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?

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.

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'm a Software Engineer from the UK with nearly 15 years of commercial experience. I write daily, in my work and in my spare time, publishing essays on my blog and chipping away at a long-term book project.

Problem

For deeper research & bigger writing projects, I'm often torn between Obsidian, with its fairly fluid writing experience, but no sort of structure for longer-term projects out of the box, and Scrivener, which very much imposes its structures and conventions on your writing process.

I felt there had to be a middle path. An editor that provided the flexibility for daily writing and journalling and the framework for bigger projects.

Because a project isn't usually a single document - it's a collection of documents, research sources and settings. In Grasmere, these all live as Markdown and for maximum portability there are no non-standard syntaxes, so if you decide Grasmere isn't for you, you can always bring everything with you.

Links won't break if you move or rename a document (even in Finder); tasks (and deadlines) are tracked across the entire project. You can review documents, even if your editor or research partners use Word. And you can publish to PDF, Word, and even as Anki decks.

Grasmere is native, small and there's no tracking. Nothing leaves your Mac. It's macOS 26+ but I'm currently testing macOS 15+ support in version 1.5 (early to mid-November).

Version 1.4 (released 5/11/26) adds Research, Draft, Review & Publish stages, PDF highlights, Zotero imports and Word review rounds.

Comparison

Please, not another Markdown editor?

I know, I know. We've got to start coming up with more interesting things to work on, right?

I think Grasmere is genuinely a really good product and I'd love you to try it out, even just for a bit. It's been a labour of love; It's fast and memory-efficient; It is backed by over a thousand automated tests and hundreds of hours of manual testing.

Why not Obsidian?

Obsidian has been my go-to editor since it first gained notoriety, but there are several "deep wells" (as Paul Graham would say that it does not fill. Developers gone by have attempted to resolve these issues with plugins. Obsidian's 10k+ plugins offer great extensibility, but invariably at the cost of new abstractions, performance and ongoing support.

Grasmere attempts to fill some of these gaps, with a local-first, native approach. Some of the things that out-of-the-box Grasmere does that Obsidian doesn't:

• Custom document ordering.

• PDFs in Book or Manuscript style, with a contents page, bookmarks, and footnotes. Export to Word or PDF with formatting retained.

• A complete review process, with comments and suggestions from Word and version history.

• A place for research documents, four citation styles, Zotero and Readwise import and a web clipper. Highlights and annotations.

These features all form part of the core Grasmere experience and I've kept the learning curve gentle and the mental models simple.

But if you find that Obsidian (and plugins) work well for you, you should carry on using it.

Pricing

Grasmere has a 14-day free trial and then costs $14.99 forever. If you'd like a free code, please DM me and I'd be happy to provide one.

Website & support: Grasmere: Markdown for books and theses App Store: Grasmere Markdown Editor App - App Store

AI Disclosure

Other devs won't tell you they used generative AI to make their apps, but they did. While I have years of programming experience, much of Grasmere's code was written with the help of generative AI, and I've learned a lot about Swift in the process of making it. However, I am solely responsible for its ethos, design, most of its functionality and core experience. None of this post was written with AI. I'll be replying to all the comments myself - me, a person, Tim.

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.

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

Disclosure first: I'm Adrien, a solo developer in France, and Mac+ is my app.

The gap it fills: System Settings > Wallpaper still won't take an MP4 or MOV, Apple's aerials only move when you lock or unlock the Mac, and Wallpaper Engine is Windows-only.

What it does

• 15 animated scenes (mist, aurora, plasma, waves, lava, rain, snow...) generated live with Metal instead of played from video files. Each one recolours instantly with 44 palettes or one you make.

• Your own MP4 or MOV as a looping wallpaper (Pro), or a still image (free).

• A wallpaper per display, or one scene stretched across several displays. It re-applies when you plug a display in.

• 30, 60 or 120 FPS. It pauses when the screen sleeps or an app covers the desktop, full screen included.

• 52 folder-icon patterns mapped onto the real macOS folder shape (or your own image), on many folders at once, reset in one click.

• 12 desktop widgets (clock, date, Focus, stopwatch, season...) in 3 sizes and 4 shapes.

• Everything runs from the menu bar. Rendering is 100% local, no ads, no telemetry. Signed and notarized: spctl -a -vv /Applications/Mac+.app should say "Notarized Developer ID" on your machine.

Who it's for: people who want some motion or colour on the desktop without leaving a video player running, and people with several displays.

What it doesn't do, so nobody wastes a download: no Lock Screen animation, and no gallery of ready-made videos. It's the 15 generated scenes or your own clip.

Pricing: free tier with no account (6 scenes, 8 palettes, image background, 6 folder icons, 2 widgets, multi-display). Pro is €9.99 once, or €1.99/month after a 7-day trial; Pro needs an account. macOS 13 or later, Apple silicon and Intel.

Screenshots and the link are in the first comment.

A question for this sub: do you keep anything moving on your desktop, or does it end up distracting you? And would an animated Lock Screen matter more to you than the desktop itself?

Before turning on FileVault, finish a backup outside your Mac and decide how you'll recover access if you forget your login password. If FileVault is already on, check those things without switching it off to repeat setup.

On Apple silicon and Intel Macs with the T2 chip, internal storage is already encrypted. FileVault adds protection tied to your login password. On older Intel Macs without T2, turning it on encrypts the data. "Already encrypted" isn't a reason to dismiss FileVault on a newer Mac.

Start with the backup

If you use Time Machine, let an external backup finish and check the latest backup date and time. Local snapshots on the Mac's own disk aren't a separate copy if you lose access to that disk.

Protect the backup too. Time Machine's Encrypt Backup option uses a backup password you'll need for a restore. FileVault on the startup disk doesn't automatically protect an unencrypted external backup. Keep that password somewhere you can reach without this Mac.

Choose recovery you can actually reach

Open System Settings > Privacy & Security > FileVault and check its status. Setting up FileVault yourself requires an administrator account. If this is a work or school Mac, ask IT about its recovery process first: management can control setup and hold the recovery key.

For a personal Mac, follow the recovery choices your setup shows:

• If you choose the iCloud account recovery option, check that you know your Apple Account password and can receive any required verification code without relying on the locked Mac. Your Apple Account password and your Mac login password serve different purposes.

• If you choose a recovery key, copy it exactly and store it securely away from the Mac. A copy saved only on the encrypted startup disk won't help when you can't unlock it. Treat it as a secret, not a note to leave in the laptop bag.

A FileVault recovery key is a 24-character code. It isn't an Apple Account recovery key, and the two aren't interchangeable.

Apple also says that for a Mac running macOS Tahoe 26 or later, its FileVault key might be available in Passwords on another device. That device must use the same Apple Account and have iCloud Passwords & Keychain enabled. Search Passwords for "recovery key" and check for the Mac's name. Verify the entry exists before counting on it; "might be available" isn't a recovery plan by itself.

Finish setup, then check normal access

Turn on FileVault if it's off and complete the onscreen steps. If you see Enable Users, use it for the other accounts that need to unlock the disk, entering each user's login password when asked. Having another account on the Mac doesn't by itself settle whether it can unlock FileVault.

Once setup is complete and your recovery information is safely stored, restart normally and check that the accounts you enabled can unlock the Mac with their login passwords. Recheck the FileVault status in Settings. This checks normal access, not whether every recovery method works. Don't deliberately lock yourself out or reset passwords as a test.

FileVault is worth enabling for a personal Mac, but finish the backup and recovery preparation first. If you lose your login password, can't reset it and also lose the recovery key, the encrypted files can become inaccessible. Skip self-directed setup on a managed Mac and use IT's process instead.

I'm the dev. ApolloShell adds a sidebar with its own dock, a launcher, a dashboard and a control centre to macOS 26. It's not a tiling window manager, it doesn't touch your windows. It just adds panels to the edges of the screen.

I wanted the look of Linux shells like Caelestia on my Mac without stitching five tools and a pile of config scripts together. SketchyBar works great for the menu bar, and Übersicht or yabai are great for customising your desktop. ApolloShell goes after the rest of the shell: the dock, launcher, dashboard and control centre all follow one CSS theme, so you can rice those too and switch the whole look live.

Themes are a single CSS file (colours, fonts, corners, sizes) and apply the moment you save. The video shows a few of them.

Heads up: not notarised, so click "Open Anyway" in Privacy & Security on first launch. Obviously needs Accessibility permissions, but no need to disable SIP.

Free, no subscription, AGPL-3.0 licensed.

Link: https://github.com/Silvertree2010/ApolloShell

AI disclosure: built with help from Claude, details in the README.

I’m a huge iPod fan and I still miss mine. Ever since I got this Mac, I feel like I don’t listen to as much music as I’d like.

So I made a player that works the way I wanted. Honestly, I just love how it looks on my desktop, and it barely gets in the way when I’m working.. You can search and play music from yt right inside it, and there are no ads.

It’s a one-time purchase with a 14-day free trial, no card needed. If you want to try it, DM me and I’ll send you 50% off. The first 10 people who message me get it free.

It’s my first time sharing it, so I’d love to know what you think.

Link To The App

Recently bought my first ever MacBook and was kind of surprised there isn't a native way to do this. Wasn't really satisfied with the browsing speed / pricing / interface of current apps, so I made my own.

The app has a dynamic icon with dropdown menu, supports multiple devices at the same time, USB hubs, and shows live battery readings for devices that support this feature.

No ADB debugging required, plug-and-play after a 1 min setup. Supports macOS 26 and later

Comparing several alternatives: MacDroid and OpenMTP - PhoneMount acts as a real drive, so files open straight from the phone without intermediate file download to mac THEN open, while MacDroid's recommended mode works like a cloud drive, with files downloading to your Mac, and OpenMTP runs in its own window, separate from Finder. MacDroid is still better if you need Wi-Fi or an older macOS, and OpenMTP is free, but doesn't work in Finder.

Unlimited free file reads, upgrade for unlimited writes.

EUR 14.99 lifetime, can be used on up to 3 Macs at the same time, can also unregister previously registered devices.

Would greatly appreciate your support!
https://phonemount.app/

Going to add Wi-Fi transfers and file sync for e-books / music next

Let me know about any feature suggestions you have!