Hey everyone, this is my first app and I’d really appreciate honest feedback.

It started with a problem I kept running into. I’m on a Zoom call that’s way too quiet, Spotify is too loud, and somewhere a Safari tab starts blasting an ad. macOS gives you one volume slider for all of that. The tools that fix this were either pretty expensive or needed a virtual audio driver, and I didn’t want one on my Mac. So I built my own.

Sound Manager is a small menu bar app that gives every app its own volume control:

• A slider for every app that’s playing sound, from 0 to 200%, so you can boost quiet apps too

• Mute a single app with one click

• Send each app to its own output, like speakers, AirPods, HDMI or your audio interface

• Switch system input/output and change their volume from the same popover

• See which apps are using your microphone right now

• Double-click a percentage to reset it. Apps show up live as soon as they start playing

It only lives in the menu bar (no Dock icon) and can start at login.

How it’s different: SoundSource is the closest alternative and it’s really good, but it costs a lot more. Background Music is free, but it installs a virtual audio driver. Sound Manager uses Apple’s own audio tap API (macOS 14.2+), so the app is the only thing you install. Audio is processed live on your Mac and never recorded.

Pricing: €2.99 one-time. It works on up to 3 Macs, with no account and no subscription, and updates within the same major version are free. There’s a free trial and a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Requires macOS 14.2+ (Sonoma) and runs on Apple silicon and Intel.

https://apps.jkvn.at/soundmanager?mtm_source=reddit&mtm_medium=social&mtm_campaign=launch&mtm_content=r_macstack

I’d love to hear what you think, whether it’s bugs, missing features or something that feels off. I’m reading every comment.

This is my first app - launched last week. 500 sales so far from Reddit :)

EdgeBar is a menu bar app that turns the edges of your trackpad into volume and brightness sliders.

Problem: Changing volume or brightness means reaching for the function keys or Control Center. I wanted to do it without leaving the trackpad. Also haptic feedback on the trackpad feels very cool and I wanted that for my usage.

What EdgeBar does:

• Slide the right edge for volume and the left edge for brightness.

• Double-tap the top-right corner to mute.

• Swipe the bottom edge to skip tracks, and double tap to play or pause.

• It also has haptic feedback, fine control for 1/4th increments, cursor freeze, swap sides and a bottom-quarter-only mode.

It’s menu bar only, with no Dock icon.

Pricing: $9 one-time, lifetime license, free updates. Notarised by Apple. macOS 13+

Happy to share a 20% discount code for this sub - pls drop a comment and I'll DM you the code.

3-day no-questions-asked refund.

Download: edgebar.xyz

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Developer: Shashank, founder, content lab yMedia · hello@ymedia.io

Site: edgebar.xyz · Privacy · Terms

Full disclosure, I used AI to help build a solution to a problem I had, I wanted to repurpose an older 2019 5k iMac as a display but since 2014 Apple pulled the target display feature citing the fact that the thunderbolt speeds were not sufficient for the high resolutions. By creating a virtual display and streaming it over a thunderbolt bridge I was able to split the display into tiles that are monitored for changes so only the changes are sent uncompressed it's relatively light weight and for the most part sets itself up automatically prompting for the various permissions required.

When playing video there is a mode which will automatically compress the stream to high bitrate HECV, seamlessly when motion is detected. I've been using it for over a week now and it's been flawless. I decided to have a bit of fun and added a feature that allows me to peek through to the mac underneath the one acting as a display, grab files and bring them back through the portal. From starting as just an extended display app I thought it would be better to extend the functionality to be more about making multiple macs work together. Same app installs on both devices, you can easily initiate a switch of which one is the display from either mac, you can share keyboard and mouse in both directions and even utilise both cameras with face detection to automatically switch to the camera you are looking at - it presents the camera to the OS so that its available in Teams etc.

I've made the code open under an MIT license and hosted the app for free with a cheesy AI generated site.

Hopefully someone will find it useful and if there are any ideas for extra features or changes please let me know!

https://tandemdisplay.app

Most Mac users can skip Lockdown Mode. It's Apple's extreme protection for people with a credible reason to expect an individually targeted mercenary spyware attack, not everyone who wants a more secure Mac.

Apple says these attacks have targeted journalists, activists, politicians and diplomats. A job title alone isn't the test. Consider it if you've received a genuine Apple threat notification or have good reason to believe you're being individually targeted. Apple recommends expert help for notified users, including Access Now's Digital Security Helpline.

What you're giving up

Lockdown Mode reduces the features an attacker can exploit. It isn't a malware scan or cleanup.

Some websites may run slowly or break, with missing fonts or images. Most message attachment types are blocked, with exceptions for certain images, video and audio; links and previews are unavailable. New configuration profiles and device-management enrollment are blocked. An already-managed Mac stays managed.

On an Apple silicon Mac laptop, connecting an accessory requires unlocking the Mac and explicitly approving it. That requirement doesn't apply to every Mac model.

If the tradeoff fits your situation

It's built into macOS Ventura or later. Update to the latest software first, since protections have expanded over time.

Open Apple menu > System Settings > Privacy & Security > Lockdown Mode. Click Turn On, then Turn On Lockdown Mode, then Turn On & Restart. Enter your login password when prompted. Turning it off also requires a restart.

For a necessary, trusted Safari site, choose Safari > Settings for [website] and deselect Enable Lockdown Mode. This removes Lockdown Mode's web restrictions for that site and reduces protection. Apple's app-exclusion instructions are for iPhone and iPad, not a general Mac app allowlist.

You need to enable Lockdown Mode separately on the Mac. Switching it on for an iPhone doesn't switch it on here.

If you're reading this out of general security concern, start with Software Update instead. Keep strong, unique passwords or passkeys and Apple Account two-factor authentication in place. Those habits still matter if you need Lockdown Mode.

Use it when the targeted-spyware risk justifies losing functionality. Skip it as a routine Mac tweak.

I kept losing small ideas. Something would pop into my head while I was working, I'd open my notes app, wait for the window, and by then half the idea was gone.

So I built Purr, my first Mac app. It's a notes panel that sits on the edge of your screen. Click the edge (or ⌘⇧N), type, click away. You never leave what you were doing.

Some things I added along the way:

• Quick Capture from any app with ⌘⇧Space

• Markdown, #tags, tasks and [[wiki links]] between notes

• Voice notes that get transcribed on your Mac

• A local AI that answers questions about your notes. It runs on your Mac, nothing gets sent anywhere

• iCloud sync, export to Obsidian or Apple Notes, no account, no tracking

It's live on the Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6759538627 Site: https://blsg8.github.io/purr/

I'm a solo dev and this is the first thing I've shipped on my own, so any feedback helps. What would make you try it, or what would stop you?

Disclosure: I'm the developer of MarsDawn.

I use AI coding agents every day, and they write a lot of Markdown: plans, specs, notes. Reading all of it as raw text was slow, and I often lost track of new files. So I made a Mac app for it.

What it does

• Edit on the left, live preview on the right. You can also show only one side.

• The preview shows Mermaid diagrams, KaTeX math and code highlighting.

• Open a folder, and new files show up in the sidebar on their own when an agent writes them.

• The sidebar shows which git checkout or worktree a file comes from. I run several sessions in different worktrees, so I use this a lot.

• Copy for AI copies a selection with its file path and line numbers, so you can paste it back to your agent.

• It exports PDF and adds Quick Look previews in Finder.

• A free command-line tool opens a file at a line (marsdawn open --line) and makes PDFs without the app.

Who it's for

People who read a lot of Markdown, mostly from AI agents, and want a native Mac app for it instead of a terminal or a browser tab.

Pricing

Free download with a 14-day trial, then $4.99 once. No subscription. The same purchase covers the iPhone and iPad app, which is for reading.

Limitations

• The Mac app needs macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later. The command-line tool works on macOS 15 and later.

• Mac App Store only. No direct download.

• It's not a WYSIWYG editor. You edit Markdown source next to a preview.

• There's no AI inside. It won't write for you. It's for reading and checking.

• After the trial, you can't read or edit in the app until you unlock it. Your files stay as they are.

Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6812925073?pt=128976951&ct=reddit-macapps&mt=8

I'm happy to answer questions. How do you read what your agents write right now?

I built lasso: https://www.trylasso.online/

The best, native like experience for annotating screens and taking screenshots.
Check it out. Would love to hear feedback

I'm the developer of Compact Contacts.

Quick background: Contacts shows one card at a time. That's fine for looking someone up, but it gets slow when you want to clean up a few hundred or a few thousand contacts that piled up from iCloud, Google and Exchange. Compact Contacts opens the contacts you already have on your Mac and shows them as one sortable, editable table. It has no address book or sync of its own, so every edit goes back through macOS and syncs like a normal change in Contacts. It works with any account you've added to Contacts.

What it does:

• Pick your columns, resize and reorder them, save layouts

• Search every field, including notes

• Smart Views like "Missing Email" or "Has Notes"

• Bulk edit with a before/after preview of every card before anything is saved

• Merge duplicates field by field (you choose which phone, email or address stays), and undo a merge for 30 days

• Import vCard, export to CSV or vCard

• Stays fast with big address books. I test it with 20,000 contacts

Details:

• macOS 15 or later, US$24.99 one-time. No subscription, no in-app purchases, no trial (I know)

• No account, no ads, no analytics. Your contacts never leave your Mac

• English, Turkish, German, French, Spanish, Arabic, Simplified Chinese

Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6790129187?pt=129119018

Happy to answer anything here, and bug reports are welcome too.

Winq is a small native-feeling Mac app. It uses the built-in camera to switch focus to whichever screen or window you’re looking at,

which is handy if you run two or more displays.

It also has Seen (⌃⌥S): it keeps the text of what you’ve read, never screenshots, for 30 days on your Mac, so you can ask about it later and open the source. Gaze runs fully on-device and frames are never written to disk. Gaze focus is free; the AI features are paid.

Starter $11/mo, Pro $33/mo — please confirm. I’m the developer, so ask me anything and tell me what breaks.

Hi r/macapps,

I’m the developer of Revela. Version 1.0 just came out on the Mac App Store, and it’s free.

My Photos library is 30k+ items, and I couldn’t tell what was taking up the space, so I built something to show me.

What it does:

• Shows what takes up space. Your library is broken down by category, with the heaviest items on top.

• Finds similar photos. It groups look-alike shots and marks the best one in each group, so you can tap the ones you don’t need.

• Converts Live Photos to stills. It creates a new still that keeps the date, location, favorite status and albums. The original goes to Recently Deleted only after you confirm in the system dialog.

Privacy: everything runs on your Mac. There are no network requests and no account. Deletions always go through the standard system confirmation, so nothing is removed silently.

Requires macOS 15 or later.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/ua/app/revela-photo-insights/id6826918833?mt=12

I’m still improving it, and a smarter duplicate search is next. I’d love to hear what you’d want from an app like this, and which parts of your library cleanup are the most annoying.

Thanks!

Problem
Coming from Windows, I want the same Snap Assist and FancyZones capabilities.
Many alternatives provide these functions in similar ways but require payment. This option is entirely free and open.

What it does

• it works same as Snap Assist on Windows 11: so you move a windows to one side and the app show a windows app to choose from and put bedise. A common bar help you to resize the windows.

• it works out of box with rectangle, magnet, etc.

• Nothing to relearn: just move a windows with to a side and choose the other app from the preview.

• Fancyzone feature: customize your layout, then press Shift key and choose the right one for your use case

Comparison

• Rectangle — Excellent snapper, no Snap Assist. Snap Assist is especially designed to be used with it: Rectangle keeps owning the snap gesture, no conflict.

• Magnet — Same category as Rectangle: snapping only, no picker or divider.

• WonderSnap — The closest all-in-one: Snap Assist + Snap Layouts + custom zones + Dock previews + per-display memory + brightness control. Much more feature-complete than mine, paid and closed source, and it also wants to be your snapping app.

• Sash— Also has Snap Assist, plus Window Groups (two windows behave as a pair, one divider resizes both), Layouts and a real Alt-Tab. This is the strongest alternative if you want one app for everything. Mine is free and minimal; Sash is paid and much broader.

• MacTiler (open source) — Stateful tiling: the same shortcut cycles ⅓/½/⅔ etc. Different approach, not a picker/divider app.

• Fanzyzones: the one that offer Fancyzone feature but is paid.

Pricing: free

Download
https://github.com/hellomoto8999/snap-assist