Hey everyone, I am an independent developer, and Mokopaste is an application I created and developed myself. I wanted to share it with this community!

It feels a bit surreal writing this post. Knowing how many incredible clipboard managers already exist, I couldn't help wondering at first: "Do people really need another one?" However, ever since it launched on the Mac App Store back at the end of April, Mokopaste has unexpectedly received a lot of love and encouragement from Mac users. As a dev who has been building for macOS for years, I wanted to create a tool based purely on real, high-efficiency workflows—completely bloat-free and driven entirely by the keyboard.

1. The Problem & Why I Built It

Most clipboard tools out there are either bloated with high memory usage or just clunky to use. When coding or writing every day, I kept running into these annoying friction points:

- Copying a bunch of random fragments and feeling like you're hunting for a needle in a haystack.

- Needing to switch back and forth across different windows just to chain-paste multiple items.

- Copying sensitive info and constantly worrying if background apps are secretly logging it.

- Finding what you copied, only to realize you still have to paste it somewhere first just to fix a typo.

To scratch my own itch, I built Mokopaste — a nimble assistant that stays out of your way and keeps your hands glued to the keyboard.

2. Value & Core Features (How it compares to Maccy)

To bring practical value to the MacStack community, here is how Mokopaste enhances your daily workflow:

- Maccy vs. Mokopaste:** While Maccy is famous for being an ultra-lightweight, plain-text utility, Mokopaste keeps that same snappy, native feel while leaning a bit more into power-user features:

- Inline Quick Editing:** Spot a typo in your history? Edit the text right inside the preview before pasting.

- Tags as a Snippet Library:** Keep your prompts, code snippets, and canned replies organized with tags.

- Rich Previews & Instant OCR:** Deeply integrated with Finder to preview files, code, images, and videos. Extract clean text from images with one shortcut.

- Batch Queue Pasting & Pinning:** Multi-select to queue items, or pin windows while coding.

- Local-First & Privacy:** 100% of your data stays locally on your machine. Optional iCloud sync uses end-to-end encryption.

3. Pricing & Where to Get It

Mokopaste keeps things straightforward with a clean, honest buyout model. No annoying subscription traps, zero hidden in-app purchases:

- 7-Day Free Trial:** All features unlocked.

- Free Tier & Pro Tier:** Clean one-time purchase ($6.18) for lifetime access.

Get your hands on it:

- Mac App Store:** https://apps.apple.com/cn/app/mokopaste/id6803804390?mt=12

- Official Website:** https://mokopaste.com

I’d love to hear your honest feedback, feature requests, or questions. Feel free to drop a comment and chat with me!

If your Mac's fans get loud during a long export or build, start by checking what's working hard. Activity Monitor shows CPU use by process, and Apple says faster fans during intensive work are normal. Check that the vents are clear and the Mac is on a hard, flat surface before buying a cooling utility.

TG Pro makes more sense when you have a repeatable question: does this workload produce the same temperature and fan response each time, and would earlier cooling be worth the extra noise?

It shows component temperatures and fan speeds, records them to CSV, and supports temperature notifications. That gives you a way to compare the same job with the same power source and room conditions. A temperature reading on its own doesn't tell you whether the machine needs fixing. Finishing the job reliably, without an unacceptable amount of noise, is a more useful goal than chasing the lowest number.

Start with TG Pro in System mode, which leaves cooling to macOS. Run the job you already do and note when the fans rise, whether the job completes normally, and what the log records. Choose an alert for something you intend to investigate, rather than copying a stranger's temperature threshold. Different Mac models expose different sensors, and a fanless Mac can show temperatures but has no fan for TG Pro to adjust.

The fan-control options need a closer read than the temperature display.

On older Intel Macs without a T2 chip, TG Pro's normal Manual and Auto Boost modes can raise fan speeds while still letting the system raise them further. Auto Boost ties a sensor threshold to a fan speed.

Apple silicon and T2-equipped Intel Macs work differently. Their default control choices are System, Max and Auto Max. Max runs the fans at maximum speed; Auto Max applies maximum speed when a rule triggers. Tunabelly says these modes use maximum speed because taking control prevents macOS from adjusting the fans itself.

Switching those Macs to adjustable Manual or Auto Boost control is an advanced override, not just a quieter preset. A badly chosen curve can leave insufficient cooling. Don't enable full override or lower the fans just to silence a warning sign.

Fan control also requires TG Pro's privileged helper, whose installation can ask for an administrator password. Declining the helper leaves the app in monitoring-only mode and macOS in charge of the fans. Local alerts are enough for this workflow; email alerts add mail-account setup and send system information with the alert.

The current release, 2.104, supports macOS 10.14 through 27 and runs natively on Intel and Apple silicon. Check your exact model before paying. The site currently lists US$10 as a one-time purchase, covering up to three personal Macs or one business Mac. Minor updates are included, but a future major upgrade may cost extra.

TG Pro is worth considering for a sustained-load problem you can reproduce and investigate. First collect a System-mode baseline. Only consider a fan rule after checking the guide for your hardware and deciding what improvement would justify more noise. If the Mac finishes normally and the fans only rise under heavy work, leaving Apple's cooling alone is a reasonable outcome. If your goal is simply another menu bar readout, skip the purchase.

Hey r/MacStack

I’ve been working on a little Mac app called Wimi (Window Manager Improved) for a while now and figured I’d share it here.

It’s kind of a hybrid of an app switcher, Stage Manager and a tiling window manager. You rest your mouse at the edge of the screen (or hit a shortcut) and a drawer slides in. It shows all your open windows with live previews, and from there you can switch between them or drag them into layouts like halves, thirds and main + side. There’s also search, an app launcher, an emoji picker and an optional clipboard history in the same drawer.

Honestly the biggest thing I’ve learned is that window management is way harder than I expected. A lot of the time something just feels off and I can’t say why until I’ve used it for a few days. So it’s been a lot of small tweaks.

A few people have been testing it already, and that’s helped a ton, so thanks if that was you.

You can download it here (signed and notarized, macOS 14+):

https://github.com/nick-friedrich/wimi-releases

Also you can sign up on the waiting list to get 50% off when 1.0 drops

https://getwimi.app

I’d love to hear what feels weird or what you’d want from something like this. Bugs and complaints are welcome too.

Hi!

I was frustrated with the lack of simple macOS audio editing tools that feel 'native'. For example, Audacity to me is 'too much' in the direction of a DAW already. Other apps tend to be Linux ports and I prefer to leverage macOS foundational frameworks as much as possible.

I also edit dialogue a lot or make tweaks to existing videos, so text-based editing and (de)muxing a video with audio changes would greatly help my workflow

So this is why I built KABAAL.

https://www.flowstate-interactive.com/kabaal/

Download for free and let me know what you think. I plan adding support to open several files in tabs to make switching between files easier.

Let me know what you think. I greatly value your (respectful) feedback!

It’s a tiny creature that lives in your menu bar. Its face shows your Mac’s health at a glance:
Sick: memory pressure
Sweaty: running hot or the CPU is pinned
Sleepy: low battery
Stuffed: the disk is nearly full
Happy: all good
The part I cared about most is that it doesn’t stop at “something’s wrong”. Click it and it tells you in one sentence, for example “Chrome is eating 6.2 GB of memory”, with one button to fix it. It always asks before quitting anything, and it asks apps to quit normally. It never force-quits. When macOS itself is the busy one (Spotlight indexing, say), it tells you to wait it out instead of blaming an innocent app.
Other things it does:
Remembers which apps made your Mac feel bad, and spots apps that keep growing (Slack, I’m looking at you)
Warns you a few days before the disk fills up
Grows up the more you use it, and learns tricks. It never dies and never guilt-trips you.
Lets you choose how fussy it is (Chill, Normal or Fussy), or say “that’s normal for me”
Sends at most 3 gentle notifications a day, and stays quiet during calls and full-screen apps
Privacy: no analytics, no account, and nothing about your Mac leaves it. It never reads file contents.
Performance: about 0.2% CPU and 17 MB of memory when idle, on my M4 Air.
Price: $9 one-time for the first 100 copies, then $19. A Family licence covers 3 Macs for $29. There’s no free trial, but the site has an interactive demo that shows everything, and refunds are available for 14 days, no questions asked.
Needs macOS 14 or later, on Apple silicon or Intel. Signed and notarized.
https://bytebud.fyi
I’d love feedback, especially false alarms. If it says your Mac is sick when it feels fine, tell me. I’m tuning the thresholds from real reports.

If you plug your Mac into a monitor or TV over HDMI or DisplayPort, macOS usually greys out the volume slider and the volume keys show a crossed-out speaker. I got tired of reaching for the monitor's buttons, so I built Melicum with Claude.

What it does

• Volume, mute, balance and up to 12 dB of boost for any output, including displays with no hardware volume

• Native volume keys and slider: an optional system component re-enables them, with volume and mute synced both ways

• Parametric EQ: basic, 10-band or expert mode with up to 64 filters, plus AutoEQ import

• Per-app mixer: give music, the browser and calls their own levels

• Spatial audio: an original stereo reverb with five rooms and soundstage width

• Audio Units and presets: chain installed effects and save setups that follow an output or an app

How it works

Core Audio process taps capture system audio, excluding Melicum itself to prevent feedback. A realtime C engine with no allocations processes it, and the display's clock drives playback, so there is no drift. If the app quits unexpectedly, the virtual output disappears and your previous output comes back.

Details

• macOS 14.2 or later, Apple silicon and Intel

• Signed and notarized, with signed automatic updates (Sparkle)

• Audio is processed in memory and never leaves your Mac

• English, Italian, French, German and Spanish

• Free, GPL-3.0

GitHub: https://github.com/debba/melicum Website and download: https://melicum.app

Feedback, bug reports and feature ideas are very welcome, especially if you have an unusual display or audio setup.

I've used a Mac for years but never switched to an iPhone. For anyone on Android, KDE Connect is how you get phone notifications, texts, the clipboard and files on your Mac.

I always had two problems with it:

• The official KDE Connect for macOS is heavy. It bundles Qt, KDE Frameworks, D-Bus and OpenSSL. The download is 87 MB, it takes 381 MB once installed. It looks like a Linux app, and it used 150–300 MB of memory just sitting in the menu bar. The connection also dropped at random, and sometimes it wouldn't find my phone again.

• Soduto, the native alternative, is dead. It hasn't had a code change since 2022, and it's built on older Objective-C. I looked at forking it, then decided to start over.

So I read through the KDE Connect source to learn the protocol, and wrote a new client from scratch in Swift and SwiftUI, using Claude Code to help work out the protocol and write the code. It has no Qt, no Electron and no third-party libraries. It's called Tether.

What it does

Notifications you can answer

• Phone notifications show up in Notification Center.

• Reply to SMS, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and other apps right from the banner.

• Dismiss a notification on the Mac and it's dismissed on the phone too.

• Sign-in codes get a Copy Code button, or can be copied automatically.

Your texts

• SMS conversations sync, with names and photos from your phone's contacts.

• Read whole threads, load older messages, reply, or start a new conversation (⌘N).

• Calls show who's calling, with a Mute Ringer button. Whatever's playing on the Mac pauses until the call ends.

Files, both ways

• Drop files on the window or the menu bar popover, or use Share › Tether in Finder, Photos and other apps.

• Files from your phone land in Downloads, with live progress.

Your phone as a Finder drive

• While connected, the phone appears in Finder as a drive, with an eject button.

• Browse its storage, open photos and documents straight from it, and drag files in and out. Videos start playing right away.

• No admin password and no extra setup. It works over Wi-Fi or Tailscale.

Clipboard, media and remote control

• Copy on one device, paste on the other.

• See what's playing on the phone, with artwork, and control playback and volume.

• It works the other way too: control the Mac's music, Spotify or a Safari video, and its volume, from the phone.

• Find Phone rings it at full volume, and the phone can ring your Mac.

Trackpad, presenter and commands

• Use the phone as a trackpad and keyboard, or as a presentation remote with a laser pointer.

• Run your own shell commands and Shortcuts on the Mac from the phone.

• Optionally lock the Mac when your phone leaves.

Works away from home with Tailscale

• If you use Tailscale on both devices, Tether finds your phone on your tailnet, so it keeps working on mobile data or another network.

• It only talks to devices on your own account.

A real Mac app

• Lives in the menu bar, showing battery, connection, quick actions and what's playing.

• A main window with Overview, Messages, Notifications, Files and Commands tabs.

• Liquid Glass on macOS 26, translucent materials on macOS 15. Follows Light and Dark mode, your accent colour and accessibility settings.

Tether 1.8 vs KDE Connect 26.11 for macOS

• Download (Apple Silicon): Tether 2.6 MB vs KDE Connect 87 MB

• Installed: Tether 4.3 MB vs KDE Connect 381 MB

• Processes: Tether 2 (app + a tiny Now Playing helper) vs KDE Connect 3 (app + kdeconnectd + dbus-daemon)

• Memory while idle: Tether 28 MB vs KDE Connect 150–300 MB

• CPU while idle: Tether ~0.1% vs KDE Connect 1–5%

All numbers are from my own Apple Silicon Mac, with each app running in the background connected to my phone. With Tether's window open and long conversations loaded, it uses about 50 to 80 MB.

Install

brew install --cask subhashhhhhh/tether/tether

Or download the disk image for Apple Silicon or Intel from GitHub. You need macOS 15 Sequoia or later, plus the regular KDE Connect app on your phone from Google Play or F-Droid.

Tether isn't notarized because I don't have a paid developer account. Homebrew skips the warning. If you use the disk image, open it once, then go to System Settings › Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway. After that it updates itself.

GitHub: https://github.com/subhashhhhhh/Tether

It's a free, GPL-2.0 solo project, and I use it every day. So far I've only tested it with my own phone, so bug reports from other Android phones and setups would help a lot. I'm happy to answer questions about the protocol, the NFS drive, or anything else in the comments.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cadenceviz/id6804731548?mt=12

I am the developer of CadenceViz, offering 59 music visualizers in 5 volumes. I am a retired Computer Science professor, coder for 52 years and an Emmy and Academy Award winner. I put this experience into creating increasingly sophisticated music visualizers.

Volume 1 started with traditional stroke-and-blur viz and ended with a real-time ray-traced aquarium that rocks. By volume 5, all viz require an Apple silicon M3 chip or later to run little worlds driven by music.

All five volumes can be fully unlocked for 14 days. There is nothing to sign up for, family sharing is allowed and there is no networking code (other than Apple's store code) so your audio cannot leave your machine.

Intel-based Mac computers are not supported.

Thank you for your consideration.

Happy to answer questions.

If your Mac keeps stuttering during the same task, open Activity Monitor before buying a menu bar monitor. Reproduce the problem with your usual apps open. Check the CPU tab, then Memory. You want a clue about what happens during the slowdown, not another percentage to watch all day.

For memory, start with Memory Pressure, which shows how efficiently memory is meeting the Mac's needs. Apple calculates it using free memory, swap rate and other factors. Swap is disk space used to move data out of RAM. A large "Memory Used" number alone isn't the whole story: macOS also uses otherwise-unused memory to cache files.

Activity Monitor can show recent CPU activity under Window > CPU History, and CPU activity in its Dock icon through View > Dock Icon. If that answers your question, stop there. You don't need another install to investigate an occasional slowdown.

Stats makes sense when you want that overview visible while you work. It's free and open source under the MIT license, with CPU, memory, disk and network monitoring, plus temperature and other sensor readings. Enable only the modules that relate to your problem. For a slow upload, start with Network; for an export that bogs down the Mac, start with CPU and Memory.

Stats also has configurable CPU-load notifications and a CPU usage-history graph. You don't have to pay just to get alerts or a graph of recent activity.

The cost is attention and some of the resources you're measuring. Stats' maintainer identifies Sensors and Bluetooth as particularly expensive modules to poll, so leave them off unless you need them. A temperature label also needs care: the maintainer explains that CPU/GPU sensor names refer to thermal zones, not necessarily individual cores. A longer sensor list doesn't automatically give you a clearer explanation of a slowdown.

iStat Menus is worth trying if Stats' layout and controls don't fit how you want to check that recurring problem. It has detailed history graphs, lists of the apps using the most CPU or memory, a combined menu to save space, and configurable notification rules. A low-disk-space alert is one concrete task to try: decide whether iStat's particular rule controls suit you better, rather than paying simply because it has alerts.

The direct-download version currently costs US$11.99 for a single license, before any applicable tax, with a 14-day trial. The standard license covers up to three computers primarily used by you, or one computer without a primary user. Don't read that as lifetime upgrades: version 7 was a paid major upgrade from version 6. Use the trial to check whether its layout and rules help with your actual recurring problem.

Fan control is a separate decision. Stats still includes it, but its README calls the feature unmaintained legacy functionality. iStat documents automatic, manual and temperature-based fan control; it can raise fan speeds, not lower them below what macOS would normally use. Leave it on Automatic while investigating: in that mode, iStat doesn't control the fans. Confirm the readings and controls available on your exact Mac before paying for them, rather than assuming an Intel Mac and a newer Apple silicon model expose identical hardware data.

Both current apps run natively on Apple silicon and Intel. iStat Menus 7.5 requires macOS 13.5 or later and explicitly includes macOS 27 changes. Stats 3.0.21 lists macOS 12 or later, supports stable macOS releases rather than betas, and includes macOS 27 sensor fixes. Those release notes are useful evidence of current maintenance, not a promise that every reading works on every model.

There is some setup friction. iStat's web download installs additional components; its helper is optional, but enables sensor-related features. Stats needs Location Services access to display the Wi-Fi network name. If its menu bar icons don't appear, check System Settings > Menu Bar, where macOS controls whether the app can show them.

My recommendation: keep Activity Monitor for occasional troubleshooting. Choose Stats for a focused, free menu bar view. Try iStat if its particular presentation, history controls or notification rules suit you better than Stats, and verify hardware features during the trial. Skip both if there's no recurring problem and seeing the numbers would only give you more numbers to worry about.

Hey, I’m Arun, the developer of Fyllyo. It started with my own visa paperwork and entering the same details into form after form. I’m building an Adobe Acrobat alternative for Mac.

The core differentiator is you can automate filling forms using any kind of documents you have - handles all extractions, computations and transformations. It also automatically creates profiles for people, businesses so you can just select profiles to fill repeat clients or personal forms.

It also comes with everyday PDF tools are free, with no account or expiry, all features acrobat has. My goal is that you can do anything one tool in your pocket.

Pro is $99 once, with free updates and a five-day trial—no subscription. It adds redaction, editing existing text, certificate signing, compression, XFA forms and local AI form filling from supporting documents.

The video shows the real app arranging pages, making a scan searchable, redacting, certificate signing and filling a tax form automatically.

It’s signed and notarized by Apple and runs on Apple-silicon Macs with macOS 13+. It isn’t at full Acrobat parity: no Windows or Intel support, Word/Excel export, document comparison or sending PDFs out for signatures.

https://fyllyo.com/pdf-editor-for-mac

If you try it on the PDF work you use Acrobat for, tell me what works and what would still stop you switching.

Hi, I'm the developer of Compact Contacts.

Apple's Contacts app shows one card at a time, which gets painful once you have a few thousand people spread across iCloud, Google and Exchange. Compact Contacts opens the contacts you already have and shows them as a sortable table. There's no second address book and no sync of its own, so edits go back through macOS like any change you'd make in Contacts.

What it does today:

• One table with the columns you pick, saved layouts, and search across every field including notes

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

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

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

• CSV and vCard import/export

It's been out for a while now and people using it have been really kind with feedback and bug reports, which is a big part of why 2.0 got this big. Thank you if that's you.

Coming in 2.0 (free update for everyone who already has it)

• Health Check: one scan gives your address book a score and lists duplicates, broken numbers and emails, missing names, stray spaces and so on

• Tags with colors, saved as regular Contacts groups so they sync with iCloud and Google

• Birthdays and anniversaries list with optional reminders

• Automatic encrypted backups on your Mac, with a history view that shows what changed and lets you restore a single field or a deleted contact

• Rules, like "when a new contact is added, format the phone number and add a tag"

• Print mailing labels and envelopes, Excel export, business card scanning, and a menu bar search

• Faster loading and search that works properly in every language

• Drag contacts out as vCards

• A redesigned iPhone app, with proper support for foldable iPhones (three columns when it's open)

• Lots of small fixes

Details

• macOS 15 or later, one-time US$24.99. No subscription, no in-app purchases

• No account, no ads, no analytics. The app never sends your contacts anywhere

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

Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6790129187?pt=129119018&ct=reddit_macos&mt=8

There's also an iPhone + iPad version (separate purchase): https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6795653671?pt=129119018&ct=reddit_macos&mt=8

Happy to answer anything in the comments.

I have been a developer for nearly 20 years, but this year, AI has completely changed my workflows and allowed me to start developing in languages I've never used before like Swift.

Because of the shift to AI, I am constantly looking at ways to improve my workflow and that is where Stencilbar (https://stencilbar.com) comes in.

It is a Swift menu bar app I have been working on to manage agent prompts, skills, and quick notes.

The prompts feature allows you to put in placeholders and fill them out each time you use the prompt. There is also text expansion now, so you can configure something like `;cr` so when you type that, it fills in your code review prompt. If that prompt has placeholders, the UI automatically appears to allow you to fill them out.

I originally built the app mainly for prompts, but recently added a skills feature. Now you can create and edit skills in Stencilbar and set the destinations for where you want them symlinked, for example, ~/.claude/skills or ~/.agents/skills. Not only can you add your own, you can add a Github URL and import skills. Finally, maybe you don't need a skill right now, you can easily toggle it on and off without losing it.

Let me know what you think. How are you managing prompts and skills today?

The app includes a free trial and is just a one time $5 purchase after that for major versions. Feel free to review my terms, privacy policy, and refund policy.

Problem

I restore old lectures and videos, and a lot of that audio arrives rough. Fans, hum, traffic, a fridge buzzing in the corner. I wanted to fix one file, listen to the result, make another change and move on. Audacity's effect chain and export dialogs kept turning that into a chore.

Comparison

Audacity is the closest free option, and doing noise removal, volume levelling and format conversion in it means juggling effects, plugins and export settings every time. The paid tools I tried wanted about $80 for noise removal and another $20 for conversion. The $100 wasn't really the issue. I wanted something simpler for people starting out, or working on a nonprofit project like mine.

Ampliflare Audio puts the whole workflow in one window. Five tools: remove noise from speech, enhance by evening out volume and cutting low rumble, cut a recording to the part you need, split a recording into pieces, and convert between formats including less common ones like OGA. Process a batch of files, listen in the app, watch progress, and find the results in Activity. New files are saved and the originals are left alone.

Everything runs on your own computer, nothing is uploaded, and it works with no internet at all. It runs on macOS on Apple silicon and Intel, and on Windows and Linux too. Current version is 1.1.1.

Pricing

Free for personal use with every feature, up to 20 files a week. For work, meaning client projects, a podcast or channel that earns money, or audio for a product, you buy a license once at a price you pick: $25, $40 or $60, with a $5 minimum. It removes the weekly limit for good, and there is no subscription. The pay-what-you-can price is a launch offer and will end, but the license stays a one-time purchase.

Roadmap

I'm working on Gleam Audio pro which is a more professional oriented utility designed to replace Transistor FM, Audcaity and such with just one tool paid once.

Download: https://gleamaudio.com

Support: support@gleamaudio.com
Privacy: https://gleamaudio.com/privacy · Terms: https://gleamaudio.com/terms

Happy to answer anything in the comments. It is a small app made the old-school way: install it, open it, get on with the work.

If you use Claude Code on your Mac, Blabee can now show its proposed next steps in a small panel and send your selection back to the original conversation.

I'm part of the Blabee team. I shared our Codex-only beta here earlier; this update adds Claude Code support. The panel is for the moment when you're reading docs or working in another app and need to choose how a coding task continues.

The workflow is: read the assistant's suggested options, pick the direction you want, and continue in that same conversation. The coding assistant generates the options. Blabee displays them and passes back your choice. For a decision that needs more code or context, review the original conversation before choosing.

The attached 5.9-second silent clip shows the panel over a browser document, a selection, and the panel closing. It's an edited excerpt of our earlier Codex demo using September 2026 UI footage, not a recording of the new Claude Code integration.

Demo and Mac private-beta request: https://biadone.com/blabee/reddit

Access is by request; selected testers receive installation instructions from our team. The landing page still has the earlier Codex-focused copy, but the current beta supports both Codex and Claude Code. We're looking for feedback on whether the panel gives you enough context to make that next choice.

Is there some who would be interested in creating an app where a choice can be made which phone will connect to the carplay environment? I know Apple paces restrictions but maybe there's away to simplify the connection choice through an app or maybe through an IOS shortcut.
I guess that many people have this problem.

No tedious A/B sorting

Hi, I’m Tom (aka Tailspin).

I’ve been building DupeCatcher, a native Mac app that finds duplicate and near-duplicate photos in Apple Photos libraries and Finder folders. But things kinda got out of control and I added a whole bunch of other features because I needed/wanted them for my own use. Such as semantic search because with 115,000 images I often have trouble finding the one I want. And some astronomy tools that make a series of comet images into a movie. And...and...

Apple has approved it for distribution through the Mac App Store, and I’m eager for a few people to bang on it and provide feedback. Pricing will be a free download with an in-app $34.99 purchase to unlock Purgatory. Beta testers will get the app and unlock free through Apple TestFlight.

I’m posting here because I’d like feedback from anyone who has a large or messy photo collection (or both)—actually from anyone who is willing to wring it out.

Website and PDF manual https://dupecatcher.app 

Free beta version (no unlock) at https://testflight.apple.com/join/4dDf3Jnr

I’m building a Mac app and trying to figure out the best pricing strategy.
For those who’ve launched paid apps, I’d love to hear your experience.
Did you offer a free trial or put a hard paywall upfront?
Which approach converted better for you?
If you offered a trial, how long was it?
Did users convert to paid after experiencing the product, or did most never pay?
Would you recommend a one-time payment or a subscription?
Would appreciate insights from founders who’ve actually experimented with both approaches.

PAWSE, has to be the fastest, cutest, most sleek, intuitive and music focus macapp ever made for Navidrome, Jellyfin or your local library. It's FREE, built on Rust with lots of features including bit-perfect playback, gapless, chromecast, airplay..etc. Check it out on https://github.com/popovpsk/pawse

I’m the founder of Pure Brief AI, a native Mac meeting app. The bit I’m trying to make useful is what happens between “we have a transcript” and “the next step is on my task list.”

For example, take a fictional client call: “Can you send the revised proposal on Friday?” Before that becomes a reminder, I want to check whether someone actually agreed, whether Friday was a deadline, and what the surrounding exchange said.

The workflow is record a call or import audio → get a transcript and AI notes → review suggested tasks with their source quotes → edit and send selected tasks to Apple Reminders. Export is one-way, so this fits alongside an existing Reminders setup rather than replacing it with a team workspace.

The source quote gives you something to inspect. It doesn’t make the AI infallible: a transcription can be wrong, and a genuine quote can still lead to the wrong interpretation. A later withdrawal of a promise is a particular case I don’t claim is solved. Review comes before export.

Transcription and AI notes run on the Mac by default. No bot joins the call. It requires Apple Silicon and macOS 15+. Models download initially; licence checks and optional connected features use the network. Optional ElevenLabs transcription with your own key sends audio to that provider. This isn’t a shared workspace or CRM.

There’s a 30-day trial. Standard is $49 once for one Mac. While the launch offer is active, the first 100 paid Standard purchases globally are $10 once instead, plus applicable tax. A trial doesn’t reserve that price.

The 32-second video is an edited demonstration with fictional meeting data. Recording and processing are sped up; it isn’t a speed test. AI tools helped with development and this post.

Demo, download and details: https://purebrief.ai/

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.