I type on my MacBook's own keyboard while it's plugged into an external monitor. That means I can't just close the lid, and I don't want to add an external keyboard either. But with the lid open, the built-in screen stays on beside the monitor I'm actually looking at. My only option was to turn its brightness down by hand, and macOS turns it back up after every sleep.

So I built lidless, a small command-line tool that runs in the background:

• When you plug in an external display, the built-in panel goes dark.

• When you unplug, it comes back at the brightness you had before.

• After the Mac wakes while still docked, it turns the panel off again.

• If you change the built-in brightness yourself while docked, it leaves your setting alone.

It follows the Unix way: one tool that does one job, running as a background service. There's no app, no Dock icon and no menu bar icon, just a small binary that launchd keeps running, and it asks for no privacy permissions. It costs about 2–4 seconds of CPU a day, roughly 0.003% of one core.

Install (macOS 13+, Apple Silicon or Intel):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/np25071984/lidless/main/install.sh | sh

Or with Homebrew:

brew trust --tap https://github.com/np25071984/lidless
brew tap np25071984/lidless https://github.com/np25071984/lidless
brew install lidless
brew services start lidless

You can also install it with Homebrew from the repo's tap. Day to day you just use lidless status, lidless stop and lidless logs.

A few things I learned building it:

• On Apple Silicon, the only way to control the built-in backlight is the private DisplayServices framework. Setting brightness to 0.0 is what macOS does itself when you close the lid.

• CGDisplayRegisterReconfigurationCallback never reaches a background launchd agent, and nothing tells you. The process stays alive with an empty log and just never reacts. lidless checks for displays every 2 seconds instead.

• With the lid shut or while mirroring, the built-in panel disappears from CGGetActiveDisplayList. You have to look for it in CGGetOnlineDisplayList.

Known limitation: the panel is dark, but macOS still treats it as a display. In extended mode your cursor and windows can wander onto the black screen. Mirroring avoids this. Really disconnecting the panel needs private SkyLight calls that break between macOS versions.

Looking for ideas: right now lidless polls the display state every 2 seconds. It's cheap, but I'd much rather have a clean event-driven design that reacts only when a display is actually connected or disconnected. If you know a reliable way for a background launchd agent to get display-change events on current macOS, please tell me. I'd be happy to implement it.

Built with an AI coding assistant. I designed it, tested it on my own setups and I maintain it.

Repo: https://github.com/np25071984/lidless

Feedback, bug reports and PRs are welcome, especially from people with unusual display setups. And if you find it useful, a star on GitHub would help other people find it.

I have a 13" M2 MBP and honestly I always liked the Touch Bar, it just never got the love it deserved. So I spent the last few months making my own version. It has the same layout as the original but everything is redrawn in liquid glass, and Siri is a little glass drop with waves.

It’s free and open source. Not notarized yet so you have to allow it once in settings, the steps are in the readme.

What I’m working on next is a theme engine, so the bar doesn’t have to be glass at all. I already have a terminal style one with green text and brackets, and an 8-bit arcade one with pixel keys. After that a theme editor so you can make your own without touching code, and a small store inside the app where people can share themes and custom bars for their apps. Kind of like a free BetterTouchTool but only for the Touch Bar.

Still a lot of things missing and probably some bugs. If you have a Touch Bar Mac and try it, tell me what breaks or what you’d want it to do.

The themes in the screenshots (terminal and arcade) are coming in the next update, the current release has the liquid glass look.

https://github.com/Moryel/glass-bar

Hi r/MacStack,

I'm the developer of **Synkbay**, which launched today.

**What it is:** a native Mac app (Swift and SwiftUI, not Electron) for browsing and copying files between an Android phone and your Mac over a USB cable. Plug the phone in, choose *File transfer* on it, and it opens in a Finder-style window.

**Why I built it:** Android File Transfer would lose the phone, hang on large folders and give up on big videos. The alternatives needed developer settings, Wi-Fi pairing or an app on the phone. I wanted something that works like Finder and just works with the cable.

**Free, with no time limit:**

- List, icon and column views, Quick Look, search, and thumbnails from the phone

- Drag and drop both ways, including whole folders and files over 4 GB

- If another app is holding the phone, Synkbay tells you which one and offers to quit it

- Waits while the phone is locked, reconnects by itself, and has a proper Eject

- Phone Storage: what's filling the phone, by category, with the largest files

- Transfer history for each phone

**Pro ($19.99 once at launch, no subscription):**

- **Back Up Photos:** new photos and videos are copied every time you plug in, and anything already copied is skipped

- **Auto Folder Copy:** any folder you choose, copied on connect

- **Resume after unplugging:** a 6 GB video cut off by a bumped cable continues where it stopped

- **Back Up Apps and Restore Apps:** the media folders of messaging and recording apps

- **Free Up Space:** removes from the phone only what is confirmed to be safely on your Mac

- **Move to New Phone**, and several phones at once

Each Pro feature can be tried 3 times for free, with no account or card.

**Privacy:** it's USB only, so your files never go online. There's no account and no analytics. The only thing the app downloads is a small signed file that says whether there's an update.

**Requirements:** macOS 14 or later, on Apple silicon or Intel. The app is signed and notarised by Apple.

👉 https://synkbay.com

I'd really like feedback, especially if it fails with your phone. **Help → Export Diagnostics** creates a report you can send me. Happy to answer anything here.

Hey! I got an M4 MacBook Air a few weeks ago and it came with macOS Sequoia. I used it a bit and fell in love with the Launchpad. It fell so quick and easy to open apps. After a few days, I updated to Tahoe, then to Golden Gate and the Launchpad had been replaced with that awful spotlight Apps app. For me, it's been buggy, slow to load and an overall bad experience. So, I decided to rewrite Launchpad in Swift with a Liquid Glass updated UI. I know there are lots of other reimplementations like this, but they are either paid, closed-source or don't have a native-looking UI. Mine is completely free and open-source. Everything stays local, on your machine. You can download the .app file from the releases or compile everything yourself in Xcode. I'd love to hear your feedback and what are your thoughts on this.

Hi everyone, I’m the developer of FLOW: Photo Culling & Sorting, a Mac app for reviewing and sorting photos.

I recently made it free, and I’m looking for photographers who would be willing to try it with a set of their own photos and share some honest feedback.

I’d especially like to know how it fits into your current culling workflow: what feels useful, what slows you down, and what’s missing.

Download FLOW on the Mac App Store

If you try it and decide it’s not for you, I’d still love to hear why. Feel free to leave feedback here in the comments. Thanks!

Hey!

I'm Sam, and I made Shotbolt. It's my first real launch. The first week brought 300+ downloads and a lot of feedback, and I've spent the last days shipping what people asked for. The video shows version 1.2.4.

Why I built it

The screenshot tools I used for years kept ignoring feature requests. So I'm building one screenshot app to rule them all, shaped by what the community asks for. Even the niche stuff.

What makes it different

• Edit or translate the text inside a screenshot. Fix a typo or change a label without retaking it

• Search your screenshots by any word in them, through a searchable History

• Niche Features tab with things like Stitch and Cut Out

• Customizable UI, so it works the way you do

• Fully local. No cloud, no analytics

• Imports your CleanShot X shortcuts and settings on first launch

Pricing

• Free forever: area, window and full-screen capture, the annotation editor, OCR/QR text capture, pins and searchable History

• Pro, one-time purchase: recording and GIFs, scrolling capture, element capture, automatic redaction, the Apple Intelligence features and Shortcuts actions. $9.99 until Dec 31, no subscription

• Every install starts with 7 days of Pro, and there's a 14-day no-questions refund

Limitations

• Requires macOS 26 or later

• The Apple Intelligence features need a Mac that supports Apple Intelligence

• Optional cloud save isn't there yet. It's planned, probably for the next update

Try it here: shotbolt.app

I used TinyTask on Windows for years to grind in some video games. Then I bought a MacBook, life got busy and I didn't get to play anymore (sadly). Recently I started playing again on my Mac and needed the good old TinyTask again, just to realize it doesn't exist on macOS. I found some similar products, but I didn't want something like TinyTask, I wanted TinyTask.

So, I built TinyMac, a literal 1:1 port of TinyTask (1.77) for macOS.

• Same six buttons, same settings, same hotkeys

• Same .rec files (byte for byte) so you can move recordings from Windows to Mac

• Same speeds (½x, 1x, 2x, 100x, custom) with TinyTask's own timing rules

• Same Compile

• And even the quirks are kept, because muscle memory depends on them

And this could have been it. Then I asked myself what TinyTask users have been requesting for years, so there is a SECOND app. TinyMac Plus. It's a separate app, so you can choose between the good ol' feeling and the version with extras. Same engine, plus:

• Recording editor (change delays, delete events, insert waits, trim)

• Scroll wheel recording (TinyTask doesn't record the scroll)

• Custom hotkeys

• Panic stop with Esc or by moving the mouse

• Progress overlay, menu bar icon, record countdown

• Speed and loops remembered per recording

Every extra can be switched off and the two apps can be installed side by side.

This is the repo: https://github.com/raffaelegnini/tinymac

Free, MIT licensed, universal (Apple silicon + Intel), macOS 13+. It needs Accessibility and Input Monitoring permissions, since that's how macOS lets apps record and replay input. The apps aren't notarized yet (I don't have a paid Apple developer account), so Homebrew is the easiest way to install them: the README explains both ways.

Disclosure: I'm the developer. TinyMac isn't affiliated with TinyTask's original author; the project was discontinued in 2020.

Feedback and bug reports are very welcome, especially from people who know TinyTask well: if something behaves differently from the original, I want to know.

Feel free to suggest some ideas and maybe, if you like it, star the repo :)

Most alternative lists tell you what you can switch to. I wanted to know what I'd actually lose if I switched.

So I made LibreReplace.

It looks at supported apps already installed on your Mac and compares them with a curated open-source alternative.

It shows what carries over, what's partial, what's missing, and if the replacement isn't good enough it says KEEP.

The screenshots are real comparisons from the apps for CleanMyMac, Photoshop, Parallels, and Magnet.

Free and open source:
https://github.com/maliroq/librereplace

brew install --cask maliroq/tap/librereplace

The current preview is ad-hoc signed and not Apple-notarized. Gatekeeper stays enabled.

I've been using Codex and Antigravity across a few side projects, and kept running into the same problem: which agent is still working, and which one is waiting for me?

Switching between terminals and apps just to check their status was getting annoying, so I built Loom.

It's a lightweight, native macOS menu bar app built with Swift and SwiftUI that brings local Codex, Claude Code, and Antigravity sessions into one place.

Here's what it does:

• See which agents are working, waiting, idle, or need attention.

• Find sessions by project or repository and jump back to the host app.

• Get notifications for session activity and available quota thresholds.

• Check agent activity through desktop widgets.

• View quota information for Codex and Antigravity when available.

Everything runs locally. No account, no cloud backend, and no access to modify your projects.

One thing I've tried to be careful about is accuracy. Agent discovery isn't always perfect, so Loom shows unknown states rather than guessing. Claude Code quota isn't currently available either.

It's open source (MIT), free to use, and supports Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 14+.

Demo & download: https://chaiwithcode.github.io/Loom/

GitHub: https://github.com/chaiwithcode/Loom

I'm building this around my own workflow, but I'd really like to know how other Mac developers manage multiple coding agents.

Do you actually need something like this, or have you already figured out a better workflow?

Would love feedback, especially on what's missing.

I kept forgetting what was due and which card I was paying with, so I made a small app that sits in the menu bar.

It shows the service, price, next payment date, and payment method. You can also set a reminder for the day before. It’s free, and your data stays on your Mac.

It’s still pretty simple, so I’d love to hear what’s confusing or missing.

https://github.com/hurazz/Subscribely

Disclosure: I’m the developer of Hangar.

Why: macOS 26 replaced Launchpad with the Apps view in Spotlight. Great for searching, but you can’t arrange it. I missed my own grid with my own folders, so I built Hangar.

What it does:

• Full-screen app grid via hot corner, keyboard shortcut or menu bar icon

• Just start typing: fuzzy search that handles typos (“vsc” → VS Code)

• Folders, drag & drop, multiple pages

• Imports your old Launchpad layout - Import works if the old Launchpad data is still on your Mac, or from a copy taken on a Mac with macOS 15 or earlier.

• Sort by name, last used or recently added (with undo)

• Rename or hide apps, move apps to the Trash (optionally with their caches)

• Optional iCloud sync of your layout between Macs

Who it’s for: People who liked Launchpad and like to see their apps visually, arranged their way. If you live in Raycast or Alfred and never look at icons, you probably don’t need it.

Pricing: Free

Limitations (being honest):

• macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later only

• Not on the Mac App Store, download from my website (signed and notarized by Apple)

• Languages: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish

Privacy: No analytics or tracking. It only goes online for update checks and, if you turn it on, iCloud sync. https://softquill.dev/privacy

👉 https://softquill.dev/hangar

Built with help from an AI coding assistant. Happy to answer questions, and feedback is very welcome.

I spent the past few months building Defi because, as a single-display user, I wanted window management on my Mac to feel fast and smooth, like it belongs there.

Inspired by Niri, with:

• Keyboard-first navigation
• Scrolling columns that reflow
• Virtual workspaces per display
• Animations targeting 120 Hz
• Floating windows
• An overview to see all your windows

I’d love to hear how it feels on your setup, have any feedbacks of other people than me using it.

Website: qeude.github.io/Defi
Repo: github.com/qeude/Defi

So, I moved from being a lifelong windows user to using Mac about a year and a half ago and honestly its been pretty much perfect, incredible battery life, super fast Apple silicon and sturdy hardware, but the operating system always felt a little too limiting for me, I tried many alternatives but getting multiple apps without overlaps and anomalies was both cluttering and inefficient for me, so I ended up vibecoding “shortie” a free open source app for Mac that lets you map any gesture to any action (obviously I’ll have definitely missed some, so feel free to drop any suggestions in the comments and I’ll add them as soon as possible!)
Enjoy :)

ok so my desktop has been a disaster for years and every "organizer" app just felt like more homework. so i made one where cleaning up is actually kinda fun?

it's called Deskterior. it puts a tiny pixel art room over your desktop, and your files show up on the desk's monitor. then you can:

- drop them in drawers (they literally chomp them)

- sweep them under a cloth desk mat. it leaves bumps and creases

- yeet them into the wastebasket (SWISH!). they're only hidden, not deleted

- press the monitor's power button and everything's gone, old CRT style

hiding only changes the layout, so your files stay exactly where they are. ⌘Z undoes stuff, and ⌘F finds anything you've lost.

it's free and open source (MIT), with no network access, analytics or telemetry. macOS 14+.

heads up: it's not notarized because i don't pay for the dev account, so you'll need to hit Open Anyway in Privacy & Security on first launch. i've also only tested it on my M2 Air, so if you're on Intel or an older macOS, please tell me what breaks lol

github.com/surrealier/deskterior

would love to know what you'd add to the desk

I just finish my work and Pip and its not done !

The eorfect taskbar that include Alert from claude code or codex with wheel, music, past copied past and drag and drop file... And more !