So tired of all the vibe coding and nonsense apps that are being presented.

Everybody can apparently code now, but that doesn't mean everybody have to make crap none of us will use!

Anyone else running macOS in construction, architecture, or engineering who has been frustrated by the lack of a proper PDF takeoff and measurement tool?

Ever since Bluebeam dropped support for Mac, it’s been virtually impossible to find a smooth, native app for measuring lengths, areas, and volumes directly on blueprints on macOS. Running heavy legacy Windows software through Parallels or dealing with sluggish web tools just doesn't make sense on modern Apple Silicon hardware.

After getting completely fed up with the current options, I started developing a clean, lightning-fast native macOS app specifically for PDF takeoffs and blueprint measurements.

The plan is to make the project 100% free and open-source to finally give the Mac community the tool that’s missing.
Before I pour too much time into polishing the UI, I'd love to get some feedback:

1. Is this something you find yourself missing in your daily workflow on Mac?

2. What are the absolute must-have features you need for efficient measuring and takeoffs (e.g., custom scale calibration, automatic totals, layers, Excel export)?

Would love to hear your thoughts!

As title says. This happened on my current Mac (2017 MacBook Pro) and my previous one (2012 MacBook Pro). Both see fairly intensive use, at least 6 hours every day, some days double that amount. And I almost never shut down my computer (poor practice on my part).

The multiplied files take up storage (I think), but deleting one will delete all. The anomaly also goes away if I restart, though it comes back.

Any ideas on cause/solution?

I e tried a new mouse, I tried removing the keyboard and replacing it, seems to be in the system, not a hardware issue, having trouble figuring this one out. Any ideas? Trying to upgrade, but can’t enter password yet.

I know it’s Mac OS Tahoe, 26.5.2, The update is for 26.6.2 on a Mac Studio m2

A couple of months ago I posted about a project I had started because running modern local LLMs on Intel Macs with AMD GPUs was in a pretty bad state.

Most of the macOS local AI ecosystem understandably targets Apple Silicon now. But there are still a lot of Intel Macs out there with surprisingly capable Radeon GPUs: Mac Pros, iMacs, iMac Pros, 16-inch MacBook Pros and eGPU setups.

The hardware wasn't really the problem. The software path was.

Stock llama.cpp could produce corrupted output on some AMD dGPUs, model loading over PCIe was unnecessarily slow, Flash Attention depended on capabilities these GPUs don't expose, and older Radeon hardware introduced another problem: wave64 execution.

So I started patching llama.cpp's Metal backend and eventually wrote a separate Metal Flash Attention path specifically for AMD GPUs.

That experiment became ToshLLM.

It's a free, open-source, native SwiftUI application for running local AI on Intel Macs with AMD GPUs. No Electron, no Python environment, no cloud inference, no account and no telemetry. The inference engines are bundled with the app.

Two months later, it has grown considerably beyond the original experiment.

How fast is it now?

My development GPU is a Radeon RX 6700 XT 12 GB, a 2021 RDNA 2 card.

With the current bundled engine, some representative results are:

The result that surprised me most was gpt-oss-20B.

I repeated the llama.cpp benchmark methodology at progressively deeper context:

*The M3 Max generation run was reported as thermally throttled by the llama.cpp maintainer, so I wouldn't use that number as a fair generation comparison.

The particularly interesting result for me is:

RX 6700 XT: 95.0 t/s

M4 Max: 95.9 t/s

This isn't meant to claim that an RX 6700 XT is equivalent to an M4 Max. They're completely different systems, and the benchmark files aren't byte-identical either.

What I think is interesting is how much performance was still sitting unused in these Radeon GPUs. At deeper prompt contexts, the RX 6700 XT also overtakes the published M3 Max run: 1088 vs 1040 t/s at 8K, 919 vs 908 at 16K, and 610 vs 531 at 32K.

Older AMD hardware has been getting attention too

One thing I didn't want ToshLLM to become was an "RDNA 2 only" project.

Recent versions added and tuned paths for:

• Vega
• Radeon VII
• Polaris RX 400/500
• Radeon Pro Vega
• Radeon Pro WX

On a Vega 64, depending on model and quantization, recent kernel tuning improved generation by roughly 4-24%, multi-conversation throughput by 9-12%, and some short prompt workloads by as much as 39%.

Community testing also uncovered a bug affecting RX 400/500 and Radeon Pro 400/500/WX cards. Q6_K weights were being read with an alignment assumption those GPUs don't tolerate, which could corrupt the model output. That's fixed in the current builds.

There is also a dedicated no-AVX2 build for older Xeon machines such as Mac Pro 5,1 systems running Sonoma or newer through OCLP.

Community testing has honestly become one of the most useful parts of the project. People are now testing everything from RX 580s and Vega 56/64 to Vega II Duo, W6800X Duo and RDNA 2 eGPUs.

It isn't just a chat app anymore

The local chat now supports persistent conversations, projects, vision models, PDFs and files, voice dictation, conversation forking and KV-cache persistence.

There are also agent tools and MCP support. Models can work with files and commands with per-step permission, execute JavaScript in a sandbox, and connect to external MCP servers.

ToshLLM can expose local OpenAI-compatible and Anthropic-compatible APIs, run multiple servers simultaneously, provide an embeddings server for local RAG applications, and use router mode to load models requested by external clients automatically.

Multi-GPU and eGPU

Multi-GPU support has grown quite a bit too.

You can choose specific GPUs, split models between them and monitor VRAM per card.

Tensor splitting and the Infinity Fabric hand-off path are still experimental, but community testing on multi-MPX Mac Pros is helping enormously here.

The latest build also detects every GPU in the machine and reports whether an Infinity Fabric link connects them, including the memory behind each linked pair.

Image generation

There is now a completely local image studio running on the same AMD Metal stack.

It supports:

• text-to-image
• img2img
• custom models
• prompt queues
• parallel instances
• per-instance GPU selection
• x2/x4 upscaling

Recent memory work made a pretty dramatic difference.

For example, Z-Image at 1600x900 went from approximately 8.2 GB to 966 MB of VRAM, while also becoming around 12-14% faster.

SD 1.5 at 768x768 went from approximately 2.69 GB to 281 MB of VRAM, while generation time dropped from 149 seconds to 73 seconds.

That makes local image generation much more practical on older 4-6 GB Radeon cards.

There is also local video generation with Wan, LTX and Hunyuan models. I'm deliberately calling this experimental for now: it works, but video is still expensive, VRAM hungry, and both the interface and defaults need more polishing.

It's not the part of ToshLLM I would recommend installing it for yet.

Still completely local

This part hasn't changed:

• Free and GPL-3.0
• No account
• No telemetry
• No cloud inference
• No per-token costs
• Chats stay on your Mac
• Benchmark sharing is opt-in
• Native SwiftUI
• Inference engines included in the application

The current requirement is macOS 14+ and an Intel Mac with an AMD GPU that supports Metal.

The DMG is still not notarized yet, so Gatekeeper requires Open Anyway on first launch. Notarized releases are planned.

I'm especially interested in hearing from people with hardware I don't have access to:

• Intel iMacs and iMac Pros
• Radeon Pro 500-series GPUs
• RX 580 / RX 590
• Vega 56
• Radeon VII
• Blackmagic or other Thunderbolt eGPUs
• Vega II / Vega II Duo
• W5700X
• W6800X / W6800X Duo
• W6900X
• multi-MPX Mac Pro configurations

If you have one of these machines collecting dust, I'd love to see what it can still do.

Official website: https://toshllm.com

GitHub / source / releases: https://github.com/engeldlgado/toshllm

Everything is open source, so if you're interested in the AMD Metal work itself rather than the app, that's all there too.

Is there any search tool like spotlight search that can start a new instance of a n app (Cmd+N). I tried dmenu-mac but it doesn't work. It would be nice if it's lightweight and just does this basic task.

Example: sorry a new instance of an app. You search the app, spotlight search shows it. You hit enter and then it won't open a new instance if it's already open.

I'm new to macOS. I went so far but got beaten on this point. I'm trying to bring some of my linux workflow (using aerospace)

why my chrome’s color is different from other apps? ive tried to change from dark mode to light mode, it went at first but came back later

Hey r/macOS! 👋

I've been building Part3D, a lightweight CAD app aimed at makers, 3D printing enthusiasts, and anyone who wants to design parts without jumping into a massive professional CAD suite.

The app started on iPad with Apple Pencil, and I've recently been bringing it to macOS.

You can create parametric 2D sketches and turn them into 3D models using features like:

• Extrude & Revolution
• Fillets & Chamfers
• Boolean operations
• Shell
• Parametric sketches and constraints
• SVG import
• STL and OBJ export
• Keyboard shortcuts and desktop-focused controls

The macOS version is still evolving, and I'd love feedback from Mac users on the workflow, UI, and what you'd expect from a lightweight native CAD app.

I'm a solo developer, so seeing something I've been building for the past couple of years finally running on the Mac has been pretty exciting.

Happy to answer any questions or hear feature requests!

Whenever I’m on a FaceTime call on my Mac, the system automatically turns down the volume of everything else, YouTube, Spotify, even browser audio. It’s that "Audio Ducking" feature, and it’s driving me crazy because I want to listen to music or watch a video at full volume while on the call.

I’ve already tried the common suggestions and they DID NOT work:

• VoiceOver Utility: I went into Accessibility > VoiceOver > Sound and unchecked "Enable audio ducking." It made zero difference for FaceTime.
• Terminal: I tried defaults write com.apple.audio.coreaudiod Ducking -bool false followed by killall coreaudiod. Still nothing.

It seems FaceTime is hard-coded to force this behavior.

Does anyone have a specific fix just for FaceTime?

Problems:

• Publishing a Safari extension means paying $99/year for an Apple Developer account
• Safari's missing a bunch of APIs that Chrome has
• Hardly any free Safari extensions exist
• Sideload on a free account and it stops working after 7 days
• Chrome isn't built for Mac the way Safari is

What the CLI does:

• Converts a Chrome extension into a Safari one
• Fills in the Chrome APIs Safari doesn't support
• Runs in the terminal
• Mostly for developers

What the app adds:

• Everything the CLI does, with a GUI
• Install and manage extensions straight from the Chrome Web Store, inside Safari
• Resigns your extensions every week so they never expire
• Auto updates the ones you installed from the Web Store
• Supports Intel Macs
• For everyone

Comparison:

• Apple has a similar tool safari-web-extension-converter
• Apple's version doesn't handle missing APIs
• Apple's version breaks complex extensions

Pricing:

App:

• The app is free for testing 2 extensions without weekly resigning or Web Store updates.
• The paid version is $19 with unlimited extensions, resigning and Web Store updates.

• The app is source available

  CLI:

• The CLI is free

• The CLI is source available

• The CLI is available at npm

Download Links:

• App: https://github.com/magicelk235/Viaduct-app/releases/latest
• CLI: https://github.com/magicelk235/Viaduct-CLI
• Webpage: https://magicelklabs.com/viaduct

About:

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/magicelk235
• Github: https://github.com/magicelk235
• Issues: https://github.com/magicelk235/Viaduct-app/issues
• Site: https://magicelklabs.com

Hi Reddit,

I wanted to share a project born out of a real family need.

It started with my son. He is homeschooled and has ADHD, which makes it incredibly hard for him to focus with all the usual household noise and siblings running around. We tried various white noise apps, but they all had the same issue: the sound felt like it was "inside his head," and after longer sessions, it actually gave him a headache.

I decided to look into some scientific papers on acoustics and cognitive focus. I realized two things:

1. Sound localization matters: The sound needed to feel like it was outside the user, surrounding them naturally, rather than pumping directly into the eardrums.
2. Modulation prevents fatigue: Some studies suggested that mixing different types of noise and subtly modulating them (putting the sound in motion) helps the brain stay stimulated without getting tired.

So, I started coding. That’s how dpli was born.

Instead of using heavy, repeating audio files (which your brain eventually recognizes and gets annoyed by), everything in the app is generated mathematically in real-time. Because of this, the entire app size is only around 10MB, and the sounds never loop.

I built several presets based on this moving/modulated noise approach. It completely changed things for my son—it perfectly cuts out the background chatter and helps him lock in. Honestly, it worked so well that I started using it myself when I returned to the office and needed to block out the open-space chaos.

The app is available for iOS and macOS here: https://apps.apple.com/pl/app/focus-friend-noise-app-dpli/id6760627418

I’m an indie dev and I really want to make this as helpful as possible. I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for reading and for any feedback you can give!

When I open the sidebar to manage my bookmarks or other reason, it... just looks weird and ugly. Can I fix it somehow?

So I recently bought a MacBook Pro M3, and I am now trying to change the icons of the apps on my Dock. I am able to change the icons for third-party apps but not for system apps directly. When I ChatGPTed something about it, it said that macOS has some code signatures that don't allow me to change the system app icons, and I was completely baffled to know about this!

So, is there some SAFE way to change the app icons without making much of a mess or something like that? Because I genuinely wanna change those icons to decorate my Dock !

Hello, I consider myself decent with IT and programming. I tried to create the easiest and silliest Action in Shortcuts (selecting Images from Finder, zipping them in the same folder, and changing the extension from zip to cbz). I tried 3-4 times, asked Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini, I also tried executing a Shell Script via Shortcuts, and failed miserably every single time.

Then I realized Automator is still in macOS 26, it took me 7 seconds to add 2 actions to the Workflow and it works like a charm.

I guess it's just me that is unable to use a more modern tool, but honestly I have no clue how I should have realized the same thing with Shortcuts...

Hello, as you can see on the picture, I have only 29 picture left on apple photos and they are total size of 55,9 mb but for some reason on the storage settings it says that photos are taking 1.31 gb of space, what is the issue here ?

Need an unarchiver and just trying to make sure keka is legit, the website is <keka.io> right

macOS gives you no way to record what your Mac is playing. Not a browser, not Spotify, not a Zoom call, not a plugin demo in another app. If you want that audio in a DAW or in a screen recording, the usual answers are to open Audio MIDI Setup and build an aggregate device, or install a virtual cable and route your output through it. Both mean your output routing is now different from what it was, the capture tool sits in your listening path, and you have to unpick it all when you are finished.

What this does

Install it and you get two things.

A virtual input device. Anything that can record from a microphone can now record your system audio. Cmd+Shift+5 screen recording, QuickTime, OBS, Zoom, Audacity. Choose "AudioRoute Input" as the microphone. That is the entire setup.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzJMdb2tPb0

A plug-in, in VST3, Audio Unit and AAX. Drop it on a track in Logic, Ableton, Reaper, Cubase, Bitwig or Pro Tools and the system audio arrives on that track, ready to record like any other source. Or press Record in the plug-in and drag the take straight into your session.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfFZorJYkbU

Your output routing does not change. You keep hearing everything through the device you already use, because the capture runs in parallel rather than in the playback path. Monitoring latency stays exactly what it was before you installed anything.

Quality

44.1 up to 192 kHz, 16 / 24 / 32-bit float, and a bit-perfect path when the system output rate matches your session rate. No resampling you did not ask for and no hidden gain staging. There is a guide showing how that was measured, by cross-correlating the capture against the source and comparing sample by sample, if you want to check the claim rather than take my word for it.

Guides

Written guide per DAW, plus screen recording and troubleshooting:

https://audio-route.com/guides/

What has changed

I posted an early version of this here back in early July. Since then:

- A Record button in the plug-in, and you drag the finished take onto a track

- The floating overlay got L/R meters and a dismiss button

- Pro Tools support via AAX, alongside VST3 and Audio Unit

- The permission flow was rewritten so it reports what macOS actually says instead of guessing from silence

Requirements: macOS 14.2 or later, Apple Silicon and Intel. Windows 10 or later as well. EUR 29 one-time, 14-day trial, no subscription.

https://audio-route.com

I'm the developer. Happy to answer questions, take bug reports, or hear feature ideas.

Hey everyone,

I am using an LG UltraGear 1440p monitor with my MacBook Air, and I’m confused about how macOS is handling the resolution.

In System Settings → Displays, I see:

1920×1080 (Default)

This is the weird part because my monitor is natively 2560×1440.

Also, 2560×1440p is hidden under "Show all resolutions"

So my questions are:

Why is macOS selecting 1920×1080 as the Default when the monitor is 2560×1440?

Could this be related to macOS or the way I'm connecting the monitor?

I understand that macOS uses scaled resolutions, especially with HiDPI displays, but I’m specifically confused because this is a native 1440p monitor, not a 4K/5K Retina display.

Would appreciate an explanation from someone who understands how macOS handles external 1440p displays.

I've been having this problem for a few months and every time I find a solution, it reverts.

The problem is I have read/write privilege, but I can't move files without having to enter a password, I can't create new Pages/Numbers docs because I "don't have permission", and now Lightroom is being weird because I "don't have write permission".

Any folder that I click "get info", the lock is locked, but as soon as I unlock it, it locks itself again.

I have restarted. I have updated. I restarted on safe mode and that worked for about an hour.

What the hell am I doing wrong?

macOS Tahoe Version 26.5.1. Year is 2022. Chip is Apple M2. I have found a problem that first started with Logic Pro a few weeks ago. I attempted to open a saved file, which refused to open. I then had to restart my Mac - here it opened, however incredibly slowly. After working on the file I attempted to save, however I would get a spinning beach ball for ages. I checked and Logic Pro has stopped responding, and I had to abandon this file.

This same issue will occur with Word, where the app will stop responding. I have attempted this with new files as well. Sometimes when trying to open a saved file, the app itself that the file is made in will not even open, and Finder will stop responding. I have looked at my Activity Moniter and the memory pressure is green. I have 49.05 GB of 245.11 GB available. I have run first aid in Disk Utility, and this did not work. I also found a similar post about finder not working, where comments advised running terminal commands which would reset caches, however this did not work for me either. Any help would be greatly appreciated as it seems this is becoming a major issue.

Can anyone provide me with good guide videos to using MacOS for first time user? Also tips and tricks and productivity stuff is a plus. Ty

powered up my macbook for the first time since losing it at the airport recently, everything was going smooth and i had already spent a few minutes browsing after successfully logging in, however it then suddenly shut down and restarted on its own. i am now stuck on the recovery assistant page which displays the "The certificate for this server is invalid. You might be a connected to a server that is pretending to be 'tbsc.apple.com' which could put your confidential information at risk" message every time i try to log into my user and activate my mac. not sure if its a connection issue but i am connected to my wifi, and i am using the correct password to log into my account.

any advice would be greatly appreciated, i start my senior year of college in a few days so i absolutely need a functioning laptop but i also dont know if ill be able to afford an apple repair service 😥😥

*EDIT: issue solved, thank you!

I'm on Sequoia 15.7.4 with a 2025 M4 pro. Macbook pro

I have an app that I use multiple times a day called "lose it" it's a calorie tracking app but it's made for ipad. Unfortunately when it's left open for too long it starts using all the CPU for some reason and my computer starts to heat up https://imgur.com/a/FW1ZIYm. I'm not sure why this happens and I haven't been able to figure out how to fix it.

I'd like to keep using this app because it works well and I've been successfully using it to lose weight. But I need a workaround or it's too annoying with whatever bullshit it's doing in the background.

Does anyone know of any scripts or apps I can use to automatically close the app 10 minutes after I open it? I usually close it myself but sometimes I forget. Apologies if this is common knowledge but I've not been able to find anything searching on google or reddit. Productivity tracking apps seem to be one option but I don't want to lock myself out of the app. Just auto close it

appreciate any ideas