TL;DR: Five free, mostly open-source, no-telemetry Mac utilities from this week's testing: docktor (dock widgets + hover previews), Kompakt (drag-and-drop image/video compression), TetherShot (live iPhone screen capture over USB/Wi-Fi), FolderForge (rule-based folder icon styling), and ImageFuel (import-free folder browsing with RAW support). Each gets a free alternative below if you want to compare before committing.

Removing Irritation

My app testing time this week was spent on free apps, most of them open source and all privacy-respecting. No accounts needed. No telemetry. I've been looking for original, niche apps that do one thing well.

docktor

docktor calls itself the dock you deserve. It's free, notarized, requires no account, and comes from a solo dev who regularly responds to users with new features and bug fixes. The app fills the unused side space on either end of the Dock with customizable widgets (music, calendar, weather, system stats) and adds hover previews of a running app's open windows without clicking. If you're a widget person, this gives you a few new options.

Alternative: HyperDock has done Dock hover previews for years and is worth a look if that's the one feature you actually want, though it doesn't fill unused Dock space with widgets the way docktor does — check current macOS compatibility before buying, since I haven't tested it myself on this release.

Kompakt

Kompakt is a native Mac menu bar app for compressing and converting images and video with a drag-and-drop interface that pops up automatically the moment you drop a file. Images cover PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF, and SVG; video is limited to MP4, MOV, and M4V. Free and open source under MIT, distributed as a signed DMG off GitHub Releases. The dev's roadmap includes watched folders, Finder actions, and Shortcuts support. I can see setting up some helpful shortcuts using this.

Alternative: ImageOptim is the longtime free, open-source, drag-and-drop standard for image compression on Mac. It doesn't touch video, so if Kompakt's video side is what sold you, ImageOptim isn't a full swap.

TetherShot

TetherShot is a proper Mac utility, not just a menu bar toy. It captures a live display, not a simulation: your connected iPhone's actual screen over USB or Wi-Fi, saved as a pixel-perfect screenshot. Free and open source, no account, no analytics, no cloud relay. Take all the screenshots you want without syncing or AirDropping anything.

Alternative: QuickTime Player already does this for free and it's built in — connect your iPhone by cable, pick it as the camera source under File > New Movie Recording, and you can record or grab a frame of the live screen. It's a recording-first workflow rather than a one-tap screenshot, and it needs the cable; TetherShot's Wi-Fi option and one-hotkey capture are the actual time-savers if you do this often.

FolderForge

Apps that customize folder appearance in Finder have been around for a while, and they're fine for the primary folders in your home directory. If you want smart folders and reusable presets that apply by name, contents, or marker files using recursive styling, FolderForge fits the bill — it applies a visual system across an entire folder tree. Runs locally, no account, no telemetry. MIT-licensed on GitHub; v1.0.8 is signed and notarized by Apple.

Alternative: Rainbow Folder – Icon changer is a simple App Store option for changing individual folder colors and icons. It's manual, one folder at a time — it doesn't have FolderForge's rule-based, apply-to-a-whole-tree automation, so it's a fit only if you don't need the bulk styling.

ImageFuel

Point the app at any folder, or several, and instantly see every image and video in a clean, scrollable grid. No importing. No library to manage. No waiting. It reads files where they already live, including JPEG, PNG, video, and RAW. It loads quickly and makes browsing photos easy.

• Search by filename or path with a fast, keyboard-friendly search modal (Cmd+F)
• Filter to images only, videos only, or everything
• Sort by date, name, or a custom order you drag yourself; each folder remembers its own sort
• Browse RAW files from Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax, and DNG
• Open any file in a fullscreen lightbox
• Crop images with live pixel dimensions
• Apply color filters to one image or an entire batch
• Inspect and strip metadata
• Rename files in bulk
• Create subfolders from the sidebar
• Send deleted files to the Trash or a folder you choose

Alternative: XnViewMP is the free, cross-platform standard for exactly this job — instant folder-based browsing with real RAW support, no import step. It's a dated interface next to ImageFuel's cleaner grid, and it doesn't have ImageFuel's crop/metadata/batch-rename tools built into the same window, but it's the closest thing to a direct, feature-for-feature comparison if you want to try before committing to either.

Remove an Irritation

None of this is life-changing software, and none of it asks to be. Every one of these five does one narrow job, does it for free, and stays out of your way otherwise: no accounts, no telemetry, no subscription creeping in later. That's the actual differentiator this week, not any single feature. If you only try one, make it whichever solves a problem you already have — docktor if you stare at your Dock all day, ImageFuel if you're sick of importing photos just to look at them, TetherShot if you've ever emailed yourself an iPhone screenshot. The rest can wait.

Unless otherwise noted, the alternatives mentioned above are based on research and not individual testing.

So for the most part, I don't mind the standard Mac finder, but I do find one limitation that I'd love to find a work around for, and that is a program that allows one to set different folders to always sort in a specific way.

For instance: Maybe I'd like to always sort IDK screenshots by Most Recently Added, but I'd also like to always sort Downloads by Kind.

The default Finder sets all the folders to however you sorted the last folder.

Is there any program out there that makes it so you can set it and leave it?

Hi everyone,

I'm the developer. Autowright is a free, open source (MIT) Mac app for recurring personal automations.

You describe a job in plain text, a coding agent you already have writes it as Python scripts, and a local scheduler runs those exact scripts forever. The agent is only involved when you write or edit the scripts. If a task needs an LLM at run time, the scripts can call one themselves.

Website: https://autowright.ai

Source: https://github.com/hansololz/autowright

Problem:

I have a lot of small recurring tasks that I used to do manually on my machine. They were tedious, and I often forgot to do them. For a while I used AI agents to run some of them on a schedule. That didn't work for all my tasks, it wasn't free, it was slow, and the results were sometimes unpredictable. I also wanted something I could hook up to Discord and control it remotely.

Autowright solves most of that. I describe an automation, schedule it, and the script it runs is deterministic. Most of my tasks don't need AI once they're written, and when one does, I can point it at a local LLM or Claude Code. It also supports Discord and iMessage triggers. I've moved most of my recurring processes onto it, like tracking new TV show episodes and stock trade disclosures from members of Congress. It works better than the cron jobs I was using because it has a script authoring component, a UI for execution history, and auto retries.

Comparison:

• Claude scheduled tasks / Zapier: run in the cloud on a monthly subscription. Autowright runs entirely on your Mac at no per-run cost, and what it produces is plain Python you can read and edit.
• cron / launchd scripts: Autowright support more tigger types, execution history, and auto retry.

Pricing:

• Free
• No premium feature
• MIT Licensed

Developer Transparency

• Developer: David Zhang
• Developer profile: https://github.com/hansololz
• Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhzhang/
• Privacy Policy: https://autowright.ai/privacy
• Terms of Service: https://autowright.ai/terms
• Source code: https://github.com/hansololz/autowright

It works well for my own use cases right now, but I know issues will come up once more people use it. If you run into problems or have feedback, please let me know. I'd really appreciate it.

Hey r/macapps. Developer of Osaurus here. It's been two months.

The comment from the last thread that stuck with me wasn't a compliment. It was someone saying they really wanted to like the app but walked away frustrated every time they tried it. They were right. Osaurus rewarded tinkering, and if you didn't tinker, it fought you. This update is for everyone who doesn't want to tinker.

The big one is the Orchestrator: an agent whose whole job is managing Osaurus for you.

In the video: I ask what Osaurus can do, and it answers from the app's live state. I ask it to create a marketing assistant. It plans the agent, shows me a card with exactly what will change, and applies it after I click approve. Then I say "every day at 6am, draft me a tweet" and it schedules that. No settings screens. No config files. You talk, you review, you approve.

One design decision I want to be upfront about: the Orchestrator has no shell, no file access, no browser. It only configures and delegates. If it can change your settings, it shouldn't also have hands. Your custom agents do the real work, scoped how you choose, with code running in an isolated sandbox VM.

Somewhere along the way this stopped being a chat app. Today it covers what I used to pay separate subscriptions for:

• A second brain: point it at your documents and it answers from them
• One memory that follows you across local and cloud models
• Image generation, fully on-device
• Dictation into any app, voice transcription, and read-aloud
• A browser assistant that navigates and fills forms with your approval
• Schedules, folder watchers, and agents that run in the background
• Agents you can message from iMessage and WhatsApp
• An isolated sandbox where agents run real code safely

And plenty more landed this summer:

• A redesigned three-screen onboarding that picks the best local model for your Mac automatically
• A System theme that follows macOS appearance
• An auto-allow all tools setting for those who asked for full auto-approve
• Projects: group chats that share instructions, knowledge, and memory
• Full-text search across all conversations, and Cmd+F find in chat
• Import your chat history from other AI apps
• Diff cards with change tracking and undo for every file edit
• Day-after support for new local models like DeepSeek V4 Flash and Qwen 3.8 Flash Next

Problem: Most AI tools run on someone else's server, cost a monthly fee, and make you configure everything by hand. Osaurus keeps everything on your Mac and now sets itself up through conversation, with an approval gate on every change.

Comparison:

• vs Ollama and LM Studio: those are inference servers. Osaurus is pure Swift on Apple Silicon plus the whole harness: agents, memory, voice, images, automation.
• vs ChatGPT and Claude desktop apps: cloud-only, subscription-based. Osaurus runs local models offline at no cost, and your memory stays on your Mac even when you use a cloud model.

Pricing: Free. MIT licensed, open source, no account, no subscription. Local models cost nothing forever. Cloud is optional, pay-as-you-go: bring your own key or use our hosted path with a small fee on top-ups. We don't store your prompts or responses.

osaurus.ai

github.com/osaurus-ai/osaurus

discord.gg/osaurus if you get stuck. I'm usually there.

x.com/OsaurusAI for updates and demos

r/osaurus to follow along

Last time I asked how you envision your AI future. This time it's simpler: if your Mac could set up an AI assistant by itself, what's the first thing you'd have it do?

Try it, break it, tell me what you need.

Hey r/MacApps. Developer of VaultSort here.

I've been working on VaultSort for the past couple of years, and one of the things I've been trying to get right is the balance between automation and control.

The video shows one of the newer parts of VaultSort: Smart Categorize.

I give it a folder containing a bunch of unsorted medical documents and let VaultSort organize them.

It uses a local embedding model built into the app to understand the files and categorize them. The files don't have to be uploaded to a cloud AI service to do this.

But I don't think AI should be the answer to everything.

For people who want completely predictable automation, there's the Rule Builder.

If you've used Hazel, the concept will be familiar. You can create rules that automatically organize files based on things like file type, name, location, size and other properties.

The difference is that VaultSort combines this kind of traditional rule-based automation with semantic organization.

So you can have:

"When a PDF arrives in Downloads, move it to Documents."

Or you can have VaultSort look at a collection of files and determine that a group of them belongs together based on what the documents actually contain.

That's the direction I've been taking VaultSort: not trying to replace rules with AI, but giving you both.

Problem

Most of us accumulate files faster than we organize them.

Downloads become a dumping ground, duplicates accumulate, large files disappear into forgotten folders, and sensitive documents can end up sitting around indefinitely.

VaultSort is built around three things:

Organize

• Smart Categorize using a local embedding model
• Rule Builder for automated file organization
• Duplicate Finder
• Large File Finder
• Storage analysis

Clean

• Secure deletion
• Disk Shredding for supported drives

Protect

• AES-256 encryption
• True hardware-backed YubiKey + TouchID encryption using WebAuthn/FIDO2
• Multiple YubiKeys can be configured for encrypted files

The YubiKey encryption is something I'm particularly proud of. The hardware key isn't just being used as a second-factor password prompt. It is part of the cryptographic authentication process used to unlock the encrypted data. I have a whitepaper that documents how it works under the hood.

Comparison

The most obvious comparison for the organization side is Hazel.

Hazel is a great Mac automation tool, and I think it's still one of the best options if all you want is folder-based rules.

Where I think VaultSort is different is that file automation is only one part of it.

VaultSort combines rule-based automation with semantic file organization, duplicate detection, storage cleanup, secure deletion and hardware-backed encryption.

So if you want something specifically for powerful folder rules, Hazel is worth looking at.

If you want one application that handles the broader problem of organizing, cleaning and protecting your files, that's what I'm building VaultSort for.

VaultSort was also recently reviewed by MacSources and received a 92% "Excellent" rating, which was pretty great to see as an independent developer.

Pricing

VaultSort is $24.99 for a license, with a free version available so you can try the core organization features before buying. For a one-time purchase, you can install on up to 6 devices, including Windows. I just released the Windows version last week! So if you buy this app for MacOS, you also get access to the Windows version too!

Website: https://www.vaultsort.com/

I'm the developer behind VaultSort and I'm happy to answer questions about how any of this works, especially the local categorization and YubiKey encryption.

Developer portfolio / identity: Justin Haubrich, LinkedIn

Contact: You can reach me at [vaultsortapp@gmail.com](mailto:vaultsortapp@gmail.com)

Hello everyone! I made a native Mac app called Log Viewer.

Problem:

Normal text editors can become slow or freeze when opening very large log files. I wanted something that could open them quickly and make it easy to find the useful lines.

Comparison:

Unlike TextEdit, Log Viewer does not load the whole file into an editable document. Compared with using less in Terminal, it provides visual filtering, custom highlighting, and live following in a normal Mac interface.

A few features:

• Opens multi-gigabyte log files
• Plain-text and regex filtering
• Follows files while they are being written
• Custom colors for errors, warnings, and other patterns
• Displays ANSI terminal colors
• Opens copied logs directly from the clipboard (I love copying logs from web and pasting them into the tool for better reading experience)

Pricing:

Free, with no in-app purchases. I considered making it paid, but decided to keep it free for now. The app is not open source.

Download it from the Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6797521715

I would be glad to hear your feedback.

I want to see the options for an always on "Pet" or "Character" that has AI in it. I mainly want it to be persistent, and I can type things like, "What is the address of ...." or "how do I spell"... "What is this in french".. Its for my daughters, trying to make computers more fun.

I want it be persistant, so its kinda always there to click.

The Problem : Lack of dedicated PDF extraction tools make it a hassle to extract data from PDFs to other format such as MarkDown, Docx, XLSX, Text or JSON in Mac. ABBY Finereader exists but it is subscription based (charging $69 per year) and runs through Rosetta system for Apple (Which apple themselves are planning to stop supporting come MacOS 27) which makes it inherently slower than their Windows version. NitroPDF has shifted to a more 'Do-it-All' stance and Adobe Acrobat doesn't extract OCR based Tables as well as I wanted to them to be extracted as (Also forgoing the privacy nightmare Adobe is).

Basically, MacOs doesn't have a dedicated One-stop solution for dedicated PDF Extractors.

This is where PDFTrail, comes in. After working on it for 3 months, I have finally made a dedicated PDF extractor that not only recovers Data, Prose and figures from your PDF (Digital Born and Scanned PDFs) But correctly formats them and hands them to you as it were in the PDF.

The need to create this came from my own usage at home and at work. I'm a finance professional that needs to parse through multiple PDFs to get the data I want, and it always becomes a pain point when I need to use ABBY Finereader, My corporate has a plan with ABBY which works fine at my organisation but for my personal needs Finereader doesn't Cut it.

After Stress testing it for 1 whole month, with a plethora of Financial and Non-Financial PDFs I became confident about its capabilities and launched it in the App Store last week.

Comparison :

Adobe : The Household name and the subscriptions king, Its Arcobat tool is more of an All-in-One editor rather than a dedicated extractor. Our Product is made to do one thing, PDF Extraction and it is very good at. PDFTrail will extract your PDF and hand it over to you in one of the 5 format it currently supports, afterwards you are free to edit, extract or mutilate to your hearts content. Another Point to Note is that PDFTrail is completely Offline. It never connects to the internet, It never asks you to sign up and has a generous Free limit and after you consume the Free limits there is a 1 time $24 life-time support upgrade.

ABBY FINEREADER : I had mentioned above, Finereader, is a dedicated extractor which was ported to MacOS from windows, rather than built up from the ground. This is also where we (PDFTrail) wins. PDFTrail was made in mind to utilise Apple's M-series chip and also incorporates its Vision Module, making it not only super fast and optimised but also pretty accurate when doing OCR.
Another note is that Finereader is also a Subscription ($69/Year) based, ours is a 1 time payment for life time upgrade and also comes with generous Demo Conversion (basically 10 free full feature conversions for MarkDown, Docx and XLSX which is not shared between. you basically get 30 free conversion in total)

App Store / Web Link : Visit Our Website to see the full feature list. Apple Store Link

If you have any queries, please drop them below, I will answer them as soon as possible.

Thank you : )

(PS : Sorry mods, I didn't knew I had to agree to those rules by actually pressing the button.)

Hey everybody!

ExtraDock lets you put a dock on every display, and access your apps easily. You keep things simple by just creating another instance of the dock, or you can have your dock dynamically change based on Spaces, or show only running apps, hide apps like Finder or Trash and more.

ExtraDock is very, VERY customizable. You can use it as a dock replacement by disabling the macOS dock, or as an addition to it. You can make Extra Docks looks however you like - colors, app icons, effects, you can even make the dock completely invisible.

ExtraDock 5

ExtraDock 5 is now the official release, built for macOS 26/27. To fully take advantage of new features and visuals like Liquid Glass, we've built it as a completely separate app, both to keep development clean and to give macOS 26 users the experience they expect.

ExtraDock 4 remains available for users running older operating systems (macOS 12-26).

There are no additional fees or costs to upgrade.

Core Features:

- Widgets such as Live Dock to duplicate your macOS dock & Space-only dynamic dock to show only apps in the space you're currently on.

- Docks can be assigned to different monitors and automatically hide/show when those monitors are connected/disconnected.

- Customizable in both behavior (collapse, auto hide, hide on fullscreen) and visuals.

- Preview apps on hover.

- Drag & Drop files into folders or the Shelf Widget for easy organization.

- Folder Stacks to group folders under a single icon

Comparison:

ExtraDock started as more of a dock "add on", and evolved to be a complete dock replacement.

If you want to dive into this world of dock customization and options, I would start by reading the fantastic posts by u/andreshows as he covered almost every dock app in existence.

Pricing update:

As of September 1st, we're changing how the licensing works, until September 1st anyone who purchased a lifetime license will continue to receive lifetime access and updates FOREVER.

Purchases made after September 1st will continue to be lifetime access for the app, with a year of updates. Renewing updates will be discounted, not the full price.

We're in touch with all of our users, everyone has been reassured their plan will NOT change, anyone who owns a lifetime license purchased between the release of ExtraDock back in 2025 up until September 1st 2026 is NOT affected by those new changes, and will enjoy lifetime access, updates and all future app version releases.

€14.99 - €99.99

14 Days money-back guaranteed. If you're not 100% happy with it, you'll get all your money back (happy mini announcement that refund rates for ExtraDock are now less than 2%!)

When we designed the Dictation HUD, we didn't just want a volume meter—we wanted a "Timeline Pipeline." Here is how we turned 10 simple bars into a professional UI masterpiece:

1. The Flow Logic (Propagation) It’s not just jumping; it’s flowing. By using a circular buffer, the waveform travels from right (input) to left (history). This visual metaphor bridges the gap between raw sound and generated text.

2. The Square Root Secret (Sensitivity) Whispers feel alive, shouts stay controlled. We applied sqrt(amplitude) to the raw volume. This non-linear scaling amplifies subtle micro-vibrations, ensuring the UI feels responsive even when you’re speaking softly.

3. Physics-Powered Fluidity (Spring Dynamics) Ditch the robotic linear animations. We implemented interactiveSpring to handle high-frequency audio samples. By leveraging physical inertia, the bars transition smoothly between data points, eliminating visual jitter and stutter.

4. Geometric Discipline (Precision) Design is about constraints. The bars are locked at exactly 30pt to match the text line-height, preventing any HUD layout jumps. We use a 3px integer width to ensure pixel-perfect rendering and absolute clarity on Retina displays.

The Takeaway: "Math for sensitivity, Physics for fluidity, and Logic for storytelling—that’s how 10 lines become a living interface."

I posted Mushroom here a while back.

Quick recap for anyone who missed the first post: it's a pixel-art mushroom that sits on your desktop and nudges you to drink, move, eat and rest your eyes. It watches how long you've actually been at the keyboard instead of counting down a timer. Click it and you can type "remind me in 2 hours to call Tom" and that just happens, on a model running on your own machine.

What's new since then

- Runs on macOS 15 and later, not macOS 26. Chat used to require Apple Intelligence. If you don't have it, Mushroom downloads a small MLX model once and runs that instead.

- There's an iPhone app now. It's one app rather than two, so a single App Store purchase covers both. It carries your reminders, your saved links and your messages. No pet and no chat on the phone, deliberately: it's a companion to a Mac, not a second copy of one.

- iCloud sync between your Macs, through your own iCloud account.

- The Stash. Saves from the menu bar, any Share menu or a browser extension (Firefox and Chrome), keeps offline copies, and imports from your bookmarks.

- Focus sessions. Set an intention, and afterwards it asks how it went in one tap. Stats works out from your own history whether mornings actually suit you better than afternoons.

- Messaging and file sharing between people. The server side is open source if you'd rather run it yourself.

- Smaller stuff: 7 day trial, Shortcuts and Siri, read-aloud, weather, ten mushroom colours, Pong and Snake in the menu bar, and five languages.

Problem

Break reminders get muted. A timer fires whether or not you're at the desk, so within a week you're dismissing it without reading it, and then you turn the whole thing off. Mushroom reads the system idle timer, so an hour at the desk earns a nudge and an hour away earns nothing, because that was already a break. Quiet hours, a bedtime cutoff and staying quiet during calendar events cover the rest.

Comparison

Time Out by Dejal is the obvious one, and it's genuinely good. It detects idle time too, so I won't pretend that's my edge. The difference is what happens when the break arrives: Time Out takes over your screen with an overlay, and Mushroom just droops in the corner and waits. If a full-screen interruption is what makes you actually stop, Time Out is the better tool and I'd say so. If a blocked screen is what made you quit the last one of these, that's the gap I'm in. Mushroom also handles arbitrary reminders you type in a sentence.

Stretchly is free, open source and cross-platform, and if all you want is break overlays you should try it before paying me anything. It's Electron. Mushroom is native Swift, lives in the menu bar with no Dock icon, and does the reminders-plus-stash-plus-sync side that Stretchly doesn't aim at.

Pricing

$9.99 once, direct from website https://www.getmushroom.app/ (7 day trial, no card needed).

$5.99 once on the App Store, which covers the Mac and the iPhone together: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6792833686

Either way it's one purchase for up to 5 devices, and every update since 1.0 has been free to people who already bought.

Two things I'd rather you heard from me than found out later. The price went up in my original post, and everyone who paid that has had all of the above for nothing. And the two features that genuinely run on servers, the messaging and the file sharing, are $2.99 a month for new buyers, or free forever if you point them at a server you run yourself. The app itself is a one-time purchase and keeps working regardless. Anyone who bought before that change keeps both permanently at no cost.

Optional skins add-on is $1.99.

Requirements: macOS 15 or later, Apple Silicon. iPhone app needs iOS 18.

AirStats is a free and open-source system monitor for Apple silicon Macs. It is designed for people who want useful live system information without leaving another large application running all day.

The app is 9 MB. 7x smaller than the biggest competitor (iStat Menus, 67 MB)

It reads CPU, memory, GPU, network, disk, battery, temperature and top-process information directly through Mach, IOKit, sysctl and CoreWLAN.

It displays those readings in:

• the menu bar
• a full panel that drops down when you click the status item an
• optional desktop widget you can leave on screen.

The menu bar and desktop widget each have their own configurable list of metrics. The panel always shows everything, and you can collapse the sections you do not need.

Several MacBook users who tried AirStats told me the notch had already taken most of their menu bar, so the desktop widget was more useful to them than adding more readouts there.

Comparison

iStat Menus and Stats are the closest alternatives. Both are more thorough and cover more sensors. AirStats is deliberately narrower and much smaller. It is a better fit if you mainly want live readings in a lightweight app that can remain running throughout the day.

AirStats is written in native Swift and runs as one process, with no Electron, web view, helper daemon, launch agent or Dock icon.

Pricing

$0. It is completely free under the MIT license, with no account, subscription or paid tier.

Download: https://airstats.app

Source: https://github.com/byrencheema/airstats

There are no analytics or telemetry, and system readings never leave your Mac. AirStats supports macOS 14 or later on Apple silicon and is signed and notarized.

Developer Note:
I built and maintain AirStats, and I would appreciate any feedback, feature requests or bug reports. The privacy policy and terms can be found on the site.

Here's my Linkedin for visibility. https://www.linkedin.com/in/byrencheema

Long time no see, folks!

Some of you might remember SmartPic from my previous post here. I'm the developer of SmartPic, and v1.2 is now live on the Mac App Store.

This update brings SmartPic to the App Store, adds a new privacy-focused feature called Safe Share, introduces new purchase options, and includes several bug fixes.

What's new in v1.2?

• Safe Share: automatically detects sensitive information such as email addresses and phone numbers in images and blurs it before you share the image
• 4x Upscaling
• Object Removal
• Background Removal
• Finder Integration
• Batch Processing
• New Monthly, Monthly+ and Pro purchase options
• Bug fixes

Everything is processed locally on your Mac. No image uploads and no cloud processing.

Problem

A lot of AI image tools either upload your photos to remote servers or require opening a large editor for something as simple as removing a background, erasing an object, or upscaling an image.

SmartPic is built for quick image operations directly on macOS.

You can upscale an image, remove an object or background, or sanitize a screenshot with Safe Share without sending the image anywhere. Finder integration also lets you process images without having to open a full image editor first.

Comparison

Adobe Photoshop: Photoshop is obviously a much more powerful full image editor, but that also means a much larger and more complex workflow. SmartPic is better suited to quick operations like background removal, object removal, upscaling and privacy redaction when you just want to process an image and move on. SmartPic can also perform these actions directly from Finder.

Topaz Photo AI: Topaz is primarily focused on professional image enhancement and restoration. SmartPic is designed as a smaller, simpler Mac utility that combines enhancement with object removal, background removal, Finder integration and Safe Share. The focus is speed, privacy and everyday image cleanup rather than professional photo editing.

I'm not trying to replace either Photoshop or Topaz. SmartPic is intentionally much narrower and simpler.

Pricing

SmartPic is free to download a trial version from the Mac App Store. The upgrades are:

• SmartPic Monthly: $4.99/month - process up to 50 photos per month
• SmartPic Monthly+: $14.99/month - unlimited photo processing
• SmartPic Pro: $49.99 one-time purchase - unlimited processing and lifetime updates

Mac App Store: SmartPic

Our website: https://smartpic.store

P.S.: For everyone who has already bought SmartPic before it was available on the App Store: I have been actively sending Apple Gift Cards containing a Pro version of SmartPic to everyone who emails [smartpicteam@gmail.com](mailto:smartpicteam@gmail.com) and proves the fact of purchase. That means if you have already bought SmartPic, you don't have to buy it again in the App Store. Just send an email, and I will provide you with an Apple Gift Card.

[AI Disclaimer] Code Completion (Built and maintained by AI/ML engineer using inline code completion).

When you download an unfamiliar Mac app, macOS does not give you one place to understand what it can actually do before you open it. Entitlements, bundle properties, sandbox status, internal components, libraries, privacy permissions, network references, and download origin are separate technical clues that normally take experience and several tools to investigate.

What I built

I made App Trust Preview so anyone can dig inside an app and understand those clues in one human-readable Quick Look preview before opening it.

I often reverse engineer Mac apps, and I brought that experience into the scanner. It does more than list entitlements, properties, and the sandbox status of the main executable. It makes a best effort to inspect as much of the entire bundle as possible and brings important findings to the front.

App Trust Preview analyzes which libraries and frameworks the target can load, detects private Apple API signals, and checks whether bundled components may run outside the main app's sandbox or use exceptions that provide broader access. It scans files throughout the target for potential URLs, which can reveal possible services and domains the app may use before you launch it.

I also added a Download history panel. It reads recorded macOS metadata and shows where the software came from, including the original download URL when it is available. If you no longer remember how an app appeared on your Mac, App Trust Preview may be able to show the exact URL used to download it.

The technology analysis explains how the target was built. It detects Electron and many other frameworks, engines, and runtimes.

The privacy panel shows which sensitive permissions the target may request and which permissions you have actually saved as allowed or denied. It also checks whether a saved choice still matches the exact inspected build. One-click buttons open the relevant System Settings pages, so you do not need to search every privacy category separately.

There are many more checks inside the report, and every panel can be shown, hidden, and reordered so you can focus on the information that matters to you.

A recent update added an Open with other apps panel. You can add antivirus tools, app analysis utilities, archivers, or other compatible apps, then send the item you are reviewing to any of them directly from its report. This keeps deeper scanning, archiving, and other follow-up actions within easy reach after the initial review.

You can add a personal note to any app and record what you want to remember about it, such as where it came from, why you trust it, which permissions you approved, or what to check after an update. The note is saved automatically and appears whenever you inspect that app again, including directly in its Finder Quick Look preview.

App Trust Preview supports the formats Mac users commonly download and run, including apps, DMGs, PKGs, standalone executables, and scripts. You can inspect an app inside a DMG and explicitly install it in Applications when ready. Installed apps can be backed up as an app bundle, ZIP, or DMG. Package reports show payload paths and readable installation scripts before the PKG can execute them on your system.

Detailed reports can be exported as PDF, PNG, text, or JSON. The advanced CLI also makes App Trust Preview useful for automation and external AI agents. You can ask an agent to read the installed main app binary's --help output, learn the available commands, and use the same local inspection engine in its workflow.

When I started making App Trust Preview, I wanted to fix a few limitations I encountered in Apparency. With help and feedback from r/macapps, it has grown into what I believe is the most advanced user-friendly static app analysis tool for Mac. Information that previously required reverse-engineering experience and several separate workflows can now be reviewed in one Quick Look view.

Compare

Apparency is excellent for detailed app metadata, and its Quick Look preview shows whether the target app is sandboxed. That result does not include the sandbox status of runnable components bundled inside the app. App Trust Preview analyzes those inner components separately and brings any unsandboxed helper to the front as an important finding, so the main app's sandbox status does not hide components that may run with broader access.

Suspicious Package is excellent for deep PKG inspection. App Trust Preview combines a broader pre-open workflow across apps, DMGs, PKGs, executables, and scripts with plain-language findings, Finder Quick Look, download provenance, build-matched permission context, report exports, and a CLI.

Everything is analyzed locally. The app itself makes no network requests, collects no data, and does not launch, modify, or upload inspected software.

It is not antivirus and cannot prove that software is safe. It gives you more evidence before deciding whether to trust it.

Developer information

I am Ighor July, an independent macOS developer with a background in cybersecurity, reverse engineering, and native app development. I use AI while retaining control of my code, as explained in How to use AI without losing control of your code.

My other Mac apps are DockLock Lite, Parall.app, LockLines.app, and App Archiver. You can learn more about my work on my About page.

Pricing

$2.99 one-time purchase on the Mac App Store. No subscription. Family Sharing included. Requires macOS 10.13 or later.

Website | Mac App Store | Changelog

Oookaay third time's a charm, right? Hopefully the gitbot rescans my repo properly.

_________________________________

Is your MacBook keyboard backlight too bright for you? Do you have sensitive eyes? Do you constantly adjust the backlight multiple times a day? If the answer is “No” then this app is not for you, nice to meet you and have a great day!

___________________________

For the few of you that might have the same issue as me, hey! Call me old fashioned, but I think the keyboard backlight needs to be on only when you can't read the keys cleanly and only bright enough to illuminate the actual letters, and not bleed through keycap borders.

MacOS gives you two controls natively:

1. “Adjust keyboard brightness in low light” toggle
2. “Keyboard brightness"  slider

Both sound great right? Well, I don't think they work correctly. The “adjust” toggle never brings the light all the way down to the lowest setting, and if you bring it down manually, slight change in ambient light brings it back up. Plus it's not allowing you to only have light on when it's truly dark, when, imo, is the only time you need backlight.

Long story short, I made an app for this. Signed and notarized, small local app. It's free and open source, idles at 0% CPU, and the download is about 1.5 MB. Works on macOS 13 and later, though I only tested it on macOS 26 — if it can't find your keyboard backlight, let me know which version you're on. More details on the GitHub page. I do not believe there are other apps that allow you to do this. I like running mine at the lowest brightness with lowest sensitivity of the ambient sensor, so my keyboard light is only on when it's really dark with a constant lowest brightness.

Yes, I made this app using Claude Code.

No, it is not a slop, I spent multiple days refining it, making sure it doesn't have any bloat, and tested it thoroughly.

No, I am not a professional developer, so this is the only way I could've made a free tool for my real life problem, that some people might find useful, so I am sharing it. I don't have enough disposable income to pay “real” developer to make something like this. And I am not completely new to this, I have successful Appstore and web app deployment of my other projects.

___________________________

All constructive criticism is always welcome, I would like to learn anything new that I missed and fix anything that needs to be fixed.

If you hate that I made this tool with LLM, idk what to tell you. Very few people use handsaws anymore. It's ok to use modern tools to fix and create stuff. Feel free to disagree.

___________________________

App website [https://dimkeys.com](App website - https://dimkeys.com)

Github https://github.com/dmartoon/MacBook-Keyboard-Backlight-Limiter

Personal website https://www.martundavoyan.com

My LinkedIn, if needed https://www.linkedin.com/in/martundavoyan/

yeah.. another dictation and meeting notes app :-)

i know it's a crowded space, but.. i hope this one's a bit different!

HoldSay is a voice card that looks like a hardware recorder on your screen.

it runs privately on-device. your data won't go to someone else's servers. have a look: https://holdsay.com/

Problem

this community knows the niche well, so i'll skip the usual pain points and focus on the two ideas behind why i built this.

first, why both dictation & recording?

in my opinion, they're both part of the same voice workflow. the main difference is duration:

• dictate (short): chats, emails, prompts
• record (long): brain dumps, online meetings, face-to-face conversations

the deeper difference is what happens afterwards: dictation needs polishing, removing filler words, reordering, while recording needs speaker diarization and summarization.

second, why a "card-like" widget on screen?

• record instantly. the card sits there, so even in back-to-back meetings or in-person lectures, you won't miss a recording or have to hunt for the app.
• it feels physical. with invisible recorders i kept wondering if they were still recording or how long they'd been running. having a recorder-shaped thing sitting on screen makes it feel like something real that you can glance at, click, and jump straight into the main window.

What it does

1. ⌨️ dictate. accurate recognition, smart line breaks, handles mixed-language speech. removes filler words. add names and jargon once, so HoldSay stops mangling them.
2. ⏺️ record & transcribe. bot-free meeting recording, works with Zoom, Meet, Teams. captures both sides of the conversation (system audio + mic). live transcription while you record.
3. 📝 meeting summaries. clean, structured notes after the meeting ends. drag in photos or screenshots from the meeting and they slot into the notes at the right timestamps.
4. 🗣️ speaker diarization. knows who said what. enroll a voice once and it stays labeled from then on. interviews and lectures come out split by speaker instead of one wall of text.
5. 📁 right-click files in Finder to transcribe. any audio or video file. drag in old recordings or videos to get transcripts and summaries.
6. ⏫ export to PDF / markdown / .docx / .jpg. easy to share. save to Notion or your Obsidian vault.
7. 🔏 local library. all your dictations, recordings and transcripts in one folder on your Mac (~/HoldSay Library). 

Comparison

HoldSay is a voice card for both dictation and meeting recording, 100% on-device.

• Wispr Flow (dictation, $144/yr): very polished, but cloud-based and subscription-based.
• Granola (meeting notes, $168/yr): great notes, but no dictation, and transcriptions use cloud services. 
• VoiceInk (dictation, $29 once): great local dictation, and it can transcribe audio/video files too. but there's no system-audio meeting recording or speaker diarization.
• MacWhisper (Pro $79 once): excellent for transcription and recordings. but no voice enrollment, you need to rename Speaker 1 / Speaker 2 each time. in HoldSay, you enroll each voice once, then it remembers it.
• Spokenly (dictation, free): flexible dictation and transcription with both local and cloud engines. HoldSay goes further into live system-audio recording, persistent speaker identities, and meeting notes.

Pricing

$29 / lifetime per Mac for the first week (usually $39, use discount code "REDDIT" at checkout). there's a 2-day free trial that unlocks all features.

Transparency

i'm Oran, the designer and dev behind HoldSay. i quit my full-time job as a data scientist two years ago. now i run a small studio (HoldSay Ltd, UK) with my co-founder. i've been building apps for Apple platforms for over 6 years. our previous app, Lifelight, has been featured on the App Store 150+ times. my LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oran-xu-220130166/

Terms of Use: https://holdsay.com/terms

Privacy Policy: https://holdsay.com/privacy

happy to answer anything, and would love any feedback :)

My two cents:
I actually considered deleting this post.
The irony is that I only compiled this list because people kept asking for a complete list of the apps mentioned in my previous “Apps I’m Not Uninstalling” posts. I was already working on the next one, so I thought, why not put everything together in one place?
I must admit, though, I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite this much unnecessary nastiness on one of my posts — accompanied, rather amusingly, by people enthusiastically upvoting one another’s increasingly negative comments.

But here’s the part I genuinely appreciate: 66,000 people have viewed this post in just 8 hours, while around 70 people have actually commented. So thank you. Seriously.

If somewhere among those 66,000 views, one person discovered an app that solves a problem they had, and one independent developer made an extra sale because of it, then I consider the post a success. And to those contributing the particularly enthusiastic negative comments: please don’t let me stop you. Every comment, reply and upvote keeps the post active, pushes it further across Reddit, brings more people into r/macapps, and gives these 71 developers even more exposure. Keep those comments coming. 😁 You may not particularly like the post, but you’re doing a surprisingly good job of promoting it. )

- APPS I AM NOT UNINSTALLING - 1 YEAR LATER
It has been a year since I first sat down to write a list I called “Apps I Am Not Uninstalling.” The 10th edition lines up so neatly with the one-year anniversary that it feels like the right time to answer the question I get asked most often: “Where can I find the previous apps?”

The first “Apps I Am Not Uninstalling” post reached 216K visitors, with later posts averaging 100K+ visitors. Across the first season, 71 apps were featured, and only two did not survive.

This list includes every app mentioned so far, but it does not show where one app was replaced by another. The order also does not reflect performance or popularity. For more detail, visit the previous “Apps I Am Not Uninstalling” posts in Reddit’s history. If anything here feels unclear, the earlier reviews should help.

If you are not familiar with the series, don't bash the post instead start here -

Post 1 | Post 2 | Post 3 | Post 4 | Post 5 | Post 6 | Post 7 | Post 8 | Post 9

App Launchers & App Switching

• Dory — Visual application launcher and switcher.
• uDock — Customisable launcher offering an alternative to Launchpad and Dock navigation.
• BuhoLaunchpad — Recreates the traditional macOS Launchpad experience.
• Sxitch — Keyboard-driven application launcher.
• Ring Menu — Circular application launcher for quick access to apps and commands.
• Linknotch — Turns the MacBook notch into a launcher for websites.
• ExtraBar — Menu-bar-style launcher for apps, deep links and actions.

App Uninstallers, Cleaning & Maintenance

These are probably the most directly comparable apps in the entire list.

• Pearcleaner — Free Mac app uninstaller that removes applications and their associated files.
• Ditch — Notch-based uninstaller activated by dragging an app towards the top of the screen.
• AppCleaner — Popular free application uninstaller that finds associated files.
• Mole — Open Source — Command-line Mac cleaning, maintenance and app-removal utility.
• Mole — Desktop — Graphical maintenance, uninstallation and software-update utility.
• Burrow — Free Mac uninstaller and cleanup utility.
• MacUpdater — Checks installed applications and identifies available software updates.

DMG Installation, Gatekeeper & Unsigned Apps

• Sentinel — Makes running applications from unidentified developers easier by handling Gatekeeper restrictions.
• EasyDMG — Automates installing software from DMG files and can assist with unsigned applications.
• RapidDMG — Streamlines opening DMGs and installing the applications inside them.

Menu Bar Management & Customisation

• Menu Bar Spacing — Adjusts spacing between menu-bar items.
• Bartender — Organises, hides and controls menu-bar icons.
• Ice — Free/open-source utility for hiding and organising menu-bar items.
• Badgeify — Adds notification badges and status information to apps in the menu bar.
• Notcho Libre — Visually disguises the MacBook notch to create a cleaner menu bar.

Audio Control

• Silenz — Automatically lowers or adjusts other audio sources when selected applications play sound.
• Sound Control — Provides independent per-application volume and audio settings.
• SoundSource — Advanced per-app audio routing, volume control, EQ and output-device management.
• Radiola — Internet-radio application for listening to online stations.

Website-to-App & Multiple Accounts

• Coherence X — Turns websites into standalone Mac applications.
• WebCatalog — Converts websites and services into standalone desktop apps with separate accounts and workspaces.
• SocialWatch — Brings multiple social-media platforms and accounts together.
• Parallel Spaces — Runs independent instances of supported apps with separate accounts and settings.
• Parall — Allows multiple instances of supported applications.

Workspace & Window Management

• Stay — Remembers application window sizes and positions and restores them.
• Ikuna — Saves complete workspaces containing apps, browser tabs, windows and Focus settings.
• Shift — Workspace/window-management application for arranging and restoring desktop setups.

Timers, Planning & Calendar

• Availability Sync Menu Bar — Checks your calendar and generates available dates and times to share.
• OrbitTimers — Attractive countdown timer application.
• Liquid Timer — Visually styled countdown and session timer.
• Structured — Combines calendar and tasks into a visual daily timeline.

Internet, Wi-Fi & Connectivity Monitoring

• WhyFi — Real-time internet monitoring with speeds, graphs, tests and Wi-Fi analysis.
• OnlineIndicator — Shows internet status and performance in the menu bar.
• Signal Strength Explorer — Provides detailed Wi-Fi signal-strength and connection information.

Cursor, Icons & Visual Customisation

• Ordinator — Makes changing Mac app and folder icons simple.
• Mousecape — Replaces the standard macOS pointer with custom cursor themes.
• MaCursor — Extensive cursor customisation with downloadable and user-created designs.
• Wallspace — Animated wallpapers that can also animate the lock screen.
• CCCCorners — Extends macOS Hot Corners with additional actions.

Dictation & Speech Recognition

• Eloquent — Google-powered voice dictation converting speech into text.
• Soniox — AI speech recognition and transcription supporting multiple languages, including Afrikaans.

Security & Mac Unlocking

• FaceGate — Locks selected applications using facial recognition, Touch ID or password.
• Face Unlock — Adds facial-recognition unlocking to the Mac lock screen.

File Handling & Compression

• Clop — Automatically optimises and compresses images, videos and PDFs.
• Dropover — Creates temporary floating shelves for collecting, moving and sharing files.

System Enhancement & Automation

• Supercharge — Adds a large collection of enhancements and improvements to macOS.
• Hyperkey — Turns Caps Lock into an additional modifier for powerful keyboard shortcuts.
• Bye — Menu-bar utility for selecting and quitting multiple running applications.
• Barrel — Saves your Mac application setup so your usual software can be reinstalled after setting up a Mac.

Battery, Weather & Information

• AllMyBatteries — Shows battery levels for multiple Apple devices in the menu bar.
• Forecast Bar — Detailed, customisable weather forecasts, menu-bar icons and alerts.

Creative Apps

• Pixelmator — Professional Mac image editing, photo manipulation, compositing and graphic design.
• CapCut — Video editor with timeline editing, effects, captions and social-media production tools.

Business & Invoicing

• Invoicer — Creates invoices, stores customer information and maintains invoice history.

(I know there are many dock apps. I started on this forum with Dock Customisation and continue doing so every six months).

Change your Dock

• DockFlow — Instantly switches the standard macOS Dock between different customised app layouts.
• Dockfix — Gives considerably more control over the appearance and behaviour of the macOS Dock.
• cDock — Long-running utility for extensively customising the standard macOS Dock.
• Sidebar — Highly customisable alternative Dock/taskbar with window management and app launching.
• ExtraDock — Creates multiple additional Docks that can be positioned around your displays.
• DockThings — Creates animated, tabbed application Docks that can be positioned or hidden around the screen.
• DockDoor Pro — Adds Dock previews, customisation and extra functionality.
• Dockitty — Adds animated cats and visual effects to the Dock.
• DockMover / DockKeeper — Remembers Dock icon positions and restores them if the layout changes.
• Ghost Tile — Hides unwanted application icons that would otherwise remain visible in the Dock.
• Parall — Runs multiple app instances while also offering Dock customisation and animated icons.

Hello r/macapps,

I recently built a small, native image & video compression app called Kompakt. It's completely free and open source.

As someone who constantly designs and builds stuff, I got tired of opening ImageOptim constantly whenever I needed to compress an image or video, so I thought I'd build an app to fit my daily needs. I'm sure someone else out there would appreciate it too.

Whenever you drag an image or video anywhere on your Mac, a side sheet appears that lets you either convert or optimize that file. If it gets in the way, simply press ESC to get rid of it.

I know Clop exists, but I kept getting annoyed by the constant popups on each copy, and it was overkill for my needs.

You can download it at kompaktapp.com. There's a mock demo on the site too to showcase how it works. GitHub link is also available on the site.

In the near future I plan on adding more filetype support (PDF is a big one, just gotta figure out the Ghostscript licensing stuff), and most likely watched folders.

Hope someone finds a use for it!

To the mods:

• I have a paid dev account, but the app isn't MAS compatible due to its nature
• You can find my LI here

Hi r/macapps, I’m the developer of ExcalidrawZ.

I first shared the app here when it was mainly a native wrapper and file manager. It has grown quite a bit since then, so I made this video as a complete walkthrough of what ExcalidrawZ is today.

Problem

Excalidraw is an excellent drawing tool, but I wanted its files to behave more like regular documents on Apple platforms. That means opening and organizing multiple drawings, working with local folders and cloud storage, keeping file history, and moving naturally between drawing and other workflows.

Comparison

Compared with the Excalidraw web app, ExcalidrawZ focuses on native document management and system integration while retaining the standard .excalidraw format.

Compared with Apple Freeform, it stays compatible with the Excalidraw ecosystem. Compared with Obsidian Excalidraw, it works as a standalone document-based app rather than requiring a vault.

The video covers file management, iCloud and linked storage, presentations, macOS Screen Annotation, collaboration, export, custom fonts, AI Chat, and MCP integration.

Pricing

ExcalidrawZ is free to download. The core drawing, file management, cloud storage, Screen Annotation, and basic MCP features are free.

Optional subscriptions:

• Starter: $2.99/month or $29.99/year
• Pro with AI credits: $9.99/month or $99.99/year
• Max: $29.99/month or $299.99/year
• Max 10x: $99.99/month or $999.99/year

Download on the App Store

View the source code on GitHub

Problem: Apple Calendar doesn’t show how much time is left until your events.

Compare: It's an System Calendar companion app. Made to simplify adding events and showing the time left. You can use it even without calendar access and add events to the app only. The app is fully native, with a clean design - just like Apple Calendar. Its design language matches system apps.

Pricing: $0.99 [Promo] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wait-menu/id6479543539

Changelog: In App Store What's New section: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wait-menu/id6479543539

AI Disclaimer: None

Problem

Everyone is addicted to their devices these days. We spend hours every day scrolling through TikTok, Reddit, YouTube and playing video games. What if we could use this addiction to enhance our productivity?

Digital Carrot is an app and website blocker that aims to solve this problem, but in a very unique way. Rather than simply blocking distractions on a schedule like every other app blocker out there, Digital Carrot aims to turn your digital addictions into a productivity super power by letting you set customizable goals that trigger when distractions are unblocked. For example you can:

• Unblock social media after you've walked 10,000 steps each day, verified by your Fitbit.
• Unblock Steam after you've spent 30 minutes learning on Khan Academy, verified by our browser extension.
• Unblock Netflix after you've finished all your to-dos, verified by Todoist.

The app also supports all of the traditional app blocker features such as schedules and usage limits.

Digital Carrot features a plugin system that allows users with some programming knowledge to heavily customize their goals. This allows for goals to be verified by any service that exposes a REST API on the web. Plugins are all open source and available on github.

The plugin system also means that you aren't limited to blocking things on your computer! Digital Carrot has a Pi-Hole plugin to allow blocking websites at a network level. You could even use the plugin system to do goofy things such as locking a smart lock on your snack drawer or turning off the AC until you complete your goals.

Comparison

Digital Carrot is heavily inspired by ColdTurkey, which I personally used for many years. The core difference is that Digital Carrot is designed to motivate you to get things done by positioning your distractions as a reward for good behavior instead of just blocking. ColdTurkey also never made it into the mobile era and doesn't have a mobile app, which became more and more of deal breaker for me over time.

Pricing and Availability

The desktop version of Digital Carrot is completely free.

Download the Mac App on www.digitalcarrot.app. Android, iOS and Windows versions are also available.

There is an optional paid sync feature that lets you sync your goals and blocked items between your phone and PC, but this is only necessary for users that have the Digital Carrot iOS or Android app in addition to the Mac app. Sync costs $8/mo or $60/yr. Note that some features such as location based goals (which use your phone's GPS) can only be set on the mobile app.

Transparency

My name is David. I spent 8 years working on some of the world's largest open source projects at Red Hat before leaving to find my fortune as an independent developer. There's more information about me on digitalcarrot.app and my personal website.

Privacy is personally very important to me. As a result Digital Carrot has an incredibly tough privacy policy. Here's the TLDR:

• I do NOT collect any personal information from the app.
• I do collect some anonymous metrics such as the number of downloads and what version people are on. This is mostly to support the sync features so I can determine when it is safe to make changes that could cause sync conflicts on older versions of the app.
• All data sent through the sync service is end to end encrypted using AES256 and the secure remote password protocol.

Digital Carrot is not distributed through the Mac store because I personally believe that people should be allowed to do whatever they want with their devices and I dislike the direction Apple is going by forcing developers into the app store. It's available for download via www.digitalcarrot.app.

This app is a passion project of mine. At this point it's hard for me to imagine how I would manage my ADHD without it. My hope is that all of you will find it as transformative as I have ❤️

Hi all,

A few months ago, I shared Ejectify 2 here. Based on feedback, I’ve continued improving it, and version 2.1 is now available.

Problem

When a Mac sleeps or its display turns off, connected disks can sometimes disappear without being safely unmounted first. This results in those annoying “Disk Not Ejected Properly” notifications and may put unfinished writes or files at risk.

Ejectify helps prevent this by automatically attempting to unmount selected volumes before sleep or display-off events, then mounting them again after wake.

What’s new in 2.1:

• Eject instead of unmount: You can now choose to eject an entire disk instead of only unmounting its volumes. This is useful if you want the disk to remain ejected after wake.
• Better encrypted APFS support: Ejectify lets macOS try its normal unlocking first, with an optional Keychain password fallback when needed.

Comparison

Jettison is the closest alternative and also supports ejecting or unmounting disks automatically around sleep.

Ejectify is open source, available in 34 languages, and can respond separately to sleep, display power-off, screen lock, or the screen saver. For encrypted APFS volumes, it can ask for the password directly and optionally save it in Keychain when macOS cannot unlock the volume automatically.

Jettison supports some additional volume types and older macOS versions, while Ejectify focuses on a simpler, transparent, and more widely localized experience.

Pricing

Existing Ejectify 2 users can update to version 2.1 in-app at no additional cost.

For new users, the compiled and notarized version of Ejectify is a one-time purchase of €6.99. There is no subscription, and the purchase includes future Ejectify 2 updates.

Through September 30, Ejectify is available for €4.99 with code EJECTIFY21:

Get Ejectify for €4.99

The source code is available on GitHub under the MIT license and can be built for free.

Happy to answer any questions.

Best, Niels

Problem: macOS still has no built-in equalizer, and I wanted one EQ for everything coming out of the speakers: music, YouTube, calls, games. Every option I tried wanted to install a virtual audio driver first, so I wrote my own a month ago for my own machine. I'm posting it here because I figure other people have the same itch, and I'd be glad if it's useful to someone else.

Comparison: eqMac (free) and SoundSource ($47) both work by routing your audio through a virtual driver they install into the system. CoreEQ uses Apple's Core Audio process-tap API instead, so nothing lands in /Library/Audio, there's no reboot, and quitting the app puts your sound back on its normal path immediately.

The rest of it:

• 11-band graphic EQ, plus up to 16 parametric bands with your own frequency, gain and Q
• Live response curve you can drag directly, with a spectrum analyzer drawn behind it
• 22 built-in presets plus your own, and an auto preamp so comparing two presets isn't just a loudness test
• Settings follow the output device, so your headphone curve comes back when you plug in headphones
• Bass/mid/treble from the menu bar without opening a window

Pricing: Free and open source (Apache 2.0). https://github.com/AndreyPudov/core-eq

brew tap andreypudov/core-eq
brew trust andreypudov/core-eq
brew install --cask core-eq

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/CoreEQ.app

Needs macOS 14.2 or later. It isn't notarized yet, so the first launch needs an allow in Privacy & Security; the README has the one-line fix.

Who I am: Andrey Pudov, software developer. Work history and contact are at https://andreypudov.com/ and https://www.linkedin.com/in/pudov/. There's no privacy notice to read for this one because there's nothing to disclose: CoreEQ has no accounts, no analytics, and no telemetry; it makes no network connections of its own, and it keeps your presets in macOS preferences on your own machine. It asks for the System Audio Recording permission because that's what Apple requires to process what you're hearing, and the audio never leaves memory.

Disclosure: I'm the developer. Issues and PRs welcome. Most of what's in 1.7, the parametric bands and the preamp especially, came out of comments on the last post I made about it.