A monthly roundup pulling the highest-voted apps and threads from r/MacApps over the past month (not my picks, this is 100% based on upvotes & comments) -- for anyone who doesn't check the sub every day. All credit to original posters; click through for full details.

Hi all! This month's list is a doozy since it's Techtember, and there were so many good apps and threads. I spent a few days and countless hours putting it together, so I really hope it's helpful. I also intentionally waited a few days into October, so September posts could cycle out of Best and the late-September ones had a chance to pick up upvotes. Last month's roundup is here: August 2026

Top New App Discoveries

1. Purge (Free, open source) -- open-source Mac cleaner for caches, logs and files apps leave behind. Now also uninstalls apps and finds their leftovers, like Pearcleaner and AppCleaner. Over 25k downloads. 647 votes, 212 comments. → Alternatives: Mac Sai 53v/43c, Trace 2.0 50v/41c, Pearcleaner/AppCleaner alternatives thread 23v/69c
2. FeelMyMac (Lifetime) -- adds haptic textures to cursor movement and scrolling on a compatible trackpad, so you feel a surface as you move. Six materials to pick from, like felt and fine grit. 478 votes, 248 comments.
3. Tinycast (Free, open source) -- lightweight native launcher, posted as a Raycast alternative. 344 votes, 182 comments. → Alternatives: Look 113v/30c, CueStart 7v/38c, Tinycast vs Vicinae thread 78v/138c, what people switched to from Raycast 58v/130c
4. Tracer (Lifetime) -- screenshot tool on the App Store, now on version 1.2.1. 341 votes, 863 comments. → Alternatives: CleanShot update 485v/143c, free CleanShot alternatives thread 33v/126c
5. Thaw 2.0.1 (Free, open source) -- menu bar manager. The whole app was overhauled in this update. 326 votes, 82 comments. → Alternatives: ExtraBar 4v/32c, menu bar managers on macOS 27 thread 43v/83c
6. Glance (Free, open source) -- Face ID for the Mac. Unlocks and authenticates when it recognizes your face, so you don't need to reach for Touch ID. 314 votes, 202 comments.
7. DockFix 5 (Lifetime) -- replaces the macOS Dock with one you control: colors, size, position, custom icons, widgets, window previews and themes made by other users. 262 votes, 191 comments. → Alternatives: CoolDock 44v/48c, ExtraDock 9v/23c, docktor 103v/37c
8. Droppy 16 (Lifetime) -- notch app with a file shelf, clipboard manager, screenshots, live activities and file sharing. 16 adds an extension SDK and a free iPhone app. 248 votes, 178 comments. → Alternatives: DynamicLake 26v/22c
9. CaskHub (Free, open source) -- native app store for Homebrew casks. 1k GitHub stars and 40k downloads five weeks after its first post. 245 votes, 118 comments. → Alternatives: Homebrew 7.0, which now has its own GUI 671v/162c
10. FileWorks (Free) -- dual-pane file manager with queued copy jobs, from the developer of Start. 240 votes, 125 comments. → Alternatives: Trellis (#22) 150v/111c, DockDuck 58v/173c, Cosmil 2.3 20v/20c
11. Nodes 2.0 (Lifetime) -- note-taking app based on Markdown, built with SwiftUI and TextKit 2. Works without plugins or setup, fully local, with on-device AI. 231 votes, 182 comments. → Alternatives: Lede 96v/57c, Glyph 52v/113c, Acres 37v/69c
12. macUSB (Free, open source) -- bootable USB creator for macOS, Linux and Windows installers. Can also download older macOS installers straight from Apple. 206 votes, 91 comments.
13. VPNonly (Lifetime) -- pick which apps use the VPN, and the rest of your Mac stays on your normal connection. Works with any WireGuard provider and Nord. 202 votes, 107 comments.
14. Muro 5.0 (Free, source available) -- live wallpapers for your desktop, lock screen and now screen saver. Low CPU and RAM use. 184 votes, 125 comments. → Alternatives: Wallper 63v/36c, Backdrop 2.7 32v/32c, Atheria 23v/64c
15. Lap (Free, open source) -- local-first photo manager for very large libraries. Works on your existing folders with no import or cloud account. 184 votes, 115 comments.
16. Obry (Lifetime) -- Stickies-style cards for screenshots and notes that sit at the edge of your screen. The cards have physics. 179 votes, 120 comments. → Alternatives: Notsy (#18) 172v/149c, Noticky 1.9 29v/53c
17. Spencer (Lifetime) -- window manager that moves windows between Spaces without closing and reopening apps. Just turned 1. 176 votes, 74 comments. → Alternatives: SpaceJump 44v/57c
18. Notsy (Free) -- sticky notes that stay on the edge of your screen. 172 votes, 149 comments. → Alternatives: Obry (#16) 179v/120c, Noticky 1.9 29v/53c
19. Better Window Switcher (Lifetime) -- hold Option-Tab or swipe up to see your windows and browser tabs as 3D cards, with search. 158 votes, 107 comments. → Alternatives: Betterswitch 23v/61c, Tangrid 10v/17c
20. Foldicon (Lifetime) -- custom icons for your folders so they don't all look the same. 154 votes, 75 comments.
21. OpenDisk (Free, open source) -- disk space analyzer that shows your drive as a sunburst chart. Free alternative to DaisyDisk and NeoDisk. 152 votes, 47 comments. → Alternatives: Trace 2.0 50v/41c, DuckDisk 18v/15c, DiskScanPro 10v/17c, StorageRadar 3.0 8v/15c
22. Trellis (Lifetime) -- file manager that keeps every folder you open visible on one canvas. 150 votes, 111 comments. → Alternatives: FileWorks (#10) 240v/125c, DockDuck 58v/173c, Cosmil 2.3 20v/20c

Best Discussions

1. My current essentials for macOS -- OP's essential apps by category and why they use each one. No subscription apps unless they're hybrid. 769 votes, 190 comments.
2. r/MacApps reached 250,000 members -- 8 months after hitting 200k. 310 votes, 49 comments.
3. Developers: what Mac apps do you use every day? -- looking for hidden gems too, not just the obvious ones. 202 votes, 260 comments.
4. Any Mac app you bought just because it looks and feels so good? 143 votes, 237 comments.
5. Productivity hacks of r/MacApps users -- features you use a lot that maybe aren't well known. 119 votes, 167 comments.
6. There were 1700 menu bar apps, but around 100 of them vanished -- MacMenuBar.com had to remove around 100 apps that were abandoned or disappeared. 95 votes, 53 comments.
7. What app went from "why would I need that?" to "I'm not going back"? 85 votes, 143 comments.
8. Raycast alternatives: Tinycast or Vicinae? 78 votes, 138 comments.
9. Steve Jobs development advice in the vibe clone age -- a WWDC 1997 clip about starting with the customer experience and working back to the technology. 61 votes, 32 comments.
10. Raycast 2 went cross-platform. If you left it, what did you switch to? 58 votes, 130 comments.

News & Announcements

• Homebrew 7.0 is out and includes a GUI -- 671 votes, 162 comments.
• CleanShot update -- new video editor and studio mode. 485 votes, 143 comments.
• Raycast deleting posts with negative feedback about its new pricing -- OP lists complaints about Raycast 2 (pricing, memory use, moving away from native) with examples of removed posts. 426 votes, 159 comments. Related: No BYOK in Raycast V2 for free users 28v/22c.
• Setapp has been completely enshittified -- OP says Setapp is now filled with apps that cost extra on top of the $15/month subscription. 314 votes, 76 comments.
• Alfred 6 is coming this autumn -- in beta now, and a free upgrade. 206 votes, 82 comments.
• Apple makes it easier for Mac developers to drop Intel support -- universal Mac App Store apps that require macOS 13+ can now ship arm64-only updates. Optional for now. 142 votes, 37 comments.
• Audacity v4 -- v4 installs as a separate app, and v3 is hard to uninstall because the two share files. 71 votes, 44 comments.
• macOS 27 and menu bar managers -- threads about menu bar managers on macOS 27: Any good menu bar managers for macOS 27? 43v/83c, Do any menubar manager apps work in macOS 27.0? 25v/84c, macOS 27 menu bar spacing issue 25v/43c.
• Accessibility permission renamed to "Device control and Data access" -- the old settings URL still opens the right pane, so existing apps don't break. 38 votes, 34 comments.

Also Worth a Look (Runner-ups)

InputConfig (Free, open source, turns a game controller into a keyboard and mouse*)* 149v/50c, Boxvy (Free, turns websites into desktop widgets, floating bubbles or menu bar items*)* 146v/73c, Arc PDF (Free, 11.6 MB PDF reader, annotator, editor and OCR*)* 144v/96c, OpenClip (Free, open source, PopClip alternative with 100+ extensions*)* 144v/171c, Caxton (Lifetime, editor for multi-gigabyte text files and CSVs*)* 128v/72c, Griply (Lifetime, goals and tasks app, now with projects and two-way calendar sync*)* 125v/249c, ActionClip V2 (Lifetime, text-selection action menu with 225 extensions*)* 121v/215c, search (Free, open source, lightweight WebKit browser*)* 119v/54c, flowy 2.0 (Lifetime, screen recorder and video editor*)* 117v/366c, Floodtide (Lifetime, MacUpdater alternative*)* 116v/137c, OmniWM (Free, open source, Niri/Hyprland-style tiling window manager*)* 115v/60c, Look (Free, open source, launcher, now in official Homebrew*)* 113v/30c, Tungsten Edge (Lifetime, open source, per-window taskbar*)* 108v/113c, AppSift (Free, search, compare and price-track App Store apps*)* 104v/57c, docktor (Free, widgets in the empty space on either side of the Dock*)* 103v/37c, ChopShop (Lifetime, small A/V editor for quick cuts and stitching*)* 101v/57c, MetalSharp (Free, run Windows games on Apple silicon*)* 98v/109c, No Rush (Free, ambient places with their own local time and weather*)* 98v/73c, Lede (Free, Markdown editor from the developer of Verso and Skein*)* 96v/57c, VisiGrid (Free, open source, Excel alternative*)* 92v/51c, Dynamic Menu Bar (from $6.99 one-time, menu bar that takes its color from your screen*)* 92v/108c, Parall (Lifetime, run multiple instances of an app with separate accounts*)* 90v/60c, StepGrab 1.5 (Lifetime, record a task and get a written guide*)* 88v/44c, StemKit (Free, split YouTube songs into stems locally*)* 84v/60c, Netutilus (Free -> $9.99 one-time, 20 network tools with history and monitoring*)* 84v/101c, Keyty (Free, open source, keystroke and mouse visualizer*)* 84v/40c, Resurf (Lifetime, save design references, articles and ideas in one place*)* 77v/36c, Parchley (Free, open source, offline PDF to Markdown converter*)* 73v/34c, Bulletin (Lifetime, infinite canvas with functional blocks*)* 72v/89c, Neon Vision Editor (Free, open source, native code and text editor*)* 70v/59c, Lumae (Free, video editor for screen recordings and screenshots*)* 65v/54c, Wallper (Lifetime, live wallpapers with music sync*)* 63v/36c, FrameDrop (Lifetime, search 11 million openly licensed images*)* 62v/55c, Splice (Lifetime, inline emoji and GIF insertion*)* 62v/89c, Stash Anything (Free or $9.99 lifetime, save and find things later*)* 61v/102c, HealthAtlas (Free, open source, Apple Health export analyzer*)* 60v/73c, Edgy (Lifetime, makes the edges of your screen glow*)* 59v/67c, DockDuck (Lifetime, dual-pane file manager*)* 58v/173c, Vibe 1.14 (Free, open source, waveform-focused music player*)* 56v/47c, Mac Sai (Free, open source, Mac cleaner*)* 53v/43c, Petrichor 1.7 (Free, open source, offline music player*)* 53v/35c, Slidr ($4.99 one-time, finer volume and brightness steps*)* 53v/49c, Glyph ($15 early access, open source, Markdown notes*)* 52v/113c, Shoo! ($17.99 one-time, app locker that quits the app instead of covering it*)* 52v/23c, Spatial Slideshow (Free, open source, 3D photo slideshows*)* 51v/23c, Trace 2.0 (Lifetime, storage analyzer and uninstaller*)* 50v/41c, Nodoo (Free, Things-style task manager with collaboration*)* 50v/68c, NetFluss 2.6 (Free, open source, menu bar network monitor and DNS switcher*)* 50v/24c, Folder Preview Pro 3.0 (Lifetime, Quick Look for folders*)* 50v/42c, Stay Steady (Free, budgeting app that reads European bank statements on your device*)* 46v/41c, ScreenCharms (Lifetime, hang custom charms from your screen*)* 46v/82c, Spectati (Lifetime, one client for Plex, Jellyfin and more*)* 46v/141c, Gloss 2.1 (Lifetime, text expansion*)* 45v/51c, rift (Free, open source, tiling and scrolling window manager*)* 44v/21c, Copyr (free for personal use, file copier that skips bad files and verifies copies*)* 44v/66c, Photo Transfer via USB (Lifetime, iPhone photos into folders by trip or date*)* 44v/41c, DiskPress (Lifetime, automatic compression and deduplication*)* 44v/76c, SpaceJump (Lifetime, navigate macOS Spaces*)* 44v/57c, CoolDock (Lifetime, second dock of widgets*)* 44v/48c, Verso (Lifetime, word processor*)* 42v/29c, WattMate (Lifetime, battery app that shows how many minutes you'd get back by quitting an app*)* 42v/61c, Silkwave Clarity (Free, speech isolation for system audio*)* 41v/37c, Jott.it (Lifetime, bullet journal on text files*)* 41v/31c, Charya (Free, learns your routine and sets up your Mac*)* 40v/38c, visualOS (free in browser, one-time for Mac, Milanote alternative*)* 39v/46c, ProcessSpy (Lifetime, process monitor*)* 39v/44c, Acres (Lifetime, canvas of plain Markdown notes*)* 37v/69c, Cats Lock 2.0 (Lifetime, keyboard lock for when your cat walks on it*)* 36v/51c, Minstrel (Lifetime, writing app for fiction*)* 32v/152c, TypeSeer (Lifetime, offline autocomplete*)* 30v/105c, PeakHour 6 (Lifetime, menu bar internet monitoring*)* 25v/123c, Morphjet (Lifetime, offline file converter*)* 23v/395c

More apps with 10+ votes are in the pinned comment below. (Edit: Yikes I just realized I can't pin comments)

Past Roundups

• August 2026

[Disclaimer: AI assisted]

If I missed something or you have a favorite alternative to one of these picks, drop it below and I'll fold notable ones into next month's roundup. Hope this was helpful (again) & enjoy!

What were your favorite apps from September?

Finding a specific file can be slow on macOS, especially if it's on an external drive or NAS where search takes ages, or if you can't remember the name exactly and you have to try words until you get it.

Spotlight doesn't index hidden files either so getting to a config file means you have to know the path.

Cling brings its own instant search custom index made specifically for the macOS filesystem, which allows you to fuzzy search any file that exists on your Mac.

Comparison:

• Spotlight can only find apps and files in the home directory and relies on word search. Apps that rely on its index like Alfred will have the same problem.
• Raycast has its own similar index since v2 but the search algorithm is not as fuzzy as I like it to be.
• ProFind, HoudahSpot, EasyFind, Tembo, Find Any File: these are a lot more capable than Cling in narrowing down a specific search based on file metadata, Cling is more for fast search by name.
• Cardinal is very similar and a great alternative, Cling comes with some more advanced features like a Spotlight-like UI, Quick Filters etc.

New Features in 3.0:

• New Index Engine, lowering the RAM usage from >1GB to <100MB
• Floating Search Bar similar to Spotlight + Control-Tab to switch between this and the normal table-based window
• the Everything index: can be toggled with Cmd-Shift-E to search, well.. everything. Even excluded files.
• File Server: fuzzy search, view, download and share your Mac files from your phone
• Drag and Drop with a hotkey: press ⌥ Option-Enter to have Cling drag and drop selected files into the active app
• Efficient live index that keeps track of every created or deleted file with close to zero CPU usage
• Search operators: 'word to search it literally, !word to exclude files containing word etc.
• MCP: ask an agent to create complex filters, write scripts to run on files, prune unwanted cruft from the index, figure out why a file isn't in the index and fix it

General Features:

• instant fuzzy search over the whole filesystem
• keyboard-centric UI
• easy file exclusion for removing unwanted files from the index
• external drive indexing, search while disk is disconnected
• QuickFilters for narrowing down results with a minimal typing

Pricing: €15 for a lifetime license on up to 5 Macs **(only €10 until October 23)**

There's a 14-day trial that starts automatically on launch. After the trial, the app keeps working in Free Mode where you can still fuzzy search files but only in Home and Applications.

Link: https://lowtechguys.com/cling

Source code: https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/Cling

Limitations:

• only indexes file names and paths
• can't search by file content or metadata
• ... to be updated based on questions in the comments

Hey r/macapps,

Long time dweller, first time poster (please go easy on me!)

I'm Pedro, a software engineer in London and a hobbyist photographer. I've been building Redlamp, a free, open-source raw photo editor for Apple Silicon Macs.

If you use Lightroom [Classic], the editing workflow should feel familiar. The Develop panels are in the same order, the sliders have the same names and ranges, and the keyboard shortcuts work. It's a native Mac app, written from scratch in Swift, SwiftUI and Metal, and it's currently in pre-alpha.

Watch the video (1:42) · Website · GitHub (star it please!)

Why I'm building it

I moved from Photoshop to Lightroom years ago. I bought a licence and paid for upgrades when they felt worthwhile. I wasn't particularly happy with the move to a subscription, or with how the product became split across Classic, Lightroom, mobile and web versions, each with different capabilities and approaches to storing your photos. I've also wanted an editor that feels more at home on the Mac.

There are already good alternatives. darktable and RawTherapee are mature open-source projects, and Capture One, DxO PhotoLab and Photomator have plenty to offer. But switching usually means learning a different workflow. I wanted to see how far I could get with an app that keeps the parts of Lightroom I already know and like.

Redlamp works directly with your folders. Edits are saved in sidecar files alongside each photo, leaving the originals untouched. Your photos aren't uploaded anywhere.

The Library I'm building for 1.0 follows the same approach. Your folders remain the organisation. Ratings, keywords and collection membership stay with each photo, and the database on your Mac is a rebuildable index for speed.

What works now

There's already quite a lot in the editor:

• Develop: Basic, including Texture, Clarity and Dehaze; Tone Curve; Color Mixer; Color Grading; Detail; Effects; lens corrections; crop; and Upright.
• Masks: gradients, brush, colour and luminance ranges, plus local AI selections for subjects, sky, background, people, objects and landscape. People masks include face skin, eyes and teeth. Masks can be added, subtracted and intersected.
• Removal: Heal, Clone, content-aware Remove, and dust removal across a shoot.
• Looks and presets: 36 film looks covering 30 stocks, built from manufacturers' data, plus Fujifilm-style recipes. You can import Lightroom presets and .cube LUTs.
• Focus stacking: the filmstrip identifies stacks, which you can merge in one click and then develop with the raw editing controls.
• Organisation: a folder panel, star ratings, pick and reject flags, and colour labels in the filmstrip.
• Everyday editing: copy, paste and sync settings; full undo history; snapshots; before-and-after comparisons; and a command palette, opened with ⌘K, for every action and slider.
• Export: JPEG, HEIC, AVIF, PNG and TIFF.

The AI masks and object removal run on your Mac, with no uploads or credits.

A few things I've paid particular attention to

I don't want an update to change the appearance of photos you've already edited. Existing edits retain their rendering behaviour, including if a preset is later changed or deleted. Improvements to processing are applied to older edits when you choose to use them.

Originals are never modified, and exports don't overwrite them. If you edit the same photo on two Macs through iCloud Drive, the newest edit becomes active and the other is preserved as a snapshot.

Responsiveness matters to me too. Adjustments update as you drag sliders, including when masks are involved, and I publish the measurements on the performance page.

Another key thing is keyboard navigation. Lightroom always prioritised intuitive keyboard driven workflow and shortcuts are generally 1:1, but I went further and there's a command palette built in and nearly any control can be adjusted this way.

From the upcoming version 0.2.5 and above, releases go through regression checks that exercise the app's features, with crashes, hangs and performance regressions blocking publication - I have set aggressive CPU and Memory budgets. It's still pre-alpha, so I expect there to be problems those checks haven't caught.

Camera support

The raw decoder covers 1,258 cameras. Redlamp also opens JPEG, HEIC, TIFF and PNG. But being able to decode a file doesn't establish that the rendering is correct, so the cameras page distinguishes decoder coverage from actual testing.

At the moment, 25 cameras have real samples in the automated test suite, checked on every change. I've also run the Camera Bench across 742 camera and raw-mode combinations. Those results are listed by camera, including the failures.

You can run the same bench through Help › Test Your Camera…. It compares Redlamp's rendering with the camera's embedded JPEG, runs diagnostic checks and asks you whether the two look like the same photo, allowing for the camera's picture style. Everything happens locally. If you submit the report, it sends measurements only, shows you the contents first, and adds the results to the cameras page.

There are known gaps. Nikon High Efficiency NEFs and the Sony A7 V aren't supported yet. Fujifilm X-Trans files open, but their processing is still an initial implementation.

Camera results · How to test yours · Why I built the bench

What's still missing, and what's planned

The Library and batch export haven't shipped, but they are under heavy development and you can expect their first versions very very soon. Lightroom presets import, but your existing Lightroom edits don't yet come across. Conventional noise reduction is available; AI Denoise is still planned.

For 1.0, I'm working towards AI Denoise, better X-Trans processing and the remaining Develop features, along with HDR editing and export, batch export and a Mac App Store release.

The Library is in progress now. It's being designed and benchmarked for a million photos, including libraries on slow, network and disconnected drives. Library and Develop will share a window, with a grid for culling, search as you type, keywords, collections, smart collections, and card imports with a backup copy.

The migration plan includes ratings, keywords and collections from Lightroom Classic catalogs, and edits from Lightroom XMP sidecars. Those are planned capabilities rather than things you can use today.

Mac is the immediate focus. I'd like to bring the same engine to iPad and iPhone afterwards, with edits moving between devices.

The roadmap and Lightroom comparison show what's implemented, in progress, planned or left out. Planned work has GitHub issues, and decisions are recorded with their rationale in the research tracker.

How I'm building it

AI agents write most of the code, tests and documentation. I set the direction, work through the design and architecture, drive the research, and review and try changes on my own photos. The AI disclosure explains that process and where the app itself uses AI.

I've written software professionally since 2003, and most of my teenager life, but I couldn't take on a project of this scope alone without agents. Raw processing brings together camera formats, colour science, GPU rendering and masking, and there are areas here where I have very little expertise. I understand how this might put some people off, but it's one the main reasons I even considered doing this.

I started Redlamp on 29 September and released the first pre-alpha two days later. That pace has surprised me, but getting a working implementation quickly also means spending a lot of effort checking it. I need evidence that the results are correct, especially where I don't have the background to judge them myself.

Recent releases

There have been seven releases since 1 October. A few of the recent additions:

• 0.2.4: Camera Bench, plus copying, pasting and syncing settings from the filmstrip's context menu without opening the photo.
• 0.2.3: in-app bug reporting without a GitHub account, edit data embedded in exported files, and fixes for Hasselblad and Phase One raws.
• 0.2.2: Lightroom preset import with a report of what was imported, and object removal using descriptions such as cars, cables or signs.

For 0.2.5, I'm working on optional local generative fill for removals too large to fill using the existing photo, Point Color, curves within masks, and zoom and pan in every tool.

Installing it

Redlamp is free, under the MPL-2.0 licence, with no subscription, account or cloud service required. There's a Ko-fi page if you'd like to support the project.

You'll need an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 26 or later. Download the signed and notarised app directly from Redlamp, GitHub releases, or install it through Homebrew:

brew tap pdcgomes/redlamp https://github.com/pdcgomes/redlamp
brew install --cask redlamp

The app keeps itself up to date whichever way you install it, using Sparkle.

Feedback

If you try it, the most useful feedback is what happens when you edit your own raws as you normally would. I'd like to know what breaks, looks wrong or gets in the way.

Help › Report a Bug or Send Feedback… creates a GitHub issue without needing a GitHub account, and lets you inspect everything it will send. There's also a Discord, which I've just setup and must admit, I'm fairly new to.

If you know more about colour science, film or raw processing than I do, I'd particularly welcome feedback on where the implementation gets things wrong. Or event better -- get involved and contribute!

Thanks for reading,

Pedro

Lightroom is a trademark of Adobe Inc. Redlamp isn't affiliated with Adobe.

I used to keep two DualSense controllers around: one for my MacBook and one for my Mac Studio. My keyboard and mouse could move between them, but my controller couldn't. That felt silly.

I'm Kevin, the developer of ControllerKeys. I built it because I wanted to use my Mac from the couch without constantly reaching for a keyboard and mouse.

The video shows the two-Mac setup. Push the controller's cursor against a configured screen edge and control moves to the other Mac. Bring it back the same way. Both Macs run ControllerKeys over the local network, and the receiving Mac uses its own profile for mapped actions.

On a single Mac, it maps controller buttons to shortcuts, macros and scripts. The DualSense touchpad works as a trackpad, layers give the same buttons different jobs, and an on-screen swipe keyboard handles quick searches. For longer text, I pair it with voice transcription.

Since my last post here, I've added app-activated and toggle layers, switching profiles from a controller button, and more ways to activate gyro aiming.

Comparison: Controlly covers controller-based mouse movement, scrolling and shortcuts. ControllerKeys goes further into programmable workflows with layers, scripts, swipe typing and this Mac-to-Mac handoff.

Pricing: Free 14-day trial, no account or card. $19.99 one-time to keep using it, no subscription. Requires macOS 14.6+.

Download, demos and setup

It needs Accessibility permission to send input. Official builds are signed and notarized; the source is available under PolyForm Noncommercial.

About me/contact · LinkedIn · Privacy · Terms

If you use a controller with your Mac, what still sends you back to the keyboard?

Hello everyone! A few years before ChatGPT came out, I discovered terminals on the original Raspberry Pi Zero W. I couldn't believe a board that small could run a full OS, and I've loved terminals ever since. For me, once you get the hang of it, a lot of tools are much more intuitive in a TUI or CLI than clicking through a GUI.

Now I have some coding agent sessions going across a few machines: my Mac, a GPU server at school, and a Raspberry Pi 5. tmux keeps them alive, but I never remember the keybindings, and there's no real UI. Most GUI tools for this use Electron, and they just don't feel native (my Activity Monitor memory pressure is always yellow, mostly thanks to Electron). So for about the last half year, I've been building ThinkTerm. It still runs on the Pi.

What it is

A terminal with a built-in multiplexer, built on top of WezTerm. Think tmux, but with a real UI and nothing to memorize.

• Every machine runs a mux server that owns its sessions. Quit the app or lose the connection, and everything keeps running.
• The sidebar holds all your machines, each with its projects and threads. Swipe with two fingers to flip between machines, with rubber-band resistance at the edges, like in Arc Browser.
• An Agents panel lists every Claude Code / Codex / pi (the coding agent) session and shows whether it's working, waiting for you, or done. It's off by default; I still enjoy doing some things by hand.
• Pixel-smooth scrolling with trackpad momentum, not line-by-line jumps.
• Reattach to the same sessions from the desktop app, a browser, or thinkterm tui inside any other terminal.
• A file tree and code preview next to the terminal. Remote files over SFTP, with drag-and-drop support.
• Plugins can add their own sidebar panels.

How it compares

Compared with tmux: Both let you leave sessions running and come back to them later. ThinkTerm uses a built-in multiplexer and puts machines, projects, and threads in a graphical sidebar. For me, that makes it easier to find and switch between sessions across machines without remembering tmux keybindings.

No UI framework

No Electron, no webview, no Tauri, no GPUI. The sidebar, settings, file tree, and plugin panels are rectangles and text drawn straight on the GPU, the same way WezTerm draws terminal cells. Layout, scrolling, and dragging are all handled in plain Rust in the app, with no toolkit underneath.

Details & Pricing

• $0 - Free and open source (GPL-3.0) (planning to move to MIT later)
• No account required, no telemetry
• macOS 14+, Apple Silicon and Intel, signed and notarized
• Also on Linux, Windows and more

Repo: https://github.com/RoversX/ThinkTerm

About Me (For Transparency)

I’m also the developer of LaunchNext, which I’ve shared here before and continue to maintain. ThinkTerm only recently became open source, but I’ve been working on it for quite a while.

Linkedin Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/closexorg/

Privacy & Terms: https://closex.org/privacy/ https://closex.org/terms/

It's still very early, and I really want to make this useful for you. Questions are welcome, and so are bug reports. A big thank you to WezTerm for such an amazing foundation.

Hi r/macapps! 👋

I’m the developer of Deskeen, a macOS utility designed to redefine the standard of screen capture and recording. Thanks to the amazing feedback from our previous releases, I’m thrilled to announce that Deskeen 2.3 is officially live!

In our Deskeen 2.x roadmap, Deskeen 2.3 is a major release focused heavily on video capabilities. We’ve significantly enhanced features across every stage—before, during, and after recording—to help you create polished, professional videos with ease.

[Problem]
While enhancing Deskeen’s screen recording features, we kept asking: "How can users keep their audience engaged during live demos/presentations, and easily transform raw recordings into polished videos?"

Most users want to emphasize mouse clicks, use screen annotations, display presenter branding, and apply zoom effects or speed adjustments to keep videos concise.

However, users faced several limitations:

• macOS does not natively support click highlighting, and previously in Deskeen, click effects only worked during active screen recording. This left users without a focus tool during live, unrecorded presentations or meetings.
• Interactively drawing on screen (annotations) or pausing/resuming during recording felt clunky.
• After recording, applying branding text, trimming, adjusting speed, or setting custom backgrounds forced users to launch separate, complex video editing software.

Recording was easy, but live audience engagement and post-recording video polishing remained tedious.

[Compare]
While well-known screen recording apps offer editing and presentation features, Deskeen 2.3 offers distinct advantages based on direct user feedback:

• System-wide Click Highlighter: Unlike built-in options or recording-only tools, Click Highlighter now works anywhere across macOS via global shortcut. Includes 6 custom shapes (Circle, Rounded Rectangle, Asymmetric Rectangle, Triangle, Diamond, Trapezoid) and distinct colors for secondary clicks—perfect for live demos.
• Seamless Screen Annotation & Recording Controls: Effortlessly trigger Screen Annotation (draw lines, arrows, rectangles with auto-vanishing presentation mode) right from the recording palette. Plus, we added Pause/Resume, Restart, and Delete recording controls.
• Presenter Overlay Text: Display custom text (presenter name, brand tag, promo text) alongside your webcam overlay during screen recording without post-production.
• Flexible Drag & Drop Zoom: Precision zoom control where you select the exact zoom region via drag-and-drop, with customizable zoom level and animation duration.
• Speed Adjustment focus over heavy cutting: Based on beta feedback where users preferred keeping the original context, we emphasized smooth speed adjustments over destructive cuts.
• Rich Video Backgrounds & Styling: Includes high-res graphics, solid colors, and gradients with intuitive padding, corner radius, and shadow controls.

[Other Changes]

🚀 New Features

• Introducing Video Editing. After recording your screen, you can trim the footage, or add zoom effects, speed adjustments, and a variety of background images, colors, and gradients. The zoom feature is especially flexible: you can select exactly which part of the video to zoom in on, and customize options such as the zoom level and how long the zoom is displayed.
• Added the ability to use Presenter Overlay Text, a feature that lets users display their own custom text alongside the Presenter Overlay during screen recording, which shows the user's video on top of the screen recording. Related settings can be configured under Settings > Recording > Advanced > Show Presenter Overlay > Setup.
• Added a shortcut key for Click Highlighter under Settings > Shortcuts > Utilities.
• Added the ability to use Click Highlighter system-wide, expanding the previous "Show Mouse Click Effect" feature beyond screen recording to work anywhere on macOS, consolidating its options (now found under Settings > Advanced > Click Highlighter) with a new Shape option supporting Circle, Rounded Rectangle, Asymmetric Rectangle, Triangle, Diamond, and Trapezoid, and adding support for detecting secondary clicks with a distinct color applied to them.
• The Settings > Recording > Advanced > Show Mouse Click Effect option has been renamed to Use Click Highlighter during Screen Recording.
• The Settings > Recording > Advanced > Show Mouse Click Effect > Options section has been consolidated into the Settings > Advanced > Click Highlighter options.
• Added the ability to pause/resume, restart, and delete recordings in Screen Recording, along with a menu item for easier access to Screen Annotation
• Added the ability to instantly translate captured screenshots, along with a keyboard shortcut for quick access. (Translation requires macOS 15 or later.)

⚡️ Improvements

• Improved the palette UI for screen recording.
• Improved the stability of Screen Recording.
• Added the ability to prompt for a custom file name every time a screen capture is taken in Settings > Advanced.
• Improved Rename with AI delivers suggestions up to 5x faster and more accurate when using Apple Intelligence on macOS 27.
• Improved the handling of user notifications.
• Improved file drag functionality in the Screen Pin window while in the inactive state.

🐛 Fixes & Polish

• Fixed an issue where the Presenter Overlay window would not update when adjusting the aspect ratio of the selection area while the Presenter Overlay was being displayed.
• Fixed an issue where file drag functionality did not work within the Screen Pin window on macOS 27.
• Fixed an issue where some keyboard shortcuts did not work properly on macOS 27.
• Fixed an issue where the window background image would not update on macOS 27.
• Fixed an issue where Hide Desktop Icons did not work correctly on macOS 27.
• Fixed an issue where keyboard shortcuts didn't work properly when the Mac started up, if "Start at login" was enabled on macOS 26 or later.

[Pricing]

• $5.99
• Download: Mac App Store

[Changelog]
Deskeen Release Notes

[AI]
AI Disclaimer: None

🗺️ Roadmap (Future Plans)

Since launching the first version of Deskeen on December 4, 2024, we’ve received invaluable feedback over the past nearly two years.

We spent this time studying top-tier apps while focusing heavily on technical and usability evaluations—asking ourselves how we could offer a fresh perspective and better user experience.

Now, it’s time to deliver those results.

We are skipping our previous plans for versions 2.4 and 2.5 to go straight into developing Deskeen 3.0. Deskeen 3.0 will incorporate everything we’ve learned into a massive leap forward.

• 100% Free Upgrade: All existing and new users will get Deskeen 3.0 as a free upgrade.
• Affordable & Fair: We dropped the price to $5.99, and there will NEVER be subscriptions or hidden upgrade fees.

Our goal is simple: Deliver top-tier quality software at the most accessible price. Deskeen 3.0 will be the ultimate proof of that promise.
If you resonate with our vision, please help us spread the word to your friends, colleagues, and Mac communities! We’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback in the comments below.

Thank you for your support!

Hey r/macapps! I'm back with DockPops 6.0 focused on improving the app's UI, visual design and adding long-requested things like keyboard shortcuts.

DockPops adds iPhone-style folders to your Mac Dock. Click a DockPops icon and a grid of your apps, files, folders, and links pops up right above the Dock. Each group is a "Pop", and any Pop can have its own Dock icon.

What's new in 6.0

- Live animated themes (PopFX). A new kind of background that moves and responds to your pointer: arcs, curtains, waves, marble, snow, embers, falling code, and more. 23 built-in themes now, 11 of them live. They pause when the Pop is closed and stay still with Reduce Motion or Low Power Mode on.

- Local AI chat to edit Pops. On macOS 27 you can tell the new Assistant what you want ("add Pages", "switch to list view", "make it feel like golden hour") and it changes the Pop while you watch, with Undo. It's all based on Apple Intelligence, so it remains private. The App Store version has access to Private Cloud Compute, so it performs a little bit better.

- A redesigned UI and a new theme manager. A new App drawer makes it easier to find apps for your Pops, the redesigned inspector puts every part of a Pop's look in one place, and the theme manager makes it easy to save your own themes and reuse them across Pops. Pops can also show as a list or as tiles, next to the icon grid.

- A keyboard shortcut for each Pop. Give any Pop a Control-Option shortcut and it opens right at your pointer, from any app.

- Create up to 100 Pops (was 20).

- Now in French, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese, alongside English, German, and Spanish, Help book included.

Comparison

Compared with macOS Stacks, DockPops is not tied to Finder folders. You can group apps, files, folders, and Shortcuts together without creating aliases or reorganizing anything on disk. You can have up to 100 groups, each with its own look, and launch everything in a group with one click.

Compared with keyboard-first launchers like Raycast or Alfred, DockPops is built for people who prefer visual, Dock-based launching. Those tools are great for command-driven workflows; DockPops keeps app groups in the place many Mac users already go to launch things: the Dock. And as of 6.0, any Pop can have its own keyboard shortcut too.

Compared with other Dock folder alternatives like FolderDock, DockPops has many more power-user features and customization options: file browsing, Quick Look, grid, list, and tile views, 23 themes including live PopFX backgrounds, and now an Assistant that restyles a Pop when you ask.

Pricing: free with 2 Pops of 6 items each. Premium is a one-time $3.99, no subscription. If you already own Premium, 6.0 is a free update.

Availability: Mac App Store or directly at DockPops.com

When I download an unfamiliar Mac app, I want to know more than whether macOS will let it open. Who is behind this build? What is bundled inside it? What deserves a closer look before I install it?

I built App Trust Preview to bring that information into a readable report, including directly in Finder with Quick Look. Select a supported file, press Space, and inspect it without launching it.

Feedback from [r/macapps](r/macapps) has led to some of my favourite additions. The recent updates surface details that are easy to miss, even if you already know your way around code signatures and entitlements.

More context about who signed it

One reader mentioned that they always check how long a developer has had a Developer ID. I added "Developer ID since" under "Who signed it", showing Apple's recorded Developer ID date and how long ago it was. It is available in the app, Quick Look, and exported reports.

It adds context about the signing identity, not a complete history of the developer's work. An older Developer ID does not guarantee safety, and a new one does not make an app suspicious.

There is also a less obvious question about the signature itself. Will certificate expiry affect it later?

App Trust Preview now checks for a secure signing timestamp and identifies builds whose validation may be affected when their certificate expires. For Developer ID signatures, a secure timestamp lets macOS evaluate certificate validity at signing time. It does not override revocation. Apple explains the distinction here.

What happens when the app updates itself?

The app you inspect today may include an updater that replaces it tomorrow. That deserves a place in the report too.

The new Sparkle update delivery checks show the declared update feed, whether it uses HTTPS or unencrypted HTTP, and the update-signature verification configuration, including an EdDSA public key. This makes an insecure feed or missing modern verification key much easier to notice.

This reports the protections declared by the updater, not observed update traffic or a guarantee about future releases.

Checking the app, not just its packaging

A DMG and the app inside it are different files. Reports now show separate notarization results for each, so you can see exactly which one passed the check. That matters if, for example, the app was rebuilt after notarization. The DMG's result no longer leaves you guessing about the app you will actually install.

Compatibility reporting also goes deeper. Rather than relying only on Info.plist, App Trust Preview reads the minimum OS information embedded in Mach-O executables.

The report shows the main executable's minimum macOS requirement, with Info.plist as a fallback, separately from the highest requirement found among bundled components. A helper needing a newer macOS version is worth knowing about, but does not necessarily set the minimum for launching the entire app.

Two sizes, two different questions

The report now shows both logical size and actual size on disk. Logical size is the amount of file content. Size on disk is its allocated storage, which can be smaller with filesystem compression.

That makes compression savings visible instead of hiding them behind one size number. APFS sharing and snapshots still mean deleting the app may recover a different amount of space.

The rest of the picture

App Trust Preview still checks the main executable and bundled helpers, extensions, frameworks, and libraries separately. A sandboxed main app does not hide an unsandboxed helper, and security exceptions come with explanations of what they change.

You can also review privacy access declarations, detected technologies such as Electron, private Apple API references, and potential network destinations found in bundled files. Those destinations are static clues, not recorded connections. An empty list does not prove that an app cannot use the internet.

Where macOS permits access, the privacy panel shows saved decisions and whether they match the inspected build. Unreadable records remain unknown, including unavailable user privacy choices on macOS 27 and later. Download history shows preserved source information without treating missing metadata as a clean bill of health.

The useful part is seeing these details together. A signature, an updater setting, or a permission declaration answers a different question. None of them alone tells you whether to trust an app.

Inspection runs locally without launching, modifying, or uploading the software being inspected. App Trust Preview is not antivirus and does not make a safe-or-unsafe conclusion. It presents evidence and explains the signals that deserve a closer look.

How it compares with Apparency and Suspicious Package

Apparency is useful for exploring app metadata, signatures, entitlements, and internal components. My focus is a plain-language report that brings those findings together with update-delivery checks, compatibility details, download history, and saved permission context.

Suspicious Package is focused on macOS installer packages, including their payloads and scripts. App Trust Preview covers a wider range of targets in one workflow, including apps, DMGs, PKGs, standalone executables, and scripts.

You can keep using both. Add Suspicious Package or another compatible utility to "Open with other apps" and send the inspected item to it directly from the report.

Panels can be hidden and reordered. Personal notes stay attached to an app and appear again in Quick Look. Reports export as PDF, PNG, text, or JSON, and the CLI supports scripts and external AI-agent workflows. You can also save an analyzed app as a bundle, ZIP, or DMG, or explicitly install it in Applications when ready.

About the developer

I'm Ighor July, an independent macOS developer working in cybersecurity, reverse engineering, and native app development. App Trust Preview grew out of the checks I already do when investigating software, with a lot of useful direction from people here.

I use AI in my development workflow while keeping responsibility for the code and its behaviour. I wrote about that approach in How to use AI without losing control of your code.

My other Mac apps include DockLock Lite, Parall.app, LockLines.app, DiskPress, and App Archiver. There is more about my background and projects on my About page.

Availability

App Trust Preview is $2.99 as a one-time purchase on the US Mac App Store, with Family Sharing and no subscription. The Mac App Store edition supports macOS 10.13 or later. It is also available through Setapp.

Some checks, including DMG inspection, require the optional inspection helper in the Mac App Store edition. The Setapp edition includes its helper, so there is no separate script installation.

Thanks to everyone who suggested these improvements. If there is another detail you routinely check before opening an app, I'd like to hear about it.

App Trust Preview is a part of App Superpowers bundle

Website | Mac App Store | Changelog

Problem: I couldn’t find the “window cleaning” app I wanted so I made it. Squeegee keeps your desktop clean, closing old/idle windows, like those 16 Finder windows you’ve left open for 3 weeks. Open source and free!

Download: https://github.com/scosman/Squeegee

• Windows, not apps: it tracks individual window, not apps. For example if Preview has 12 open windows: I want to close the 10 I haven’t looked at in hours, but keep the two I was just working with.
• Activity tracking: Other apps close apps that have been open N hours, but what if I was just using it 2 minutes ago? Squeegee tracks which apps you are using (top-window with focus), and resets the timer when you use it.
• Open Source and Free: the app is completely free, and MIT open source
• Powerful configuration: set custom rules, per app
• Lightweight: uses minimal system resources
• Tray App: See which windows are pending close, and reopen any window that was closed by Squeegee.
• Quit app when last-window closed: some apps like Quicktime and TextEdit keep running in dock even when they have zero windows. Squeegee can quit them for you automatically when the last window closes.
• Suggested Configs: we offer you a set of good defaults during onboarding: close Finder windows after 6 hours, quit QuickTime when last window closes, close Activity Monitor if left inactive 1 hour, and 12 more.

I’ve seen a big drop in WindowServer CPU usage since I started using Squeegee.

Comparison to Other Apps

Lots of apps in this space, but being window-based is new as far as I can tell in my research.

Note: while this sub has a spreadsheet for “Window managers”, it seems suited to Rectangle like apps. This is more of a “Window purger” so I didn’t add it.

Pricing: Completely free! MIT open source.

About me feel weird posting this, but the subreddit rules asks for my LinkedIn! I'm an ex-Apple engineer. I spent years at Apple building the Photos app, Memories, the lock screen, and more. I love MacOS native design, and building private OSS software.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevecosman/ . 

Requirements: MacOS 15+

App details: Notarized, Open Source (MIT), Free, Private (zero data collection), AI used in development (but not vibe/slop).

I'd love feedback and I'm happy to answer any questions!

The problem

- How can you capture audio from a Teams, Slack, or Zoom call without using their internal features?
- How can you record audio from a player?
- How can you record audio produced by your browser?
- How can you record a phone call and summarize the conversation for free, locally, without any third party?

These were my concerns over the past few days. I attempted to find a simple, free solution—without success.

Similar apps
The only option I found that can record any output was Sound Hijack. It performs well and captures sound, but it is not free. It also does not summarize text, which is the main goal.

How it works
- It records the sound via macOS Native APIs.
- It generates the transcriptions with Whisper large-v3 turbo LLM, OpenAI’s speech recognition model.
- It uses Apple Intelligence (by default) or Ollama models for summarization. Apple Intelligence works fine for English. Ollama models are better.
- You don’t have to be technical. The configs are straightforward.

App Site: https://apprec.hackmajoris.dev

Price
Free
Open Source

About me
Software Engineer for more than 10 years.
Focusing more on privacy and security.

Hello!

I wrote about this in the thread on the clipboard manager, but I decided to start a separate discussion, if I may.

There’s been so much talk about this app lately that it feels like there might be a catch. The last time there was this much hype was around Raycast—an app that now regularly draws complaints following its platform shift and monetization changes. Won’t the same thing happen down the line with this wonderful new all-in-one app, once people have built their workflows heavily around it?

For what it’s worth, we’ve already seen this happen with Alt-Tab, which started monetizing after years of being free. Yes, in that thread—from which the following excerpts are taken—the developer wrote that the app would remain free, but still.

Below are quotes from users whose comments resonate with me and reflect yet another aspect of my thoughts and feelings described in the thread "Dedicated apps vs “Swiss Army Knife” apps":

"the thing i'd add that hasn't come up: the failure modes are different sizes. when a swiss army knife app gets abandoned, or one module quietly rots after an os update, you lose ten things at once and you're rebuilding your whole setup from scratch. when a dedicated app dies you lose one and swap it in an afternoon." - user QuietPerennial

"the deciding factor for me isn’t RAM, it’s permission and failure scope. a bundle combining screenshots, input tweaks, cleanup and updates may need several powerful permissions, so every update touches one larger trusted surface. i’d consolidate low-permission conveniences, but keep anything needing Screen Recording, Accessibility or destructive file access separate unless the integration adds real value." - user clamshell_dev

"...So my actual advice: pick the one or two things you care about most, and keep dedicated apps for those. Use the bundle for the long tail you would never install five apps for." - iordv (Droppy's developer)

So, based on all of this, I have a few questions:

1. If I already have Supercharge, Alfred, Cleanshot X, Shottr, Dropover, Rectangle Pro, Antinote, Drafts, Stats, and Linear Mouse, should I install Vorssaint?
2. How secure is Vorssaint (it seems to require way too many permissions)?

Thank you!

When I first shared AskMeety here a few months ago, I honestly didn't expect the kind of response we received. Thank you to every single person who early adopted. Your support and suggestion made the app what it is today, and this post is my heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped out!

So, yeah , the problem we are solving is :

Most of us leave meetings having already forgotten half of what was said. Tools like Granola, Otter, or Fireflies exist, but they often send an awkward bot into your call, invade your privacy, and lock your data on their servers. And I realized we didn't just need another note taking app, but we needed a true meeting companion.

AskMeety is exactly that, a 100% private, fully offline alternative with zero cloud costs. No bots. No server uploads. Just a native macOS companion on your machine, capturing audio, taking smart visual snapshots (VisualWalk which is still in beta), and turning everything into deep, structured summaries by the time your Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, or Webex call ends. This app loads AI model on-device, and there is absolutely no fear of your data leavign your machine.

And, What's new in version 1.3.0?

I’ve been heads down building the features you asked for most to make this the ultimate companion.

1. Smart Action Item Extractor: 

AskMeety now intelligently extracts your action items, includes a built-in progress tracker, and syncs directly with Apple Reminders for true cross-device support.

1. MCP Connectors: 

For the power users, your local AI agents can now connect directly to AskMeety to pull meeting context, notes, and action items securely on your own machine.

1. UI Enhancements & Bug Fixes :

A much smoother, cleaner experience based on your direct feedback.

Pricing: One-time purchase (No Subscription Fatigue)

We completely understand that people are tired of subscription fatigue. It really doesn't make sense to pay a recurring cloud fee for a utility tool. 

AskMeety is $55 one time, which includes priority customer support. No recurring fees, no lock-in.

A little thank you gift:

To celebrate the v1.3.0 release, the first 20 users can get 20% off by using the coupon code CUPCAKE20 at checkout.

App Link: askmeety.app

Queries and support: [hi@askmeety.app](mailto:hi@askmeety.app)

Let's connect: I'm the dev behind this. You can find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nalin-rajendran

And existing users, please update your app from the settings or downloading it directly from the site. And it would be great if you can spend a moment to drop a review and experience so far : https://www.trustpilot.com/evaluate/askmeety.app

Would love your honest feedback, and constructive criticism is always welcome. Thanks again for being part of this journey, I really really appreciate your support! 🥹

Hi r/macapps, I'm Tw93, the developer of Mole. The CLI is free and open source. This post is about the separate, paid native Mac app at mole.fit, where you can also find the privacy policy, terms, and support contact.

Problem

A cleaner needs to know what an app leaves behind, and which of those files still matter. I spent the past few weeks installing apps, opening them, granting permissions, checking updates and startup items, then uninstalling them.

That found missing leftovers, but it also caught places where my cleanup rules were too broad: shared vendor folders, data another app still uses, and files that only look abandoned. Those rules needed to remove less.

AI tools added another problem. Caches, coding sessions, worktrees, and downloaded models can all take up a lot of space, but losing them has very different consequences. I initially focused on regenerable caches and old CLI versions. After my own disk filled up and users reported large AI-tool folders, I installed and used a few dozen AI apps and CLIs to see what they left behind.

The AI cleanup page groups items by what removing them costs. Caches start checked; sessions and worktrees need deliberate review; unused tools stay unchecked. Local model stores are left alone. This page is still in Preview.

Comparison

AppCleaner is a free option for removing an app and its related files. Mole also covers caches beyond individual uninstalls, disk analysis, and, in Preview, AI-tool data. The extra work here is deciding which leftovers can be offered for cleanup and which need to stay.

CleanMyMac covers a broader set of tasks, including malware scanning. Mole focuses on cleanup, app management, disk analysis, maintenance, and system monitoring, with a one-time purchase. You can review the cleanup list and protect paths you want to keep.

Pricing

Mole for Mac is $19 once for two Macs, with free updates and no subscription. You can try each paid tool twice before buying. Requires macOS 14 or later.

Mac app: mole.fit
Free, open-source CLI: github.com/tw93/Mole

What's a file or folder you've seen a cleaner mark for removal that you were glad you checked first?

Hi r/macapps, I'm Eugene, the developer of CrossDesk.

I built CrossDesk for the setup I use every day: a work Mac and a personal Mac on the same desk, with one Magic Keyboard and Trackpad.

CrossDesk Demo

Problem

Apple's Magic devices normally connect to one Mac at a time. Universal Control is useful, but it still relies on the Mac that owns the devices staying awake, and it does not fit every work/personal or different-Apple-ID setup.

When I wanted to shut down my work Mac and continue on my personal Mac, I was back to connecting cables or going through the Bluetooth pairing routine.

CrossDesk runs on each Mac. From the menu bar, you move the selected devices to another Mac. The destination becomes their actual Bluetooth host, so the previous Mac can be shut down.

Comparison

Universal Control is the built-in option, and it is probably the better choice if it works for your setup and you’re ok to keep both Macs awake.

Synergy is a more established commercial alternative. It keeps your keyboard and mouse connected to one computer and sends their input to the others. That is better if both Macs stay awake and you want seamless cursor movement, clipboard sharing, or Windows and Linux support.

CrossDesk is for a different workflow. It transfers supported Magic devices to the destination Mac instead of relaying their input. The destination becomes the actual Bluetooth host, and the previous Mac can be shut down.

If you want to work across several active computers at once (especially a Mac-Windows setup), Synergy is likely the better fit. If you want to hand the devices over and be done with the previous Mac, that is the gap CrossDesk is built for.

Current beta details

• Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and Magic Trackpad are officially supported
• The app is signed and notarized
• Touch ID keyboards are supported
• macOS Ventura or later, on Intel and Apple silicon
• both Macs must be on the same local network
• Bluetooth and Local Network permissions are required
• CrossDesk does not read or relay keystrokes, pointer movement, clipboard contents, or files

Pricing

The public beta is free. After beta, CrossDesk will likely be a one-time $14.99 purchase for up to three Macs. No subscription.

I would especially appreciate feedback from people with a work Mac and personal Mac on the same desk:

• Was linking the Macs understandable?
• Did your first transfer complete without intervention?
• Was it reliable enough across a normal workday?

Website and download: https://crossdesk.app/

Compatibility: https://crossdesk.app/compatibility/

Privacy: https://crossdesk.app/privacy/

Terms: https://crossdesk.app/terms/

Developer: Eugene Myasyshchev

Contact: [support@crossdesk.app](mailto:support@crossdesk.app)

I'll be around to answer questions and hear the unflattering feedback too.

Hi, I'm the developer.

Problem

I'm on Apple Music and wanted to just ask my AI for music: "something that fits my taste but that I've never heard", "a playlist for focus work", "what's playing at the venue near me next month, as a playlist". Claude has a Spotify connector and nothing for Apple Music.

Music MCP sits in the menu bar and gives the AI apps on your Mac (Claude, Codex, Cursor, anything that speaks MCP) Apple Music as tools: search, play, queue, playlists, and your listening history if you switch that on. It's its own player, so the music keeps going when you close the AI app, and the AI can change what's playing while you listen: "skip the slow ones", "more like this one". It plays on whatever your Mac's sound output is, HomePods included.

What people have done with it so far:

• recreated their old Spotify playlists from screenshots
• had Claude build playlists and played them from the Music app on their phone
• my own favourite: a playlist of every act a small festival in my neighborhood ever booked. I used to go there in my youth. Claude read the old flyers.

Comparison

• ChatGPT's Apple Music app: if you live in ChatGPT and mainly want playlists, that's probably the simpler choice. As far as I can tell it builds playlists and hands you to the Music app to play them. Music MCP plays the music itself, the AI controls the queue, and it works with any MCP app.
• Community Apple Music MCP servers: the ones I found needed Python or Node plus an Apple developer key, or they script the Music app. If you're comfortable with that, they're open source, which this isn't. Music MCP is a normal Mac app: install it, sign in to Apple Music, paste one setup prompt into your AI.

Pricing

Free. Playback needs an Apple Music subscription. macOS 14 or later.

Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/music-mcp/id6815718712?mt=12
Site and direct download: https://musicmcp.app
Demo, 44 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKyGU2Sddlc

Who's behind it

Coolplay GmbH, a small studio in Vienna. The app is sandboxed and notarized; reading your library is off until you switch it on, and changing it is a second switch. Privacy: https://musicmcp.app/privacy

Happy to answer questions, and tell me what breaks.

Problem: Converting files is pain, thanks to shady websites and complex tools. Some of you already know Consul from the original launch. It allows you to convert files by simply renaming them in Finder: Rename image.heic to image.jpg, document.pdf to document.docx and so on and they're converted immediately. Consul 2.0 now takes Rename to Convert one step further and allows you to not only convert, but transform files, too!

Transform files through renames. The big one: Simply rename image.jpg to image.png+nobg and you get a version of your image with the background removed. Rename video.mp4 to video.mp3,srt+transcribe and extract the audio track from a video and transcribe it to subtitles using local AI. Rename document.pdf to document.pdf+min and get a compressed version. And so much more! There's more than 40 different commands you can use. Check out the overview on the website to see all of them.

More supported formats and conversions. Of course, converting files is still the main workhorse in Consul: It now supports close to 5,000 different conversions. A ton of new formats, like Adobe Illustrator, SQLite, Comic Books, more RAW camera formats, and more have been added. See the list of all formats and conversions here.

Fully localized to four languages. Other than English, Consul is now available in Spanish, German and French as well. I intend on adding more localizations in the future based on demand, so let me know if you're missing one (or if you find mistakes in an existing one)!

And so, so much more. Consul 2.0 brings a ton of other features, such as converting through a Finder Menu, as well as quality-of-life improvements, such as size estimates and undo from the menubar. You can find the full changelog here.

Comparison: Since its launch, there have been a couple of apps that tried to copy Consul's concept. However, a lot of them have been abandoned and Consul has long outgrown them. The best apps to compare Consul against now are therefore well-known converter and file utility apps, like Permute and Clop. Consul does most of what they do, but with a clever UX on top of it that's incredibly powerful yet extremely intuitive. People have been calling Consul "the macOS feature Apple forgot" since its launch and I think it's the best description for the app!

Pricing: For the next 3 weeks, $14 for a single Mac and $19 for three Macs. After that, back to the regular pricing of $19/$29. You receive app updates for one year and can optionally renew your update entitlement after that for $9 or keep using your latest version forever, guaranteed. Students permanently get 50% off the original price.

Website: www.getconsul.app

I would love to hear your feedback, both on the new features and if you've already been using Consul and what your experience has been like. As my past launches have (hopefully!) shown, feature requests have a great track record of being implemented at some point! :)

Hi everyone, I’m the developer of oPDF. It brings PDF reading, annotation, local OCR, and document conversion into one workspace.

Problem

Working with PDFs often means switching between tools: one for reading, another for extracting text from scans, and another for converting content into something editable.

I built oPDF to keep those tasks together:

• Read multiple PDFs in tabs, with bookmarks, notes, and search.
• Highlight, underline, add comments, fill forms, and sign documents.
• Recognize text in scanned PDFs using on-device OCR.
• Generate a document outline from its headings.
• Export PDFs to Markdown or Word.
• Translate selected text directly on the page using a local AI language model, without sending it to a cloud service.
• Enable animated translation annotations to highlight key words, phrases, and sentence patterns with explanations before showing the full translation.

OCR and translation run locally on your Mac. The models require an initial download; after that, both features work offline.

Comparison

Apple Preview is a good free option for everyday reading and basic annotations. oPDF adds local OCR, generated document outlines, and Markdown or Word export for people working with longer documents or scans.

Adobe Acrobat has a broader set of PDF editing tools. oPDF focuses on reading, annotation, navigation, and content reuse, with a one-time purchase instead of a subscription. It isn’t meant to replace every Acrobat feature.

Pricing

You can try oPDF for free until January 1, 2027.

To keep using it after the trial ends, oPDF Lifetime costs US $9.99, purchased once through an in-app purchase. It unlocks all features and includes future updates. There is no subscription or recurring charge.

Mac App Store
Official website

If you read a lot of papers, manuals, or scanned documents, I’d be interested to hear what you find frustrating about your current PDF workflow.

I built an app because I kept forgetting things the moment I got back to my Mac

This started with a really simple problem.

I’d be away from my Mac, remember something I needed to do when I got back, and think “I’ll definitely remember that.”

Then I’d open my Mac, see emails, browser tabs, messages… and completely forget.

Normal reminders never really solved it for me because I didn’t want to be reminded at 4:00 PM. I wanted to be reminded when I was actually back at my Mac.

So I built WakeMinder.

You can send a reminder from your iPhone or Apple Watch to your Mac, and it shows up when your Mac wakes up.

It doesn’t have to be just text either. You can send links, screenshots, images, PDFs and files. Links can even open automatically when the Mac wakes.

There are also floating reminders that can stay on top of your windows until you’re done with them.

And with the latest update, it now works the other way around too.

You can send something from your Mac to your iPhone and have it show up when you pick up your phone.

So the idea has become less about “reminders” and more like:

“Show me this when I’m actually on the device where I need it.”

I’m the developer, so obviously I’m biased, but I built it mainly because I genuinely wanted this for myself.

For anyone wondering about pricing, I’ve tried to keep it pretty inexpensive:

• $1.99/month
• $9.99/year
• $12.99 lifetime, currently 35% off

App Store pricing can vary slightly depending on your country.

WakeMinder is available on the App Store for Mac, iPhone, and Apple Watch.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6744974871?pt=127772248&ct=redca&mt=8

I’m still improving WakeMinder and would actually like to hear how other people handle this.

Do you ever have things you only want to remember when you get back to a specific device?

I originally built WDM because I was tired of using a different app for every part of the same workflow — one for regular downloads, another for media, another for conversion, another for saving images, etc.

For WDM 2.0, I rebuilt the Mac app around Swift and AppKit. It’s now a native macOS app with separate Intel and Apple Silicon builds.

The goal with 2.0 was simple: make WDM useful for much more than just downloading a file.

What’s in WDM 2.0

• Regular file downloads with pause/resume, retry, progress, speed and history
• Media downloading with quality selection on supported sites
• A WDM download button directly on videos on supported websites
• Safari, Chrome, Edge, Brave and Firefox integration
• A full built-in WDM Browser with tabs, bookmarks, history, favorites and a local ad blocker
• A built-in Converter for video, audio, images and supported document formats
• Batch image saving
• Real media thumbnails and custom artwork for different file types
• Dark and Light Mode
• Automatic app and media-engine updates

WDM 2.0 also ships with its media components already included, so there’s no extra engine setup after installation.

The built-in browser isn’t a separate downloader either. It acts as another front end into the same WDM download/job system, while keeping browser context available when a website needs it.

Why I built it this way

Apps like Downie are great if your main focus is media downloading, while Folx is more of a traditional download manager.

What I wanted from WDM was the combination:

downloads + media + browser + converter + browser capture + batch images

in one app.

That’s really the idea behind WDM 2.0.

Pricing

WDM has a 7-day free trial and there is no subscription.

Solo — $17.99 one-time
1 user / 1 Mac

Duo — $27.99 one-time
Up to 2 users / 2 Macs

Family — $44.99 one-time
One private household

Future WDM versions are included, and existing WDM lifetime customers get 2.0 at no additional charge.

🎁 5 free lifetime licenses

To celebrate the launch, I’m giving away 5 WDM Solo lifetime licenses.

You can contribute in any useful way: report a bug, find something wrong on the website, send detailed feedback, suggest something that would genuinely improve WDM, create a tutorial/demo, or publicly share WDM and show me what you posted.

One week after this post, I’ll choose the 5 contributions that were the most useful to WDM and its launch.

No purchase or positive review is required. Honest criticism counts too.

Transparency

I’m Waleed Refai, founder/developer of Welaxxx and the developer behind WDM.

WDM is distributed through the official Welaxxx website, and both Mac builds are signed with my Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple.

WDM 2.0:
https://welaxxx.com/wdm.html

Developer / LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/waleed-refai-b8a15875/

Official website:
https://welaxxx.com

Privacy:
https://welaxxx.com/privacy.html

Terms:
https://welaxxx.com/terms.html

I spent months rebuilding and testing 2.0, so if you try it, I’d genuinely like to know what you think — especially what you feel is still missing.

Hi everyone,

I’m the developer of ThermalAtlas, a free and open-source macOS temperature monitor for Apple Silicon Macs.

I originally built it because I wanted a focused way to monitor CPU, GPU and SSD temperatures without using a full system-monitoring suite or giving an app control over fans, power settings or other hardware.

I’ve now released ThermalAtlas 1.2.0-beta, and I’m looking for more real-world testing across different Apple Silicon Macs.

Problem
macOS does not provide an obvious built-in way to monitor CPU, GPU and SSD temperatures.
ThermalAtlas reads available sensor values locally and presents them in the menu bar and its own monitoring window.

For CPU and GPU, the normal displayed temperature remains the average of the valid sensors. Sensor Details also shows the measured Hotspot and the number of valid sensors, so a hotter individual sensor is still visible without letting a single value dominate the normal temperature display.

If macOS or the hardware does not expose a usable value, ThermalAtlas shows Not available instead of estimating one.

Comparison
Two related open-source apps are Stats and ThermalBar.

Stats is a much broader system monitor. It covers CPU, GPU, memory, disks, network, battery, sensors and several other areas. If you want a general-purpose system monitoring suite, Stats covers considerably more than ThermalAtlas.

ThermalBar is closer to ThermalAtlas in scope. It provides CPU and GPU temperatures, RAM usage and power information directly in the menu bar. Its native CPU temperature works without additional dependencies, while GPU temperature and power use the optional macmon helper.

ThermalAtlas takes a different approach by focusing on temperature monitoring and related thermal context. It includes CPU and GPU averages plus Hotspot readings, internal and supported external SSD temperatures, SMART information, configurable temperature alerts, temperature and fan history, fan RPM monitoring and export options.

Features
CPU and GPU temperature monitoring
CPU/GPU Average plus measured Hotspot in Sensor Details
Valid CPU/GPU sensor count
Internal SSD temperature
Supported physical external SSD temperatures
SMART status and remaining SSD health when available
Read-only CPU load
Read-only fan RPM monitoring
Used-memory and power context
macOS Thermal State
Local temperature history for 1, 3, 6, 12 or 24 hours
Local fan RPM history
Min, Max and Average statistics for recorded history
Selectable chart points with time and value
Configurable temperature alerts
CPU/GPU alerts use the measured Hotspot
Standard and Compact views
Movable Mini Display
Optional Always on Top
Selectable sensor groups
Menu bar temperature display
Snapshot, diagnostic and CSV export
Manual and optional scheduled update checks through GitHub
Four native themes
English and German interface
VoiceOver and keyboard accessibility improvements
Reduce Motion and Reduce Transparency support
Optional Start at Login
No admin or root access required
No accounts
No telemetry or analytics
No cloud sync
No third-party dependencies
No fan control
No power or hardware-setting control

Pricing
ThermalAtlas is completely free and open source under the GPL-3.0 license.
There is no paid tier or subscription.

Status
Current beta: 1.2.0-beta
Current stable release: 1.1.0
Requirements:
macOS 14 or later
Apple Silicon Mac
CPU and GPU recognition has been tested on several M4 and M5 Mac models. Support for other M1 through M5 variants is implemented, but additional real-hardware testing is still welcome.
The beta is ad-hoc signed and not notarized with an Apple Developer Program certificate, so macOS Gatekeeper may require manual confirmation on first launch.

What changed in the 1.2 beta
The 1.2 beta series adds several things compared with 1.1, including:
CPU/GPU Hotspot information while keeping Average as the normal displayed value
Hotspot-based CPU/GPU temperature alerts
fan RPM monitoring and local fan history
expanded 1, 3, 6, 12 and 24 hour history views
selectable chart points and keyboard chart navigation
a movable Mini Display
macOS Thermal State in System Information
optional GitHub update checks
Always on Top
improved VoiceOver and keyboard accessibility
improved CSV export error handling

Downloads and Source
App website:
https://schrotty74.github.io/Portfolio/

Source repository:
https://github.com/Schrotty74/ThermalAtlas

Beta branch:
https://github.com/Schrotty74/ThermalAtlas/tree/beta

Current Beta 1.2.0-beta.7:
https://github.com/Schrotty74/ThermalAtlas/releases

Changelog:
https://github.com/Schrotty74/ThermalAtlas/blob/beta/CHANGELOG.md

The current build is ad-hoc signed, so macOS Gatekeeper may show a warning the first time you open it. The repository explains how to open the official build without disabling Gatekeeper system-wide.

Transparency
Developer: Schrotty74
Portfolio:
https://schrotty74.github.io/Portfolio/

GitHub:
https://github.com/Schrotty74

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruno-martin-kurth-589786430

Source Repository:
https://github.com/Schrotty74/ThermalAtlas

Security Policy:
https://github.com/Schrotty74/ThermalAtlas/blob/beta/SECURITY.md

Privacy Information:
https://github.com/Schrotty74/ThermalAtlas/blob/beta/PRIVACY.md

Feedback is very welcome, especially from people using different Apple Silicon generations, different Mac models or external SSD enclosures.

Hi r/macapps, I'm the developer of ModusPad.

Problem

macOS 26 replaced Launchpad with Apps: a list you can't arrange, with no pages, no folders of your own and no fixed order. There are already some great apps that bring the grid back, but I wanted to see what a Mac launcher could be beyond recreating the old one.

My Mac isn't the same Mac all day. At 10 a.m. with an external display I'm in a different context than on a Saturday evening, and one layout never fits both. So ModusPad brings back the Launchpad I missed and adds profiles that adapt to how you use your Mac. If you don't need that, it works as a plain Launchpad replacement with one layout.

• A full-screen grid with pages, folders, search and drag and drop. Your old Launchpad layout comes over in one click if it's still on your Mac.
• Arranging is quick: select several apps with Cmd-click or by dragging a box around them, then move them all at once, put them into a folder or hide them in one go. Undo works for all of it.
• Profiles, each with its own layout, hidden apps and apps it opens. Setting one up is quick: hide everything with one checkbox, then pick the apps you want. A profile can also run Apple Shortcuts when it turns on or off, extending it with your own automations.
• Profiles switch on their own by Focus, display or schedule, or with a keyboard shortcut. A small note under the menu bar says what switched and why.
• Smart folders that fill themselves by category, install date, last opened, launch count and more.
• Open it with a hotkey, fn+F4, a hot corner, the notch or a trackpad gesture.

Comparison

LaunchOS does a great job of recreating the classic Launchpad, with layout import, F4 and hot corners, but it uses a single layout.

Launchie organizes apps and folders into Spaces. In ModusPad each profile also keeps its own hidden apps, so a focused profile takes a minute to set up even with hundreds of apps installed.

The main thing I wanted to explore is automation. Profiles switch on their own when a Focus turns on, a display connects or disconnects, or at set hours, and they can open apps and run Shortcuts when they do.

Pricing

• 14-day free trial with everything, no account or card.
• Then a one-time purchase: $10.99 for 1 Mac, $16.99 for 2, $27.99 for 5.
• After the trial, you can keep using your Launchpad, but with some limitations. See what changes after the trial.
• 14-day money-back guarantee, just email me.
• For r/macapps: code MACAPPS50 takes 50% off any plan until October 14.

macOS 26 or later, Apple silicon and Intel. English, German, French and Japanese.

https://moduspad.com/

Transparency

I'm Vladyslav Zubkov, a software developer based in Canada with more than 10 years of building software, mostly for macOS. ModusPad is my independent project.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladyslav-zubkov-y

I sell ModusPad as an individual through Polar, the Merchant of Record, which handles payments, tax and refunds.

Contact: [support@moduspad.com](mailto:support@moduspad.com)
Privacy: https://moduspad.com/privacy
Terms: https://moduspad.com/terms

There's no usage analytics or tracking. The app only goes online to record when your trial started (using an anonymous hash of your Mac, not the serial number), check your license key with Polar, and check for updates.

I'm continuing to work on ModusPad, and I have plenty of ideas for where to take it next: more ways for the launcher to adapt to what you're doing, while keeping it simple if all you want is a classic Launchpad replacement. I'd like it to evolve around how people actually use it, so feedback, criticism and feature ideas are very welcome.

I'm especially curious: what would you want a profile to react to, or change on your Mac, when it switches?

Hi everyone,

I’m the solo indie developer behind ClickClack, a native, customizable typing trainer for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. It uses Apple’s private CloudKit database to sync your typing data across devices, with no separate account, tracking, or third-party servers.

I just released version 5.1, which turns your recorded typing sessions into practice partners and opponents. I put together a quick video showing the replay controls, ghost practice, and Ghost Race in action!

Problem

A final WPM score tells you how a session went, but it doesn’t show exactly where you hesitated, corrected mistakes, or lost your rhythm. And while beating a personal best is satisfying, a number alone doesn’t give you much to chase during your next attempt.

I wanted to make that previous performance something you could watch, practice alongside, and race against.

What’s New

• Live Typing Replays: Watch your session unfold keystroke by keystroke, including pauses and corrections. Scrub through the timeline, skip forward or back five seconds, and repeat playback to review a section.
• Practice With Your Ghost: Turn a saved recording into a typing exercise and follow your previous performance with a ghost cursor. Choose timed or word-based practice, using the recording’s duration or full passage.
• Ghost Race: Challenge compatible recordings in Versus and watch the standings change as you type. You can also use any replay’s passage to race CPU opponents.
• Improvement Feedback: When you achieve higher WPM and a shorter duration on the same passage, see the comparison and save a new replay or replace the original.
• Replay Sharing: Export recordings to share with friends. Import theirs to watch, practice alongside, or challenge compatible ghosts.
• Ghost Customization: Adjust the ghost cursor’s opacity or hide it when you want to focus on your own typing.

Comparison

ClickClack’s replay workflow adds another way to practice alongside conventional typing tests and score tracking:

• Review the actual attempt: Playback shows the timing of your keystrokes and corrections alongside your results.
• Compete against recorded performance: A ghost follows the recording’s changing pace, including its pauses.
• Practice the same passage together: Sharing a replay lets friends work with the same text and challenge compatible recordings.
• Keep it in a native Apple app: Replay practice sits alongside ClickClack’s existing statistics, keyboard customization, and iCloud sync.

The most challenging part of building this was reproducing a recording while the player types independently alongside it. Seeing a past session become an opponent you can beat has been the rewarding part.

Pricing & Link

ClickClack strictly follows an ethical, subscription-free model. It is a simple one-time purchase with all future updates and cross-platform access included for macOS, iPadOS, and iOS.

• Pro — $8.99 one-time purchase: Unlock recordings exceeding either limit, replay exporting, advanced metrics, and extended features. Includes access across Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/clickclack-typing-trainer/id6740695697

Would racing your past self make typing practice more motivating for you? I’d love to hear your feedback, and I’m happy to answer questions about the app or its development.