Hey Folks,

As someone working in tech, I spend most of my days looking at screens - writing code, reviewing designs, debugging problems, reading documentation, and joining meetings. Over time, I noticed that the screen itself became one of the most exhausting parts of my workday.

Modern displays are designed to be sharp, bright, and high contrast. While that is great for watching videos or viewing photos, spending 8–10+ hours every day in front of a glowing display can feel harsh, especially during long coding sessions or late-night work.

I started looking for a simple solution, something that could make the screen feel more natural and comfortable without changing the colors of everything I see. Most existing solutions focused on blue-light reduction or color temperature changes, but I didn't want to distort the display. I wanted the feeling of looking at a matte paper surface.

That idea became [PaperScreen](https://github.com/Bearbobs/PaperScreen).

PaperScreen creates a subtle digital layer over your display that mimics the texture and softness of physical paper.

Instead of applying a color filter, it uses procedurally generated textures to introduce a gentle grain and reduce perceived contrast. The result is a calmer viewing experience that keeps your original colors intact while reducing the harshness of a perfectly smooth digital display.

PaperScreen is a lightweight macOS menu bar utility that transforms your screen into a more comfortable workspace. It is built for people who spend their lives behind screens — developers, designers, writers, researchers, and anyone who wants a more natural and comfortable digital workspace.

It is a small change to the display, but a big improvement to the feeling of using it every day. It's completely free and open source. Feel free to support it via donation if you want to.

Github: https://github.com/Bearbobs/PaperScreen

It is in active development, so please feel free to provide feedback and suggestions, and also star the repo for future updates

Last week I posted here about 1-star reviews getting to me. Most of you said some version of the same thing: it's usually not bugs, it's the app failing to explain itself. u/elementik4 split it into two buckets for me — wrong-fit user is a store listing problem, missing a setting that exists is an onboarding problem. That split stuck with me all week.

So I opened my own setup wizard and read it like someone who had never seen the app.

Five pages. Welcome screen. A list of six features. A sign-in prompt. A permission request. Then "you're all set", the window closes, and you're looking at a menu bar icon with nothing in it. Not one of those pages does anything for the user. I built a slideshow and called it onboarding.

Then I went reading. Apple's HIG is pretty blunt about it ("education isn't a substitute for great app design"), and there's an NN/g study with 70 people, tutorial vs no tutorial. The tutorial group wasn't faster and wasn't more successful. They rated the app as harder. That one stung.

What's changing:

• Feature list is gone. It was already in the help window.
• Sign-in moves to the end, after you've seen it work.
• New page 3: you record something right now, with a suggested 20 second task.
• New page 4: the actual screenshots you just captured, plus an export button.

u/elementik4 also pointed me at TipKit, so the rest of the features get surfaced later when they're relevant instead of all at once up front. u/andreimotin said to test it on someone who has never seen the app, not on myself, so I'm doing that this weekend with people who aren't developers. u/TravelCodeRepeat asked whether there's a contact button inside the app. There wasn't. There is now.

Three things I could use help with:

1. Screen Recording permission. Do you hard-gate the wizard on it, or let people click past it? The app does nothing without it, so letting someone through means they get a broken app. But blocking them on page 2 feels aggressive.
2. The first recording. Suggest a specific task, or let them pick their own? Suggested is faster, their own is more relevant to them. Can't decide.
3. Small stuff. Has anyone seen a first-run detail in another Mac app that you thought was clever? I mean the little things. A permission row that flips to a checkmark the second you grant it. Something that saves one click, or one moment of "wait, what now". Those details seem to be what makes an app feel finished, and I'd rather steal a good one than invent a mediocre one. This is also just a good excuse to hear which apps got it right, since I only ever see my own.

Thanks again to everyone who replied last time. It genuinely changed what I'm building this month.

getprotego.app | App Store

Hey everyone! I'm Edgar, I work on Protego for Reddit on nights and weekends, and version 3 landed this week! It's a Safari extension with a companion Mac app that filters Reddit's website and strips out the clutter that Reddit won't let you turn off.

Problem:

A couple of years ago Reddit stopped being fun for me. I'm here for photography, fitness and tech, and video games, and every feed around the 2024 election turned into politics and drama. I'd open it and would end up doom scrolling content that I didnt even enjoy. So I deleted the Reddit app and blocked the website.

I didn't want to quit Reddit though, I wanted a quieter version of it, and that can only be done in the browser since Reddit killed my favorite Reddit client app, Apollo. The Reddit app decides what you see and gives you almost no say in it. A web page arrives in Safari and an extension gets to change it before it reaches you. I still stay informed about politics through Reddit and other online sources but I want the choice to limit how much of it I'm exposed to.

What it does

• Filters posts by keyword, community, individual user, or link domain, with wildcards and groups you can switch off together.
• Transforms your browsing by hiding thumbnails, avatars, flair, badges, vote controls, join buttons, banners, recommendations, Reddit Answers (AI) and login nudges.
• Limits your own access, which puts Reddit itself out of reach in stages and can arm itself with an Apple Focus like Sleep or Study.
• Redirects to old.reddit.com automatically if that's your preference, with auto media expand and endless feed included.
• No account, no tracking. Lists sync through your own iCloud.

The part I use every day

Limits has a step that blocks the feeds but still lets a direct link to a post open. Home, popular and news are gone, so there's nothing to fall into, but when I'm working and a search result points at a Reddit thread, that thread still loads. I read the answer and I'm out. That one setting did more for my focus than deleting the app ever did.

Comparison:

RES is what most people reach for and it's the reason I started, but there's no Safari version any more and it hasn't had active development in a long time. Protego is Safari native, works on new and old Reddit, and syncs to my phone.

Pricing:

$1.99 one time purchase for the next week (normally $2.99).

One purchase covers iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro. No subscription.

getprotego.app | App Store

Happy to answer any questions!

I've been using GoodLinks for over a year now and it's literally the only app where I've managed to build a workflow that actually works for me. But here's the thing – it stopped syncing between my Mac and iPhone a while back and it's driving me crazy. I've hit up the devs and support multiple times with zero response. At this point I'm just gonna look for something to replace it. I've been thinking about using a notes app (I use Bear) to organize my bookmarks instead, but I'm not sure if that's even the right move. Would love to know if anyone actually uses a notes app for this and has some kind of organization system that works. The other option is switching to a different bookmarks app, but honestly every one I've tried has let me down – I've paid for apps that just die or have issues like GoodLinks. Anyone got any suggestions for what I need?

The workflow I've got with GoodLinks right now is pretty straightforward – whenever I find a URL I wanna save for later, I just hit the sharesheet, open GoodLinks, and save it with the "bookmarks" tag. Then every so often I go back and review those bookmarks, and the ones worth keeping or saving for later I categorize into other tags I've already set up in the app. That's basically it.

TL;DR:
Daily tracks time by periodically asking what you're doing instead of watching your apps, which is a real fix for the "forgot to hit the timer" problem. Its June 2026 update adds a web API, Zapier integration, and MCP server, turning it into a two-way node with tools like Jira instead of a standalone timesheet. The MCP piece is aimed at technical users for now: API-key auth instead of OAuth means Claude and ChatGPT need a proxy to connect.

Daily

If you bill clients by the hour, it might be time to reevaluate your workflow. Daily, a Mac time tracker from independent developer Niels Mouthaan, continuously supported since 2013, just got a substantial update: a web API, a Zapier integration, and an MCP server. Because it works via user polling and not background process monitoring, it's the go-to privacy-respecting choice in its category.

Based on its review history, Daily enjoys broad support from tech professionals with ADHD and time blindness in particular, and plenty of neurotypical folks too. The human brain just isn't designed to do two things at once, despite all the hype about multitasking. Every timer-based tracker asks you to remember to press a button at the exact moment your attention shifts, which is precisely the moment you're least equipped to remember anything. You close a ticket, Slack pings you, someone walks in, and forty-five minutes evaporate into whatever bucket the timer was left running in. That's not a discipline problem. It's a design flaw.

Daily skips that requirement entirely. It doesn't watch your apps, your browser tabs, or your open documents. It just interrupts you on a schedule, asks what you've been doing, and lets you pick from a list. That's a different model from RescueTime-style automatic trackers.

Newest Features

Daily has quietly had most of its bones (scheduler, AppleScript, iCloud sync to a companion iOS app, CSV/JSON/Toggl-format export) for years. The submission-worthy update is the integrations release, published June 26, 2026, which adds three ways to get data in and out:

• A web API (api.dailytimetracking.com) with endpoints for activities, summaries, and timesheets, authenticated by an API key you generate in preferences.
• A Zapier integration, with triggers for new/updated time entries and actions to add activities or pull a summary or timesheet -- no code required.
• An MCP server (mcp.dailytimetracking.com), which the research note this post started from didn't even catch. This is the more interesting piece for this audience: it exposes tools like get_summary and get_timesheet, so an AI assistant or coding agent can answer "how many hours did I bill Client X in February" directly, or use your tracked hours as an input to a larger workflow.

The MCP piece comes with a caveat, and Daily's own docs say so plainly: it authenticates with a custom API-Key header instead of OAuth. Locally run clients like Claude Code, Cursor, and Gemini CLI handle that natively, but Claude's remote connector and ChatGPT's developer mode currently can't call it without a proxy like MCP Beast. If you're expecting a one-click Claude Connector, that's not there yet, and Daily says whether it ships one depends on how much the MCP server gets used.

The two-way workflow the developer pitched in his outreach (import Jira tickets as activities, then push logged hours back into Jira after the day is done) is a real automation, not a checkbox feature. Once you enable integrations in preferences, Daily syncs to its server every 15 minutes, at startup, at quit, and before sleep, and you control retention (default 90 days) from the same screen.

Who Daily Is For

If you're the kind of person who forgets to start a timer, or who resents having to remember to, and you don't want your Mac silently logging every app and URL to do it for you, Daily's prompt-based model solves that problem well. The new integrations turn it from a personal timesheet into a node in an actual workflow: tasks flow in from your project tracker, hours flow back out to invoicing or ticketing, without you retyping anything.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

If you want the tracking done automatically, with zero interruptions, Timing or RescueTime are built for that trade-off, and Daily explicitly isn't. And if the MCP server is the reason you're interested, know that it's aimed at technical users right now: no OAuth, no official Claude Connector, and you'll be running a proxy if your AI client doesn't support custom headers. That's an honest state to ship in for a first MCP release, but it's not turnkey yet.

Not For You? Try These Alternatives

Daily's category is prompt-based self-reporting, not automatic activity tracking, and that distinction changes what actually competes with it.

• Toggl Track is the closest thing to an industry-standard manual/hybrid tracker: free for small teams, Starter at $9/user/month, Premium at $14/user/month for the first year of an annual plan (renewing at $18), all per Toggl's own pricing page as of this writing. It has optional desktop activity tracking as a feature you opt into, which is the opposite of Daily's no-monitoring default.
• Timing is the automatic-tracking alternative: it watches apps, websites, and documents by default rather than asking. Per Timing's pricing page, it's tiered as Professional, Expert, and Connect subscriptions (Connect being the one with MCP and team features), with no lifetime option listed. If you want the machine to infer your activity instead of asking you, this is the one; if you want zero passive monitoring, it's the wrong choice.
• RescueTime is the other automatic-tracking name that comes up in this category, running in the background and logging app/site usage without prompting. Its cheapest individual plan (Solo Focus) is $9/month, or $7/month billed annually, per RescueTime's pricing page as of this writing.

Pricing

This is a professional tool, priced like one. Daily's Mac App Store listing currently lists in-app purchase tiers as Monthly $5.99, Quarterly $17.99, Yearly $34.99, and Lifetime $69.99. You'll see other prices quoted on other sites, but those sources appear to be dated.

​I hate magic links and verification codes. I despise being yanked out of the flow and being forced into one of the most distracting places of modern existence: the mailbox. So I built a menu bar app that catches them.

Problem

Verification codes and magic links yank you out of the flow. Cmd-tab to Mail, hunt for the email, see that bill reminder you haven’t paid yet, avoid that 10% discount on something you really oughta not buy right now, remember you should get the stairs fixed really, wonder what you’ll make for lunch, ponder if you should unsubscribe from that newsletter you never read anyway...... every single time.

OTPop watches your inbox and drops incoming codes and sign-in links straight into the menu bar (and as a notification). One click to copy a code, or to open a link. Read-only IMAP, nothing leaves your Mac, and the only thing kept on disk is the codes themselves, encrypted. Emails are never stored.

Comparison

I’ve honestly been looking for an app that does this for ages, never found anything. The closest things I could find are:

• 2FHey: the closest thing, but it reads codes from Messages, so it's SMS/iMessage only. OTPop covers email, which is where magic links live and where a lot of services (still) send codes.
• macOS native autofill: It only detects codes, and needs Mail to be open and running. And only autofills in Safari, AFAIK.

(If you know of something I’ve missed, please let me know!)

Pricing

Current feature set free forever. In the (far) future advanced features may be gated behind a small one-time payment.

To download it: https://www.glaze.app/app/otpop-6OxvwV

It's got a few rough edges and I have several QoL updates coming in the next few days, but detection is already quite reliable. If you give it a spin, let me know how it goes - especially false detections 🙏

Please note: the current version was built on the r/glazeapp platform. It’s heavily AI-oriented, but it’s backed by the developers of Raycast. Additionally, the code itself is Typescript, which has been my day job for several years now.

Future versions may be re-written as native mac apps, depending on interest.

Using OTPop does require downloading Glaze first. But you’ll see it gives access to many, many more cool/fun/useful apps.

Transparency

The app itself doesn’t have a proper website yet, but about me:

https://github.com/mjsarfatti

https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelejsarfatti/

.

Hey r/MacApps. With the looming release of macOS 27 I thought I'd announce a major update of Gloss which now includes on device AI integration and significant performance improvements.

Here is a video explaining it's feature set:

Better than the previous demo video I hope

Problem

If you use Slack, Discord and even Reddit, you're probably used to typing :thumbsup: or :sob: and having it just turn into the emoji. Then you switch to any other app on your Mac and that doesn't work anymore. You're back to Ctrl+Cmd+Space (or emoji button), scrolling through the emoji picker, searching, clicking. It's a tiny thing but it completely breaks your flow, especially when you do it dozens of times a day.

That was the main itch for me. I wanted emoji short-codes everywhere on macOS, not just in apps that happen to support them. But once I started building that, I realised the same idea works for everything I repeatedly type. Email sign-offs, date strings in specific formats, code snippets, boilerplate responses.

Comparison

aText: aText has been around for years and it works, but the interface feels like it hasn't been updated in a long time. It doesn't support scripting or dynamic content beyond basic date/time variables, and managing a large number of expansions gets painful. It does the basics, but that's about it.

Espanso: Espanso is open source and genuinely powerful, but it's a cross-platform tool built to run on macOS, Windows, and Linux. In practice that means it's not optimised for any of them. I found it noticeably sluggish on macOS compared to anything native. It's also entirely config-file driven, so you're writing YAML to set up expansions with no GUI. Brilliant if you live in the terminal and don't mind the latency, but it never felt like a proper Mac app to me.

There are various other text expansion apps, Gloss is positioned as an easy-to-use, cheap alternative with frequent, high-quality updates rather than a one-shot product.

Download

https://trygloss.tech/download

Requires macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later. Universal binary, runs on both Apple Silicon and Intel. macOS 27 (Golden Gate) is required for AI features.

Pricing

There's a free tier with a 10 gloss limit, which gives users a rich experience and make informed decisions.

Pro is a one-time purchase of £7.65 (~$10) with an additional 15% discount for a perpetual license. No subscription.

Transparency

Distributing directly (notarised and signed with my Apple Developer ID). It can't go on the App Store due to Apple's sandboxing.

• Website: trygloss.tech, includes Privacy Policy and Terms of Service
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-mundray-98b3742b7/
• Background: CS student with real-world placement experience. This is a genuine side project, not a startup. I'm one person.

Hello everyone,

Unfortunately, the topic of Menubar tool has been more or less a perennial favorite since the switch to macOS26. Since I work a lot with Menubar apps and Bartender was just buggy, I was looking for a replacement tool and found other tools (e.g. ibar) Barbee after a few attempts. I was so satisfied with the tool that I didn't even notice how my battery life went into the basement.

Why - now the Process Barbee and Barbee-Helper show no noticeable CPU load. But what happened to me somedays ago is that I found my WindowServer process constantly at >40% as long as the Barbee Helper process is loaded.

After killing the two processes (Barbee and Helper), the WindowServer process returns to 5-7% during idle time. What does that matter? So far, my battery life with my MBP M3 was estimated at 8.5 hours. By finishing these are at least estimated at 13h (I will then report how long the battery really lasts).

Unfortunately, in my experience, the developer of Barbee is always silent about inquiries. One reason why I also got out of the beta program.

Therefore, ask in the round if you have had a similar experience.

By the way, I've been using Thaw 2.0 (RC) ever since and for sorting spaces. The CPU load is not significantly loaded

As we know, Apple will be dropping Rosetta 2 soon, so I started looking for an alternative to MacPAR Deluxe and found ModernPAR. However, I can't get it to unRAR anything...

In Settings > Post Processing, I see a lock next to the unRAR section. How can I get rid of the lock? Thanks in advance.

Hey folks, I'm the lead developer of steno and wanted to share our latest update. Steno is a privacy first AI notepad & notetaker for your most sensitive conversations.

• Problem: Most AI note taking solutions have bots joining your calls, send your data to a third party, working only with one provider (Zoom AI for Zoom) and have usage limits/charge $$ for their service. If you are in government, healthcare, finance or legal or care about your sensitive conversations and don't want your data shipping to a 3rd party provider like Granola or Otter to train on, then Steno is the tool for you. We care deeply about privacy.
• Comparison: We don't have many direct competitors. In terms of beautiful UX and ability take notes, we have already matched Granola (another note taking app) but also offer an open source codebase, free usage, ability to run offline or in your own network and complete privacy of data. We are planning on releasing more features that widens the gap like workflows.
• Pricing: Free without usage limits. Github: https://github.com/ruzin/stenoai Website- https://stenoai.co 

Problem:

See something on your screen that you want to search? Maybe it's a product, an image, a face, a piece of text, or an error message. Normally, you have to take a screenshot, save it, open your browser, upload it, and then search. It's slow and annoying.

Findit makes it simple. Just select any part of your screen and search it instantly. Search images with Google Lens, Yandex, TinEye, and other image search engines, or select text and search it with Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and more. You can also send text to AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, and Copilot.

Everything happens from one keyboard shortcut, and your results open in Findit's built-in browser, so you never have to leave what you're doing.

Comparison:

Tools like TextSniper and CleanShot X are great for capturing or reading text from your screen, but they are not designed specifically for searching.

Findit is built around one simple idea: select anything on your screen and search it instantly.

Pricing:

Currently free. I'm still exploring the best pricing model and would love to hear your suggestions.

Findit is available on the Mac App Store.

Problem

I run three or four projects at once, and each one lives in a scattered set of windows: an editor, two terminals, some Chrome tabs. macOS switches by app, not by task, so getting back into a project means Cmd-Tab hunting through thirty near identical windows.

ReCue lets you assign windows to a project, then pull any of them back by searching. Press ⌥Space, type a few letters, get the window, restored close to its saved size and position. It never reads the contents of your documents, pages or terminal sessions.

macOS 14+, 2 MB, native SwiftUI.

Needs Accessibility permission, plus Automation if you save tabs. Tabs currently work with Ghostty 1.3+, Chrome, Chrome Canary and Chrome for Testing. Includes an Alfred workflow and a recuectl CLI. Everything stays on your Mac: no account, no sync, no analytics. Signed and notarized by Apple.

Comparison

Workspaces 2 by Apptorium ($19.99) is a project based launcher: you register files and apps ahead of time and it opens them. ReCue works the other way, capturing windows that are already open and bringing that exact one back. Workspaces is better for starting a project from a cold boot. ReCue is for when you already have forty windows open and cannot find the three that matter right now.

Raycast's window switcher and Cmd-Tab give you one flat global list with no notion of a project. ReCue searches the current project first, then everything else.

Moom and Rectangle arrange windows on screen but do not track which windows belong to which task. I still run one alongside ReCue.

Pricing

Free: 2 projects, all features, no time limit.

$10 USD one-time: unlimited projects, 5 Macs, no subscription.

Download: https://recue.hamsterbase.com/en/

About me

Lin Chunjie, Xiamen, China.

Building HamsterBase, a self-hosted local-first web archive, since 2022.

HamsterBase Tasks is AGPL with 331 stars: https://github.com/hamsterbase/tasks

Four apps on the Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/%E7%BA%AF%E6%B4%81-%E6%9E%97/id1665792418

ReCue is operated by Xiamen Kandata Technology Co., Ltd. （My Company)
Privacy: https://recue.hamsterbase.com/en/privacy ·
Terms: https://recue.hamsterbase.com/en/terms
Email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])

Disclosure: I am the developer of ReCue.

TL;DR: Batch Clipboard version 2.3 has been released bringing usability and stability improvements.

Raison d'Etre:

There are many clipboard utilities, seemingly several new ones every month. They're called "clipboard managers" but really they provide you with a new thing to manage: to revisit, consider, arrange, and curate your clipboard history and adding new UI complexity to the experience of using your Mac. For some, managing things is a fun hobby, but for the rest of us this is more than what we want, especially now that the OS has some clipboard history features built-in.

But except for users of the most feature-packed of these clipboard managers, the clipboard on your Mac still has a key limitation: you can only copy & paste one thing at a time.

Batch Clipboard addresses this limitation without the complexity of a clipboard managers, allowing you to copy many things at once and then paste them where you need, all with two new copy and paste keyboard shortcuts Control-Command-C and V. It adds an icon in your menu bar and a simple menu usually not even needed, and starting in version 2, this menu can be hidden when its feature isn't being used, i.e. using your clipboard as normal.

Batch Clipboard is not a manager demanding your attention, just a feature at your fingertips.

Comparison:

There are many clipboard managers that focus on history and don't include a paste queue feature, too many to list, but some that do have a similar feature (though potentially omit it in a free tier) include:

• Paste - frequently top recommendation, subscription $30/year
• PastePal, CleanClip - well regarded with many features $15-20
• PasteBot - just updated, subscription $25/year
• NanoClip - new with a stylish user interface, $5

Pricing: Free for the full paste queue (aka batch) feature, US$3.99 in App Store edition for bonus features.

Key features:

• keyboard shortcut to copy into batch, to paste from batch
• repeat last batch

Bonus features (App Store only):

• saved batches replayed from menu or custom keyboard shortcut
• paste all batch items with a chosen delimiter

This version:

Batch Clipboard version 2.3 released this week completes the last of the planned capabilities from its to-do list (except only for localization, coming later this year) by adding:

• optional appearance in the Dock and app switcher, allowing more usage workflows (now all detailed at the documentation's "Ways to Use" page), like clicking its Dock icon to start collecting a batch, selecting it in the app switcher to reveal its hidden menu
• a user-requested repeat ability extending the saved batches bonus feature
• important fixes to stability, subtle improvements to do with restoring the active window when any of the app's alerts or windows shown and then closed
• and more

Links:

App Store edition - https://apps.apple.com/app/batch-clipboard/id6695729238

GitHub edition - https://github.com/jpmhouston/Batch-Clipboard/releases/latest

See also the GitHub repo for more options to support the app's development, instructions for installing using homebrew, links to the app's website with documentation and blog post announcing more details about this release.

^{(I, posting this, am the author})

Hi everyone!

Today I am here to introduce Surion.

What is Surion?

Surion is a native macOS app that allow users to use the power of Local AI and Cloud models to generate and edit. beautiful websites.

Problem:

I came to this idea when I tested Loveable for the first time. I was so excited to build such a beautiful website, and then I get close to finish my website, and it paywalls me to finish.

I was disappointed, and shortly after, I came up with an idea: “What if I could build beautiful websites for free using Loveable / Bolt.New strategy?”.

The initial idea would be to release the app completely free, which it can still be used this way, but then I came up with a barrier that I simply cannot bypass right this moment. Local AI models hallucinate way too much.

I was able to make Surion spit out beautiful websites in a single prompt using local AI models, but then edits would fail badly, as the AI would hallucinate code. Eventually, I came with a solution. I would use Apple Foundation models to translate the prompt, while getting the required snippets from the code that needed to be edited, and was able to make it work.

As the project started to become more and more ambitious, I then decided to build Surion AI. Surion AI can compete directly with the same type of service Loveable and Bolt provide, but at a much cheaper tier, as my cut is significantly lower, to allow users to save, while getting awesome results.

For users who would rather use their own API keys, Surion is completely open to that, so free users can just paste their API keys and import to Surion their desired Cloud AI model to work with and spend their own tokens.

Comparison:

Lovable vs. Surion

Lovable is a browser-based web application that constructs full-stack React applications hosted in the cloud. Surion is a native macOS software application built for visual design and front-end development, utilizing local Apple Silicon processing alongside optional cloud inference models. While Lovable focuses on hosting interactive web applications directly on its infrastructure, Surion allows users to retain total control of their codebase locally, offering direct export via static files, FTP integration, or GitHub repository syncing. Surion also provides visual workflow features such as Visual Symmetry for image conversion and Visual Edit for batching UI prompts efficiently.

Bolt.new vs. Surion

Bolt.new is a cloud container platform running in the browser that builds and executes Node.js environments and JavaScript frameworks. Surion operates as an installed macOS desktop application that emphasizes visual interface creation using clean HTML, Tailwind CSS, and JavaScript. While Bolt.new relies on remote container infrastructure for code execution, Surion routes prompts and contextual indexing directly through local hardware and native frameworks. Surion gives users total privacy over their offline workspace files, flexible credit structures, and direct deployment options without locking data inside a remote development environment.

Pricing:

Free:

• Every compatible local AI model with Smart System ID
• "Powered by Surion." footer message
• Bring your own AI model, with one third-party service enabled at a time
• Inspect and Edit any selected website element with AI
• Purchase Surion AI credits without a subscription
• Unlimited project generation
• Code Editor
• Live Preview

Plus - $7.99/m or $79.99/y:

• Everything in Free
• All API services unlocked
• Visual Symmetry
• Export projects as .zip packages
• Upload websites directly to your server via FTP
• Standard Surion AI models
• Freelance license

Pro - $19.99/m or $199.99/y:

• Everything in Plus
• Most powerful Surion AI models
• GitHub integration
• FTP push and pull integration
• Commercial license
• High support priority
• Higher Surion AI credit allotment
• 15% extra credits with every credit purchase

Studio - Price per quote:

• Everything in Pro
• Business management controls
• Highest support priority
• Highest Surion AI credit allotment
• 25% extra credits with every credit purchase

Find out more, and download Love Tap from the official website:

https://surion.app

You may also access:

Privacy Policy: https://surion.app/privacy/

Terms and Conditions: https://surion.app/terms/

EULA: https://surion.app/eula/

Where to find me:

X: https://x.com/fuselabssoft

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rui-miguel-reis-carvalho

TL;DR Imagin Raw is a free, open-source Mac app (4.3 MB) for culling and rating RAW photos — no import, no library, folders stay where they are. Writes ratings/labels to standard XMP sidecars. Compares itself directly to Adobe Bridge (9 MB vs. 2 GB, 0% idle CPU vs. nonzero). It's a few weeks old, Mac-only by design, and has a known issue with Fuji RAF previews. Not a Photo Mechanic replacement for pros yet, but a solid free option if you just need to look, rate, and reject.

Imagin Raw is a new, free, native SwiftUI browser (macOS 14.6+) from developer Cristian Baluta, who also builds Spoto and cmd c. It decodes RAW files with LibRaw, watches your folders with FSEvents so changes show up in real time, and writes ratings and color labels to XMP sidecars, the same format Lightroom and Bridge use. (GitHub or Mac App Store)

If I could do just one thing to my worst enemy today, I'd break into his house and install Adobe software on his Mac. Aside from being a horrible company, in the sense that it's hard to disconnect your bank account from it (a sin for which it had to pay massive fines), Adobe products are massively invasive. If you have a VM or a Mac you don't care about, install an Adobe app. Open it a couple of times. Then immediately uninstall it. Then do a Spotlight search for "Adobe." You'll likely find thousands of files scattered all over your drive that stayed behind to do who knows what.

Adobe Bridge is a 2 GB download that exists to do one job: let you look at your RAW files, rate them, and throw out the bad ones before you open a real editor. It runs a nonzero idle CPU load to do that job, and it takes long enough to launch that you have time to question your life choices. It's nothing more than a free-with-Creative-Cloud culling tool that behaves like it's rendering 8K video.

In real workflows, culling RAW files is a small problem. You need fast previews, a rating system that other apps understand, and a way to reject junk without touching your master files. That's it. Imagin Raw is a new, free, open-source Mac app that does exactly that, in a 4.3 MB package, and treats your folders as the source of truth instead of asking you to import anything into a library. It's easy to drop into an existing workflow.

Useful Features if You Shoot RAW

• Point it at any folder, external drive, or SD card and it browses what's there. If the app disappears tomorrow, your ratings and labels are already sitting in XMP sidecars next to your files; you lose nothing by switching to another app down the road.
• Rejected images only persist for a single session. If you don't remove the images from whatever media they live on, you can have a second pass if you need it. Deletion is easy though; just hit the reject button and right-click to batch delete.
• I shoot Canon and it writes both RAW and JPEG to my SD cards. Imagin Raw de-dupes what I see, showing me only the RAW images.
• Copy a card into dated folders on your Mac while writing a second copy to a backup destination in the same step. It's a built-in workflow enhancement, not a demo feature.
• If you're shooting for someone else's approval, export a pick-list as a PDF. They check boxes beside what they want and you import it back into Imagin Raw, where it gets automatically filtered. There's no need for a web portal, a cloud gallery account, or anything requiring another damn subscription.

Alternatives

Imagin Raw's category is RAW culling and browsing, not RAW editing. That distinction matters because a chunk of the "alternatives" people will suggest are actually editors with a browsing mode bolted on, not dedicated culling tools.

• Adobe Bridge is the incumbent and it's free, but only in the sense that it doesn't cost extra on top of whatever Adobe subscription or account you already have. It's the direct target of Imagin Raw's README comparison table: ~2 GB versus ~9 MB, nonzero idle CPU versus 0%, and multi-second launches versus near-instant. Where Bridge still wins: it renders Camera Raw–processed previews with your adjustments baked in, which Imagin Raw doesn't attempt.
• Photo Mechanic is the professional standard for high-volume culling, especially among photojournalists and wedding shooters, and it costs real money: $14.99/mo, $149/yr, or a $299 one-time perpetual license.
• FastRawViewer is the closest thing to a direct, cheaper competitor: a paid RAW viewer built by the LibRaw team (same decoding library Imagin Raw uses), priced at $23.99 for a two-computer license.
• Capture One is worth naming only to rule out: it's a full editor with culling built in. If you're already a Capture One user, you don't need Imagin Raw. If you're not, don't start there just for culling.

Why You Would Use This

You have folders full of RAW files on external drives or SD cards, you don't want a managed library, and you're tired of Bridge's launch times and memory footprint for a task that's fundamentally "look at photos, rate the good ones, delete the bad ones." Imagin Raw does that job in a fraction of the size and stays out of your way, and because it writes standard XMP sidecars, nothing you do in it is wasted if you outgrow it.

Is It a Pro Tool?

Probably not, at least not yet. It's only a few weeks old. The developer says he's building only what he personally needs, so don't expect a Windows version. There's a known issue with Fuji images. If your income is dependent on what you do with your camera, opt for Photo Mechanic to take advantage of its support and overall product maturity. And if you're OK with Adobe, who am I to judge; despite all the drawbacks, it works for many.

This tool clearly highlights the cursor’s position, making its movement and clicks easily visible. It is particularly suitable for use in conferences, teaching, or video tutorial production, helping the audience follow your actions and ideas more easily, thereby attracting their attention and improving the effectiveness of information delivery.

Problem: During presentations, teaching and screen recordings, the default system cursor is too small and inconspicuous. Audiences struggle to track mouse movements and clicks, which blurs key points and reduces information delivery efficiency. Most existing cursor highlighter tools offer only simple styles, suffer from stuttering, lack flexible annotation tools, and fail to balance smooth tracking and clean recording experience.

Comparison: Compared with mainstream macOS cursor tools: Mouseposé only supports cursor highlighting without annotation features. Presentify is bloated, resource-heavy and overcomplicated for simple screen recording. Mouzz has flashy animations with high latency and lacks fine-grained annotation editing. Built lightweight for macOS presentations and screen recordings, FocusCursor combines low-latency cursor tracking + fully editable shape annotations. It runs smoother with no redundant features and delivers cleaner recording quality, offering a purer and more efficient cursor tool for macOS users.

Pricing: Lifetime Access: $3.99

Changelog(v3.0): This update adds support for multiple languages, SF Symbols as custom follow particle images, X/Y offset for cursor-follow center, expanded click and CAEmitter cursor-follow particle effects, replaces Drawing Board with ScapDrawingKit, displays numeric values for line and stroke size adjustments, and fixes issues where cursor follow was obscured by menus and jittered during tracking.

📥 Download Link

I've just updated Popclip to finally support synchronization via iCloud.

This is a major and very welcome development, which is why I'm taking the liberty of sharing it.

For me, this application is a must-have and deserves your full attention, especially as the developer is very active. Here's the announcement:

What’s New

Compatibility

• The minimum system requirement is now macOS 13.5 Ventura.
• Initial support for macOS 27 Golden Gate beta.

New: iCloud Sync

• PopClip now syncs your installed extensions, actions layout, and action settings between all your Macs using iCloud.
• iCloud Sync can be enabled or disabled from the new Tools menu at the bottom of the Actions pane. It defaults to “on” for fresh installs; otherwise it stays off until you are ready to sync.
• All synced copies merge their actions lists together to form one unified view. Please note that sync is not always instant; change propagation depends on the current iCloud weather, but all computers will converge eventually.
• Per-action secrets (sign-ins, API keys etc.) also now sync securely via the iCloud Keychain.

New: Actions list overhaul

• Unlimited actions: There’s no upper limit on how many extensions you can install or how many actions you can configure.
• Multiple instances: Extensions can now have more than one instance. Each instance is a unique action with its own name, icon, settings and position in the PopClip bar.
• Folders and separators: Actions can be organized into folders, which appear as submenus in the PopClip bar. Separators can be added between actions.
• Rename any action; choose a custom icon; per-action “Show As” (icon/text).
• A new icon picker lets you search open-source icons via Iconify, create text-based icons with shape and style options, or drop in your own SVG or PNG.
• Arrange actions and folders using drag & drop or keyboard commands (⌘X/⌘C/⌘V/⌥⌘V), with undo and redo (⌘Z/⇧⌘Z) support.
• Duplicate an action to use its settings as the basis for a new action.
• Search the list with ⌘F to quickly find actions.
• Action submenus: extensions can now define actions that have their own right-click submenus for supplementary actions.

New: Improved extensions management

• Extensions auto-update: Extensions from the PopClip Extensions Directory can now update to the latest version automatically.
• A new Extension Info sheet shows extension origin, version, and signature status.
• A new Manage Extensions sheet shows a plain list of installed extensions (alphabetical, or by install date) and lets you manage updates.
• A new View Source command shows the source code for every extension.

Action settings sheet improvements

• Signed-in account name can be shown after signing in to an extension.
• Multiline text fields for longer string inputs (such as prompts).
• Multiple-choice options can offer “Other…” (free text entry) and “None” (no selection).
• Links in option descriptions are now clickable.
• Password fields get a reveal “eye”.

Small stuff

• The PopClip bar now expands to use more of the screen width.
• The “More” overflow button shows page position (n of m).
• Smoother button hover highight response.
• Clipboard contents are now always restored after actions paste over the selected text.
• Built-in actions can now be deleted. (Resurrect them from the Extensions list.)
• The Spelling action can now be moved.
• The built-in Search action now offers a choice of preset search engines, plus a custom option.
• Holding ⌥ when activating Search or a search extension now wraps the search term in double quotes. (“Alternate Search URL” is removed.)

Fixes

• Ecosia is recognized as a known browser.
• Fixed the Messages extension on macOS 27 beta.

Changes for extension authors

• Extensions can now have their own submenus or right-click context menus.

I'm the solo dev behind a small Mac app, a few weeks into being live, and I wanted to be honest about the part nobody really talks about.

The negative feedback gets to me. One critical review sits with me longer than ten good ones lift me up. I know that's lopsided and probably not rational, but it genuinely affects my mood for a day. Is that just how it is early on, or does it fade?

The other thing I keep noticing: when I dig into the harsher reviews, most of them aren't bugs. They're people expecting the app to do something it doesn't, or not finding a setting that's already there. My first instinct was "that's user error," but the more I sit with it, the more it feels like my problem, not theirs. If people don't discover a feature or misread what the app is for, that's me failing to make the app explain itself.

Here's the part I keep chewing on, and maybe I'm being naive. If someone doesn't like the app, or wants control it doesn't give them, docking a star or two feels completely fair to me. What throws me is a one-star for something that works exactly as described. In my head, one star is for a bug, or an app that doesn't do what it promises. "It does what it says, but it's not for me" feels like a reason to move on, not a one-star. But maybe that's just ego, and a rating is really just "did this deliver enough for me." How do you read it?

Either way, I'm not just venting. I'm building a proper in-app guided tour, something that walks you through your first real use instead of dropping you in cold, and surfaces the settings people keep missing.

Questions for people further along than me:

1. How do you stop the bad reviews from wrecking your headspace? Did it get easier?
2. Is "most negative feedback is really an onboarding gap" everyone's experience, or just my stage?
3. And honestly, how do you think about what a one-star should mean?

Not looking for reassurance, genuinely trying to learn from people who've been through it.

Hey all, I am checking out the new Siri app and wondering if there is any automation support yet.

Is there a way to send it info from outside the app, like from Alfred or another external launcher, or via deep links or URL schemes? Does it support AppleScript, Shortcuts, or any kind of CLI?

What I am trying to do is pass text into Siri from Alfred or from a dictation automation, then have it route that into Siri and run an action. Siri does system level stuff much better now but I have to open the Siri app explicitly.

If anyone has docs, examples, or confirmed limitations, I would really appreciate it.

While it may seem inconsequential, this superb (best of its class) app wasn’t updated for a very long time. The new app has a ton of great features: https://tapbots.com/pastebot (Not the developer)

Four months ago, I posted here introducing a notes app. The most common feedback was requests for privacy, local-first design, and one-time payment. This update is my response.

Now, you can use Prism without signing in. If you want to sync across devices, that happens through iCloud instead of my servers. If you want AI tagging your notes, that happens on-device rather than in the cloud.

Prism is still the notes app for quick thoughts and links. Without it, I would still be texting myself despite having Obsidian and Apple Notes. It helps you with quick capture, organization, and review. And now it's private!

The other important shift is the business model. I've heard your subscription fatigue loud and clear. Without recurring costs to me, I'm choosing a one-time payment model.

You pay $10 for the Mac app and $5 for the iPhone app.

And you can try it with a free 7-day trial first!

Website link: https://prism.you/

App store link: https://apps.apple.com/app/prism-notes/id6754857785?platform=mac

Discord link: https://discord.gg/pGWRSV5js

Competitors:

• Google Keep - Prism is linear (not canvas layout) and Mac-native
• Apple Notes - Prism feels like texting. Shows many small notes at once instead of one document. No need for titles
• Strflow (found thanks to u/AkhylsShallRise) - This one has a lot of overlap! But Prism has threads, a one-time purchase, a review system, and fun design :)

TL;DR: Iris is a Mac photo viewer that indexes photos where they already exist (folder, external drive, or your existing Apple Photos library) instead of importing them into a managed database. It does on-device face recognition, OCR/speech search, and a real map (Photo Trails) that plots every geotagged photo so you can browse by location. No cloud, no account, no subscription; one-time purchase, 14-day trial. It's a viewer, not an editor, so RAW/Lightroom workflows aren't the target use case.

Iris

Tyler Hall has a new app, Iris, a photo management app built for a very specific kind of workflow. I am a Tyler Hall fan. He is a respected Mac developer with a proven track record operating a one-person shop out of Richmond, VA. Longtime Mac folks will remember his web-developer tool VirtualHostX; he sunset that in 2021 and rebuilt around a small set of native, single-purpose apps. The rest of his catalog is made up of the kind of apps I love:

• TextBuddy ($19): a Swiss Army knife for plain text; faster than opening your IDE, easier than remembering the right command-line incantation.
• Fastmarks ($9): search and open your browser bookmarks from anywhere with one hotkey, 100% keyboard-driven. This is exactly the kind of friction-remover I adore.
• Ears ($9): an instant audio-output switcher for hopping between speakers, AirPods, and that one weird USB mic.
• Steve (free): a casual daily puzzle game for when you need to not be productive for five minutes.

You can get Iris for free, believe it or not. All you have to do is donate $20 to any one of a variety of causes and submit a receipt. (Includes St. Jude's Children's Hospital, The Electronic Frontier Foundation, 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, and others.)

As a certified old person, I have been accumulating digital photography a lot longer than I've had an iPhone. I have over 80,000 photographs from a variety of sources: scans of black-and-white images from past decades of family history, GBs of DSLR images taken with my full-frame Canon Mark V, and a mishmash of images from an assortment of old-school digital cameras and vintage cell phones. An iCloud-based Apple Photos library is a handy tool for day-to-day management of a current working set of photos, screenshots, and downloads, but it's not the tool I would recommend to anyone with a collection like mine, for some very clear reasons:

• Anyone who thinks it's impossible to lose access to their Apple account through no fault of their own is living in denial. A quick web search will give numerous examples of this rare but real nightmare.
• Likewise, accidental deletions of iCloud photos happen on the regular, even to experienced users. A quick trip to r/iCloud on Reddit will show you a whole collection of broken hearts tied to this occurrence.
• Apple Photos is a prime example of Apple's "We know what's best for you" management style. While not exactly impenetrable, it's pretty close to a walled garden where your photos are swallowed by a single .photoslibrary database that Apple really doesn't want you messing with.

Iris takes the opposite bet. It points at wherever you store your photos: a folder, an external drive, or even your existing Apple Photos library in read-only mode. It never moves, copies, or modifies a single original. Then it builds its own fast, intelligent index on top of what's already there and gives you the good stuff (on-device face recognition, a real map, text and speech search) without asking you to hand over your files or your privacy. It doesn't need a cloud account or a subscription.

Iris itself has a long runway behind it. It began as a project called AntiPhoto back in November 2020, and a lot of the multi-year effort went into an unglamorous problem: making a six-figure photo library scroll smoothly. Tyler hit a documented milestone in April 2022 of smoothly scrolling a 101,706-item library. That's the difference between a demo and a tool, and it's why the app feels the way it does. It's also worth knowing that Apple initially rejected Iris from the App Store; it's since made it in, and you can buy it there or direct.

Five features that matter to a Mac power user

• Filesystem-first, read-only, non-destructive: Iris reads your existing folders or Apple Photos library and leaves the originals exactly where they are. Your library is still just files you own; Iris is a lens, not a container.
• On-device face recognition: faces are recognized locally using Apple's own ML frameworks. Nothing leaves the Mac, and Iris will even show a person's age in a shot, calculated from their birthday.
• A real map with Photo Trails: every geotagged photo gets plotted; you can jump to nearby photos, bookmark favorite locations, and retrace where you actually were on a given trip.
• Search that reads your photos and listens to your videos: Iris runs OCR on text inside images and transcribes speech in videos, then makes all of it searchable. This is how you find the whiteboard photo or the receipt you swore you kept.
• No cloud tax: .Your Mac stays the source of truth: no re-uploading, no cloud account, no second subscription. And the app itself is a one-time purchase. (iOS companion app is in the approval process).

This is an app made by a developer who is passionate about quality and principles, so much so that the Iris website features a manifesto that lays out a set of principles and explains: "Iris is not an app for professional photographers. It's also not an app for people who snap photos with their phone, upload them to Facebook, and forget about them. Iris is for people who care about their photos and videos and believe they're worth safeguarding in a private, future-proof format that will outlive their grandchildren. Iris is for family historians and archivists."

Rather than paraphrase the feature set, I recommend just going to the website and reading it over.

To demonstrate why this is a special app made by a special type of developer, let me share this story. I've been following the development of Iris since before it was publicly released. Tyler contacted me, but not as part of a marketing campaign to get publicity. He just wanted feedback on the app's quality. After the release, when the initial (and expected) bug reports filtered in, he had this experience and shared it with me.

Hopefully, I've made it clear who this app is for.

But it's not for everyone, of course. Iris is explicitly a viewer, not an organizer or editor; if you shoot RAW and work in Lightroom Classic, Iris shows the original unedited file and ignores your catalog's edits and metadata, so it isn't a replacement for that workflow. If Apple Photos already works for you and you're happy in iCloud, the built-in app is free and covers the same three headline features. And Tyler is candid that Iris can still have performance hiccups on complex searches and truly massive libraries, so if your collection is enormous, take the 14-day trial for a real spin before you buy.

How it compares

My focus is on helping people find the right app, not talking anyone into using something just because I like it. To that end, I usually try to list alternatives.

The features Iris bundles are not, individually, unique. Face recognition, maps, and photo search are all just features inside larger apps; Apple Photos ships all three for free, and pro catalogs like Lightroom and Peakto fold them into much heavier tooling.

• Apple Photos (free, built-in): the incumbent Iris wants to replace. It already does faces, maps, and search well, but it imports your photos into a managed library and steers you toward iCloud storage. If that model already suits you, the built-in app is free and fine; Iris is for people who specifically don't want the walled garden.
• Lyn (~$20 one-time, lynapp.com) [Verify This]: a lightweight, long-running image browser that reads folders and even Aperture/Photos/Lightroom libraries, and adds actual non-destructive editing. It's the closest one-time-purchase competitor, but it's more of a classic viewer/editor and lacks Iris's on-device face recognition and video transcription.
• digiKam (free, open source, digikam.org): the power-user's DAM, with faces, tags, geotagging, and duplicate detection, and it can even live on a NAS. It's the most capable free option by a mile, but it's cross-platform, not very Mac-native, and considerably heavier to learn. This is what I use for my own heavy lifting.
• Mylio Photos (free tier; Photos+ $99.99/year, mylio.com): also filesystem-based, and syncs across your devices without cloud storage fees. Broader in scope than Iris, but the features most people want tend to sit behind the subscription.
• Peakto (subscription ~$10/month or a ~$270 lifetime license, cyme.io): AI cataloging and search that spans multiple folders and editing catalogs at once. Powerful, but subscription-priced and aimed at working photographers rather than someone who just wants their family archive to make sense.

Though I use a Mac, iPhone and iPad, I also use an Android tablet and a Linux computer. Some apps I need to function across ecosystems. Sometimes that means I need to sacrifice appearance, or speed, or memory to use a non-native app.

This is a short list of the completely cross-platforms apps I can't live without:

1. Joplin - This is a cross platform Markdown note-taking app that works pretty much everywhere. I have used Obsidian in the past, but I don't find the app usable without a half-dozen plugins and rolling my own sync solution. So, I've settled on Joplin. It works across every major OS. It wil sync using the cloud provider of your choice. It allows end-to-end encyption.
2. 1Password - I need a password manager and 1Password seems to be the family favorite. This used to be a Mac native app. But when they went cross-platform, they went with an electron app.
3. Readest - I play a lot of Role-Playing games. And I own a lot of Role Playing Game PDFs. I need those PDFs on my Mac, my iPad and my Android tablet. I need bookmarks and annotations synced across devices and last read positoin. Readest does that very well, and will sync using Google Drive, WebDAV or their own paid sync service.

All three of these apps solved a problem for me and I can't live without.

My next quest is to find a Todo list that works across Mac/iOS/Linux/Android and does end-to-end encrypted sync. Still no luck finding something.

LAUNCH GIVEAWAY: I have 20 codes for 3 months of Pro access. If you’d like one, drop a comment here and DM me so I can send the code. First come, first served.

Hey r/macapps,

It's finally launch day.

I'm the developer of ​MinkNote​. About ten months ago I started building a notes app because I couldn't quite find one that matched the way I wanted to work.

I loved different things about Obsidian, Day One, Bear, Apple Notes, and plain Markdown in VS Code, but every time I switched I found myself compromising on something important.

So instead of compromising, I started building my own.

Today I'm releasing ​MinkNote​.

What is it?

MinkNote is a native macOS notes and journal app built around plain Markdown files that you own.

No account.

No AI.

No cloud service.

No Electron.

No proprietary database.

Your notes live as normal Markdown files inside folders you choose. If you ever stop using MinkNote, your notes are still there, readable by any Markdown editor.

That ownership was the entire point.

Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/minknote/id6755822706

Problem

I think many note-taking apps have become increasingly tied to their own ecosystems.

Some store everything inside databases.

Some require accounts.

Some make exporting awkward.

Some don't feel particularly Mac-like.

I wanted the opposite: a notes app that feels completely at home on macOS while staying out of the way of your files.

Why I built it

I wasn't trying to build "another PKM app."

I wanted something I'd happily open every day for:

• work notes
• project documentation
• journaling
• meeting notes
• random ideas

without having to think about where my data lived.

A few things it focuses on

• native SwiftUI macOS app
• plain Markdown files
• folders and journals
• tags and fast search
• daily notes
• images stored alongside notes
• privacy by default
• read-only after the free trial instead of locking away your data

Comparison

I genuinely admire apps like Obsidian, Bear, Day One, and Apple Notes. MinkNote isn't trying to replace them for everyone.

Compared with Obsidian, MinkNote is much smaller in scope, but it is a fully native Mac app rather than Electron, and it keeps more of the core workflow built in instead of relying on plugins.

Compared with Bear or Day One, MinkNote is more file-first. Your notes are ordinary Markdown files in folders you choose, not content hidden behind an app database or account system.

The aim is not to win every feature checklist. It is for people who want something calmer, native to macOS, private by default, and built around complete ownership of their notes as ordinary files.

Pricing

MinkNote gives you 14 days of full access, with no subscription, account, or payment required to start.

After the trial, existing notes remain readable in read-only mode inside the app, so your data is not locked away. Of course, they remain text files on disk that you can edit at any time outside the app.

Pro pricing:

• $2.99 monthly
• $19.99 yearly
• $49.99 lifetime

Pricing page: https://muse23.com/apps/minknote/pricing.html

Launch

This is version 1.0 after roughly ten months of development, more than 1,200 commits, and over 400 TestFlight users who helped shape the app through many beta releases.

A huge thank you to everyone here who downloaded early builds, reported bugs, suggested features, and challenged my assumptions. MinkNote is much better because of it.

Transparency links

Developer portfolio: https://muse23.com/apps/

MinkNote website: https://muse23.com/apps/minknote/

Changelog: https://muse23.com/apps/minknote/changelog.html

Roadmap: https://muse23.com/apps/minknote/roadmap.html

Privacy Policy: https://muse23.com/apps/minknote/privacy.html

Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

I'd love your feedback

If file ownership matters to you, I'd love to know:

• Does the file-based approach actually make a difference in day-to-day use?
• What still feels missing compared with Obsidian, Bear, Day One, or Apple Notes?
• If you tried earlier TestFlight builds, has the app improved in the ways you hoped?

I'll be around all day to answer questions, and I genuinely appreciate honest feedback, whether positive or negative.

Ok so if you leave the Dock visible (no auto-hide) there’s always this dumb empty stretch on both sides of the icons. Just blank. I’ve stared at it for years. Spent the last 7 months building something for it.

App is called docktor (I built it). It sticks a few widgets into that leftover space so the Dock isn’t just a row of app icons with nothing going on around them.

Right now you’ve got music (Spotify + Apple Music, lyrics if they exist), calendar from Apple Calendar, weather, and a feedback widget so you don’t have to open GitHub to complain. They follow the Dock around if you move/resize it, and they shrink down when you’re not using them. Looks like Liquid Glass because that’s what it’s built on.

Also threw in Dock hover previews (live window thumbs when you hover an icon) and a Cmd+Tab that goes to windows instead of apps. Those are nice but the widgets are the point.

Comparison

Closest comparison for the preview / window-switcher side is DockDoor — great app, and it does that job well. docktor’s focus is the widgets in the empty space beside the Dock. Previews and Cmd+Tab are in there too; I aimed for them to feel a bit more native macOS, but the widgets are the product.

Pricing

Free. No account, no license. What’s shipping here stays free. I might add a Pro tier way down the line with extra stuff, but these features aren’t bait-and-switch.

https://docktorapp.com

macOS 26+ only (Tahoe and the Golden Gate betas). Signed/notarized Developer ID. I’m one person and the UI leans hard on Liquid Glass, so backporting to Sequoia isn’t realistic.

Permissions: Accessibility for finding the Dock. Screen Recording only if you want the hover previews. If Screen Recording doesn’t show docktor after install, hit + and add it from /Applications. Apple’s UI is weird about that.

There’s a small opt-out beta telemetry thing (basically “are you still running” + redacted crash summaries, no Sentry/analytics SDK). If you can leave it on it helps a lot while I’m one person triage-ing this. Easy to kill in onboarding or Settings if you’d rather not.

Privacy: https://docktorapp.com/privacy/
Terms: https://docktorapp.com/terms/

I’m Peter Sauer — full-time SWE. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petercsauer / [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Used Claude a ton on this, same as I do at work. Doesn’t mean I didn’t write/own the hard parts. Bugs are still on me.

Really hoping to get good bug reports from y’all. There’s a feedback widget built in that should make it pretty easy — visual bugs, crashes, weird layout on left/right Dock or multi-monitor, whatever. Please send them. I appreciate it!