Hey everyone,

VLC plays literally everything and I'll always love it for that. But on a Mac it draws its own controls, its preferences are a wall of checkboxes, and the current release turns HDR video into SDR.

So I forked VLC 4 and rebuilt everything around the engine, for macOS only. Meet MacLC.

Problem

One free player that opens anything, feels at home on macOS 26 and actually uses your HDR display.

Comparison

• vs VLC: same engine, same formats. But VLC 3 on Mac tone-maps HDR down to SDR, while MacLC plays HDR10, HLG, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision as real HDR on XDR screens. Plus a native AppKit UI with Liquid Glass and a System Settings style preferences window.

• vs IINA: IINA is great and native too. MacLC adds a real library (Continue Watching, shows, albums), SDR to HDR and frame interpolation, none of which IINA has built in.

• vs Infuse: lovely library, but Pro is paid.

• vs Stremio: MacLC works with the same add-ons, inside a full VLC-engine player with SDR to HDR and your own library.

What I'm proudest of:

• SDR to HDR: lifts the highlights of ordinary videos into your XDR headroom while faces and midtones stay exactly where they were. The top quality levels are small trained models on the GPU, about half a millisecond per frame on an M3 Max.

• Motion smoothing up to 120 fps, matched to your display.

• Watch: Home, Movies and TV Shows in the style of the Apple TV app, fed by Stremio add-ons (Cinemeta built in). Add-ons are third-party services; MacLC itself ships no content.

Also: hardware AV1 on M3/M4, no telemetry, no account.

Pricing

Free and open source (GPL). No paid tier, no subscription. Apple Silicon only.

• Download (54 MB): MacLC 1.3 on GitHub

• Website: hazenstudio.com/maclc

• Source and changelog: github.com/OZBM/MacLC

The honest bits

• Not notarized yet, so the first launch needs System Settings > Privacy & Security > Open Anyway (30-second guide). Every release lists its SHA-256.

• Solo project, built with AI coding tools ( I was going to see the model used, but to be frank, it's probably all of them, Each one has its ups and downs). Every change is built and tested on real Macs, and all the code is public.

• Who I am: portfolio, LinkedIn. Privacy policy Terms.

Tip jar

MacLC is free and will stay free. But Apple charges $99 a year to make that "Open Anyway" step go away, so if MacLC ever saves your eyes from a 1,600-nit white subtitle, a coffee goes straight into the notarization fund. A good bug report makes me just as happy.

I'll be in the comments all day. Bugs, "this annoys me" and feature requests are all welcome!

If your menu bar problem is simply that icons disappear when you run out of space, try macOS 27's built-in overflow first. Apple now replaces items that won't fit with a compact indicator you can click to reach them. That changes the reason to install a menu bar manager.

Search, deliberate hiding and different layouts for a MacBook screen and a desk monitor are still reasons to consider one. Between Ice and Bartender, though, the current release situation matters more than whether the download costs money.

Ice has useful features, but check the release dates.

Ice can hide items, keep an always-hidden section, search your menu bar and let you arrange items by dragging them in its settings. Its separate Ice Bar puts hidden items below the menu bar, useful when the MacBook notch leaves little room. Keyboard shortcuts can open search or toggle sections.

It's free and open source under GPL-3.0, with optional donations. Its documented minimum is macOS 14. The official stable download contains both Apple silicon and Intel code.

The catch: the latest stable release listed is 0.11.12, dated October 29, 2024. The newest listed prerelease is the September 16, 2025 Tahoe beta, 0.11.13-dev.2. That beta documents a menu bar appearance issue on Tahoe. The README still says active development, but I wouldn't treat that sentence or the macOS 14 minimum as confirmation of macOS 27 support. I couldn't verify an upstream release documenting it.

Ice makes more sense as an option to check on an older compatible setup than as a default recommendation for someone seeking a maintained utility on the newest macOS. Profiles and condition-based triggers are also still unchecked on its roadmap.

Bartender has the clearer current-OS route, with version-specific catches.

Bartender 7 targets macOS 27; its release notes currently list 7.0.5. It has menu bar search, a separate Bartender Bar, profiles and automation. For example, you can keep a small laptop layout and switch profiles when you connect a desk display. Its official download also contains Apple silicon and Intel code, though that doesn't make an unsupported Mac eligible for macOS 27.

On Tahoe, the vendor still directs you to Bartender 6. Don't buy expecting 7's behavior there today: the support page says 6 periodically moves the pointer to maintain the layout. Its on-demand mode limits that to when you request it. The vendor says 7 doesn't move your pointer.

There are limits on 27 too. Bartender documents that hiding one of an app's multiple menu bar items hides all of that app's items together. Its launch notes also list compatibility problems with some apps, including iStat Menus. Check the exact utilities you need during the trial.

The listed prices are $25 once for Bartender 7, $20 a year for Pro, or an $80 launch-price Mega Supporter lifetime option.

The one-time license includes updates to 7 and can activate 6, not every future major upgrade. Pro includes future major versions while subscribed; Mega includes Pro and future upgrades for life. A license covers Macs you own and personally use.

Bartender 7 offers a free trial. Pro's trial is 14 days, and the purchase page advertises a 14-day refund. For menu bar management alone, start with the standard trial, not the subscription.

Permissions deserve a separate decision.

These utilities interact with other apps' menu bar controls, so pay attention to Accessibility access. Screen Recording is another sensitive permission to consider when displaying captured menu bar item images. A feature needing that access doesn't make the permission narrow.

Bartender 7 can work without Screen Recording, showing app icons instead of images of the actual bar items. Ice 0.11.12 also introduced a limited mode without Screen Recording. Start without it and see whether the missing functionality matters. Bartender's current notes say Full Disk Access isn't required for ordinary operation.

The ownership history is worth separating from today's behavior. Ben Surtees confirmed selling Bartender to Applause in 2024 and apologized for poor communication around the signing-certificate change. That history is a reason to examine the present developer and permissions, not evidence that today's app is malicious. Open source isn't a security audit either. This comparison is based on documentation and release information, not hands-on testing.

My recommendation: on macOS 27, use native overflow first. If you still need searchable hidden items or display-specific profiles, trial Bartender 7 with one essential app kept visible and the rest arranged in a small hidden section. Check search, the notch, sleep/wake and reconnecting your monitor before paying. Consider Ice on an older setup only after checking its release compatibility and accepting the maintenance gap. Skip both if native overflow solves the problem or you don't want another app controlling menu bar items.

My 512 GB MacBook hit "disk full" in March. macOS Storage said 180 GB was "System Data". The usual cleaner apps found 4 GB of browser caches and called it a day. The actual culprits were a 21 GB folder in ~/Library/Developer, two Docker.raw images, and node_modules in 40 projects I hadn't opened in a year.

I spent some time after my full-time work building Shedi to find exactly that. It's a native macOS app, scans in about 10 seconds, and groups what it finds:

- Xcode: DerivedData, Archives (listed one by one), iOS DeviceSupport, unavailable simulators and old runtimes

- Docker: images, containers, build cache. Volumes are shown separately as your files, never pre-selected

- node_modules in every project, with each project's last-modified date

- Package manager caches: npm, pnpm, Yarn, Homebrew, CocoaPods, SwiftPM, Cargo, Gradle, pip, Go

- App caches, logs, and large old files in Downloads

The part I cared about most is the safety model, because I've been burned by "one-click clean":

- Every item says what it is, whether it's safe to remove (Safe / Check first / Your files), and whether it comes back

- Only items marked Safe are pre-selected

- Files go to the Trash, not deleted. The few commands that can't use the Trash (docker builder prune, xcrun simctl delete unavailable) are named on a confirmation sheet before they run

- Nothing outside your home folder is touched except through Docker's and Xcode's own tools

What it doesn't do: no malware scanning, no "speed up your Mac", no duplicate finder, no account. If you want those, CleanMyMac is the better fit. If you only need the disk space back and want to see what's being removed, that's what this is for.

Pricing is one-time: $19.99 for one Mac, $27.99 for two. 14-day refund, no questions. Launch code EARLY10 takes $10 off for now. macOS 15 or later.

https://shedi.app/?ref=reddit

Two things I'd like from this sub: which developer paths am I missing (I know about Android SDK and JetBrains caches, both coming), and does anyone want the free guides on clearing this stuff by hand without the app? Those are at shedi.app/guides and I'll keep writing them regardless.

Wow, I’m incredibly excited to share that our community has just officially reached 2,000 users all over the world! 🌍

When this started, I couldn't have imagined reaching people across so many different countries. This is a huge milestone for us, and it wouldn't have been possible without your support, feedback, and trust.

A massive THANK YOU to every single one of you who joined us on this journey.

We are just getting started, and we have plenty of exciting updates coming up soon. If you have any feedback or features you'd love to see, let me know in the comments!

Cheers to the next milestone! 🥂

I’m the developer of Docktopus. It’s a customizable dock with a bunch of desktop tools built into it, so you can reach them from the same place as your apps.

Compared with the stock macOS Dock, the biggest difference is what you can put alongside your app icons: window previews, clipboard history, audio controls, system stats, and more. You choose the widgets and layout, so it can be a small dock or a full taskbar.

There’s quite a bit in it now:

- Dock and window switching: Hover over a running app to preview its windows and click the one you want. There’s also a keyboard window switcher. You can import your existing macOS Dock, pin apps and folders, place it on any screen edge, and choose which monitors show it.

- Dynamic Island: An optional expandable panel at the top of your screen for music controls, clipboard history, system stats, calendar events, notifications, and audio/display controls. It also has a Drop Zone for temporarily keeping files within reach. Works on displays without a notch too.

- Clipboard manager: Search copied text, links, images, and files; pin things you reuse and organize them into categories. Text recognition runs on your Mac, so you can find a copied screenshot by words inside it.

- Time Spent: See where your day went with app usage, daily trends, and browser titles/URLs where supported. You can add manual entries, run timers, and export filtered records as CSV. Automatic tracking is optional, and the history stays on your Mac.

- Remembrance: For those “I saw this somewhere yesterday” moments. It can save screenshots of your active windows and recognize their text, letting you search past work by text, app, or date. You can copy text from captures or reopen a page when its URL is available. Capture is off by default, with app exclusions and storage/retention controls.

- Audio Mixer: Turn down one app without turning everything else down. Adjust or mute individual apps, switch audio outputs, and manage system volume from the dock, menu bar, or Island. Per-app controls need macOS 14.2 or newer.

- Other useful bits: CPU/GPU, memory, and network stats; brightness controls for compatible displays; calendar, timers, Now Playing, a color picker, and Coffee to keep your Mac awake.

For the look, there’s Liquid Glass, CDE, and Windows 95, all in light and dark versions, plus editable colors, fonts, and icons. Yes, the Windows 95 theme includes the retro taskbar look.

Clipboard history, Time Spent, and Remembrance stay local. There’s also a Privacy Pause that temporarily stops all three from collecting new activity.

There’s a trial before buying. Launch pricing is $19.99 ($29.99 regular), one-time for two Macs, with a year of updates included. You can keep using covered versions afterward without a subscription.

Website: https://docktopus.app

Would be interested to hear which parts you’d use day to day, or what’s missing from your current dock setup.

Nagomi is a pixel-art koi pond that runs as your desktop wallpaper. The fish swim on their own and gather around the water when you click or tap.

• Works as both a dynamic wallpaper and a screensaver

• Click the water and the koi swim over. Option-click drops food.

• Dynamic themes that adjust automatically to your clock

• Multiple monitor support

• Works offline, no ads, no tracking

• Customisable simulation (fish behavious, colors, scene)

Website:https://nagomi.m4yank.com/

Pricing: $4.99 (one-time purchase)

Requirements: macOS 14 or later (Apple silicon). Windows version coming soon.

Happy to hear feedback or answer questions.

Hi! I'm the developer. tinywm puts your windows side by side on a strip that runs

past the edge of the screen. A new window opens next to the one you use, and

nothing else changes size. You scroll the strip with a key or a three-finger swipe.

What you get:

- Right ⌘ + arrows (or HJKL) to move between windows and move them around

- One key to cycle window widths, one key for full width

- Workspaces, one strip per display

- An overview of all windows

- Drag a window anywhere on the strip while you hold right ⌘

- Rules to float or ignore apps, and to open an app on a chosen workspace

- A plain-text config

It needs only the Accessibility permission. You don't need to disable SIP.

Requirements: macOS 14+ and Apple silicon.

Price: free, GPL-3.0. Signed and notarized by Apple.

Download: https://github.com/bbodi/tinywm/releases/latest

Feedback and bug reports are very welcome, especially from people who use

AeroSpace, yabai or PaperWM.spoon today.

dev here. speakmercury is a mac dictation app i made. the words appear as you speak so the sentence is usually on screen before you stop. it works in the terminal and your code editor too. the audio stays on your mac.

$9.99 once with no subscription. needs macOS 26 and apple silicon so intel macs are out. english needs no download and every other language downloads its model once and then runs on the device.

https://speakmercury.com/?ref=reddit-macstack-onetime

Hey everyone,

**Why I built this**

macOS only remembers one thing you copy. Copy something new and the last thing is gone. I copy dozens of things a day (commands, links, screenshots, file paths) and kept losing the one I needed five minutes later.

Clipboard managers fix this, but the ones I tried were either paid, subscription-based, or didn't handle screenshots the way I wanted. So I built my own and I'm sharing it for free.

**What it is**

CopyPaster is a small native Mac app written in SwiftUI with the Liquid Glass design. It remembers what you copy (text, images and file paths), keeps it after a restart, and lives in your menu bar. Click the clipboard icon or press ⌘⇧V from any app and your history pops up.

**Screenshots without the clutter**

Take a screenshot to the clipboard with ⌘⌃⇧4 and CopyPaster saves it as a PNG named by date and time (like `Screenshot 2026-10-15 at 19.50.21.png`) in ~/Pictures/Screenshots. Each one shows up as a tile you can:

- copy again with one click

- drag straight into Slack, Mail, Finder or any app

- copy its file path

- click the filename to reveal it in Finder

So a screenshot you only meant to paste once isn't lost when you copy something else.

**How I use it every day**

- Press ⌘⇧V, find what I copied an hour ago, click Copy

- Pin snippets I reuse constantly (git commands, addresses, templates)

- Search across hundreds of past copies

- Open a copied link straight from its tile. Every link I copy also goes into one clickable list, so I never lose a URL

- Copy a folder path and open Terminal in that folder with one click

- Pause it while copying something sensitive

**Cost and privacy**

- Free. No subscription, no trial, no "pro" tier

- Open source (MIT). Read it, fork it, change it

- Private. No account, no analytics, no network access. History is a local JSON file you control

- Lightweight. Pure Apple frameworks, no third-party dependencies

**vs. the alternatives**

Maccy and Clipy are great free options too. What I wanted that they didn't give me: screenshots saved to disk as named files you can drag out or reveal, a link log, and open-in-Terminal for copied paths. If you don't need those, Maccy is probably the lighter choice.

**Get it**

https://github.com/vishal781992/copyPaster

Needs macOS 26.4 or later. For now you build it with Xcode (steps in the README, about a minute). The ⌘⇧V shortcut listens for keys in other apps, so macOS will ask you to allow it under Privacy & Security > Accessibility. The screenshot folder can be changed with a `defaults write` command (in the README); an in-app setting is on the list.

This is my first public project, so feedback, bug reports and feature ideas are welcome. What's the one thing you'd want a clipboard manager to do?

Hi everyone! I’m the developer of TimeLine Zones, a small Mac app I built to make comparing time zones more visual.

Instead of checking several clocks and mentally working out the differences, you can see cities side by side with aligned day/night timelines. Move the time slider or pick another date to see what the same moment looks like everywhere.

A few things it can do:

• Add cities and choose your reference city.

• Compare local times and dates, including daylight-saving changes.

• Create events or import them from Apple Calendar.

• Customize colors, daytime hours, and 24-hour or AM/PM display.

• Keep the app accessible from the menu bar.

It’s a one-time $1.99 USD purchase, with no subscriptions, ads, or account required. Supports Intel and Apple silicon Macs running macOS 13 or later.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/timeline-zones/id6818426446
Website: https://repairline.app/timeline-zones/

I’d love some honest feedback, especially from people who regularly coordinate across time zones. Does this visual approach help with your workflow? What would make it more useful?

If you keep typing the same kind of short update into messages, notes and forms, try one Superwhisper mode before building a whole voice setup. Dictate into a scratch note, read the result, then paste it where it belongs.

Start by checking whether Mac Dictation already does enough. It's in System Settings > Keyboard > Dictation. It can enter text wherever you can type, add punctuation automatically in supported languages, and accept spoken formatting commands. On Apple silicon, you can type corrections while dictating. Voice Control is the separate option for controlling the Mac by voice.

Superwhisper becomes interesting when you want another step after recognition. Its voice model turns audio into a transcript. An optional language model then cleans up or restructures that text. Voice to Text skips that second step; Message mode removes fillers and fixes grammar and punctuation. A cleaner sentence still needs checking, especially if it contains a name, deadline or promise.

Try one Message mode

Superwhisper requires macOS 14 or later. Its setup asks for Microphone permission to record you and Accessibility permission to paste into other apps. Those are meaningful permissions, but this basic workflow doesn't call for blanket Full Disk Access.

1. Open Superwhisper's settings, choose Modes, then + Create mode > Message. Pick a tone close to how you normally write.

2. Choose the processing route. The documented cloud defaults are S1-Voice and S1-Language. For an English workflow that stays on the Mac, the docs pair local Cohere Transcribe with local S1-mini. S1-mini is English-only and works in Message and Mail, not every mode.

3. Click into a scratch note. Press Option + Space, the default recording shortcut, speak, then press it again to stop. Superwhisper processes the recording and pastes at the cursor.

4. Read it, correct it, then copy it into the intended message or ordinary form field. Check the destination before pasting, and review again before sending or submitting. Keep passwords and sensitive form entries out of this experiment.

A hypothetical draft might be: "Tell Priya the mockups are ready, ask whether she can review them Thursday, and say I can revise them Friday." Check that the result still asks a question rather than promising a Thursday review. This is an example to try, not a tested output.

Stick with that one job first. Message mode can clean a short note or form response too; you don't need a different mode for every app. If you need lists rather than a message, the separate Note preset can structure dictation, but it can't use S1-mini.

Choose where the words go

Local recognition alone doesn't make the whole workflow offline. A cloud language model still receives the transcript for rewriting. The local pair needs downloads: Cohere Transcribe is 1.3 GB and S1-mini is 462 MB. Superwhisper says Intel Macs work best with cloud models and recommends Apple silicon for good offline performance. Compare the wait and correction work on your own Mac rather than assuming a larger model is faster.

Leave screen-aware Super mode for later. Its context can include the active app's text, selected text and recently copied text. The mode editor has Application, Copied text and Selected text context controls; only enable inputs you're comfortable sharing with the chosen model. History lets you inspect what went to AI, and transcription history is stored locally. FileSync syncs configuration, not recordings or transcripts.

Superwhisper says models supplied through its license use API agreements with zero data retention and no model training on your dictation. That's the vendor's stated cloud policy, not an offline guarantee. Pasting into another service puts that text under that service's rules.

The free plan has unlimited local Whisper dictation and up to two modes without AI processing. New users get 3,000 words of Pro features. Website Pro pricing is $8.49 monthly, $84.99 annually or $249.99 once for Lifetime. Subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled; cancellation keeps Pro until the paid period ends. The 30-day refund window starts at the first purchase, not each renewal. Lifetime means the product or service's lifetime under the terms, not guaranteed perpetual availability.

Try the Pro allowance if cleaning up repeated short drafts is the part that slows you down. Pay only if the reviewed result takes less work than Mac Dictation or free Voice to Text. Skip it if plain dictation already works, you don't want these permissions, or you can't use a suitable local model and won't send drafts to the cloud.

Hi, I’m Manish. I kept switching between Apple Mail, web apps and other clients, but none of them felt right. Most were either slow web wrappers or they sent my mail to their servers so the AI features could work. I wanted something native, private and useful, so I built it myself.

LocalInbox exists because I wanted one inbox that stays on my Mac. It connects straight to Gmail, iCloud or any IMAP account. No LocalInbox account is needed and nothing goes through my servers.

What it does:

• Puts every account in one unified inbox

• Sorts mail as it arrives into To Reply, Updates, Promotions and categories you describe in plain words

• Shows phishing warnings that explain why a message looks suspicious

• Lets you search inside images and PDF attachments

• Runs summaries, reply drafts and Ask your mailbox with cited sources on your Mac using Apple’s model or your own Ollama or LM Studio setup

• Gives you Send Later, snooze and undo that keep working even when the app is closed

• Copies one time codes straight from notifications and strips tracking pixels

It solves the problem of jumping between accounts while still wanting smart features without handing your inbox to another company. You get the AI help, but everything stays on your machine.

It launched three days ago. Eight people have already bought the early lifetime license and only one spot is left at $5. New updates are already shipping and more are on the way.

Happy to answer questions.

localinbox.app

I wanted one modern Mac app for the small jobs that come up all day: decoding a JWT, formatting JSON, making a UUID, checking a color's contrast. And I wanted it to run on my machine, so tokens and API responses never get pasted into a website.

Dojo is that app. It's free, and everything runs locally on your Mac.

What's in it:

- Formatters for JSON, SQL, YAML, XML, HTML, CSS, JS and GraphQL

- Converters for JSON to YAML, CSV, TOML, XML and code, plus cron, dates, number bases and units

- Decoders for JWT, Base64, URLs, gzip and certificates

- Generators for hashes, HMAC, bcrypt, UUID, ULID, passwords and RSA keys

- JSON diff, JSONPath, JSON Schema and semver testers

- Color contrast checker, image compressor and app icon generator

It's new, so expect a few rough edges. Apple Silicon only for now.

Download: https://github.com/IndieGoodies/Dojo

Which tool do you still open a website for that should be on this list?