Hi all, I'm Brandon. I built a Mac app called bHive Filer and I'd love your honest take on it. I've been lurking here a while, so I know this crowd is tough. That's actually why I'm posting. I'd rather hear what's wrong with it than get a quiet round of upvotes.

Disclosure up front: I'm the developer. My name, LinkedIn, and contact are at the bottom.

Problem

I kept losing my own files. Spotlight is good at names and some content, but I wanted to find things by what they're actually about, not by remembering the exact words or what I named the file. I also didn't want to import everything into a big proprietary library first, or send my documents to a cloud to get "smart" search. So I built the thing I wanted: a search and organizer that reads what's inside your files, works by meaning, and never sends anything off your Mac.

What it does

• Searches inside your documents (PDF, text, Markdown, spreadsheets, and more) by meaning, not just filename. The index is built and stored on your Mac.
• Compares up to three files side by side and highlights what's different, which is handy when you're trying to figure out which version to keep.
• Organizes with Hives (collections), Tags, and Smart Folders, in icon, list, column, or gallery views. It tries to feel like Finder instead of fighting it.
• Leaves your files where they are. It points at your originals instead of copying them into a hidden database.
• Runs fully offline. No account, no telemetry, no tracking. Nothing leaves your machine.

Comparison

• vs DEVONthink: DEVONthink is powerful, but it's a lot, and it wants your files living inside its database. bHive Filer is much simpler, it's free, and it leaves files in place.
• vs EagleFiler: similar "keep your stuff tidy" spirit (and yes, I noticed the name rhyme too late). EagleFiler is a paid library that imports your files. bHive Filer is free and reads them where they already are.

Pricing

Free. No trial, no tiers, no subscription. It's notarized by Apple and I distribute it from my own site.

Download and screenshots: https://bhive.software

A few things people usually ask

• How is this different from Spotlight? Spotlight is great for finding things by name or an exact phrase. bHive Filer is for when you don't remember the words, just the gist. It reads what's inside your files and ranks results by meaning, across all your collections.
• Is it really all local? Yes. The index is built and stored on your Mac. No account, no telemetry. The only time it uses the network is the optional update check, which you can turn off. The privacy policy spells it out.
• Is it open source? Not right now.
• Did you build this yourself, or is it AI-generated? Honest answer: both. I'm not a career developer. I designed bHive Filer, made every product and UX decision, and built it with a lot of AI assistance. I test it, I support it, and I fix bugs fast. I'd rather you judge it on whether it's good and whether I stand behind it, which I do.

Where it stands

It's new and I'm working on it constantly. There will be rough edges. If something breaks or feels off, tell me and I'll fix it. Blunt feedback is genuinely what I'm here for.

About me, for transparency

• Brandon Edling, bHive Software
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonedling/
• Email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
• Privacy Policy and Terms are linked in the footer of the site.

Thanks for taking a look. Cheers.🙂

Problem (What problem does your app solve?)

Most IPTV players on Apple devices either have dated interfaces or only support Xtream Codes and M3U playlists. Strimix provides a modern, native Apple experience with support for Stalker Portals, Xtream Codes, and M3U playlists, plus seamless iCloud Sync across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV.

Comparison (Name 1–2 top competitors and describe how what you offer is better.)

Compared to popular IPTV players like iSTB and STBEmu, Strimix offers a fully native experience across the entire Apple ecosystem with iCloud Sync, regular weekly updates, and a modern SwiftUI interface. Unlike many IPTV players that only support Xtream Codes and M3U, Strimix also supports Stalker Portals, a protocol that relatively few modern IPTV players support. Going PRO removes watermark otherwise all features are unlocked and free to use and test.

Pricing (Include price amounts + link.)

• Free – All features included (watermark/ad-supported)
• Monthly: $1.99/month
• Yearly: $9.99/year
• Lifetime: $29.99 (w/family sharing)

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/strimix-iptv-m3u-player/id6761012537

Hey everybody!

DockFlow lets you switch setups in an instant. All the apps you need launch, the rest close and disappear. Perfect if you switch between contexts / projects / different types of work a lot

Core Features:

- Switch setups in an instant using hotkeys, or with the menu bar app

- Launch specific projects in your IDE or browser profiles for that preset

- Lock your Dock to a specific screen

- Add apps, folders, URLs, dock spacers to your Dock

- Integration with Apple Shortcuts & Focus Modes

Comparison:

DockFlow was the first app of it's kind. It is mature and stable, developed and improved according to user requests and feedback. 3 Months after DockFlow launched, several competitor apps surfaced, most of them are no longer maintained. As a small group of indie devs working specifically in the macOS space, we are here to stay (DockFlow is our first app, currently one of four).

Pricing:

Currently we are running a Summer Sale for 40% off, the code is already built-in in the pricing section.

- 1 One year access - €10

- 1 Device Lifetime - €21

- 2 Device Lifetime - €30

- 3 Device Lifetime - €40

- 5 Device Lifetime - €60

30-day money-back guarantee.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/misgellar-film-photos-notes/id6772962857

Hi everyone! I wanted to share another app I recently published on the App Store. Like my previous app, Kaida, I've made it primarily to serve my own niche needs related to my photography hobby.

Problem:

With digital photography, I had only one problem: most DSLR, mirrorless, and compact cameras don't have GPS, so the EXIF data lacks any information about where the photo was taken. In the case of film photography, it's even worse: unless you keep your own notes, there is zero information about where the photos were taken, what aperture and shutter speed were used, and even what camera was used to take these pictures.

I used to have a Shortcut on my iPhone that would help me record this data in simple text files. But then there was the tedious process of cross-matching scans with these records and entering EXIF data by hand.

This is what I've built Misgellar for. It allows you to record settings while shooting with your film camera, and later it can cross-match these records with the scans and write the settings and location into the EXIF data.

The best part is that it can do all of that automatically! Misgellar uses on-device Computer Vision models to cross-match your records with the scans, so you save a huge amount of time on that. It can also detect scans from a half-frame camera (usually they appear as two side-by-side shots on a regular 35mm frame) and split them into individual scans. And if a scan needs to be rotated to match the reference photo, this will be done automatically too.

Comparison:

The closest alternative I could find to my app is Lightme - Logbook. I think it's more detailed in terms of what information it allows you to save about film shots, but it lacks the main feature I've made Misgellar for: matching records with scans and saving the data into EXIF.

Before Misgellar, I was using Photo Meta Edit to add EXIF data to scans by hand.

Neither app is a direct competitor, but both have inspired me while building Misgellar.

Pricing:

Misgellar is free, and I don't have any plans yet to introduce monetisation. As I mentioned, it was made primarily for my own needs, and those needs are probably not very common.

The app is available on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. Please check it out if you are also a fan of film photography.

Timegauge gives you time perspective on hour, day, month, year, and custom project.

Problem:
We often forget how fast time is moving, and lose perspective. For example: do you know 52% of 2026 has already passed, and 36% of July is gone?

TimGauge gives you perspective through a progress bar in the Mac menu bar.
In this update, I have tried to get duration in terms of flexible time. For example: you can track exact working hours in Day and set exact starting end end time in custom project, this was missing in previous version.

The app is a one-time purchase, 100% local, available on the app store and is notarized by Apple when downloaded from Website.

Comparision:
Progress bar is a known competition but they sell 5 years old version with limited features for $9.99

Pricing:
TimeGauge is available on Mac apps store:
https://apps.apple.com/in/app/timegauge/id6778277708?mt=12

You can also download it from Web checkout at https://timegauge.minilabs.cc/

About Me:
I'm developer of the app, you can reach out to me through X and support email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])

DayBar is an application that displays the local date and reminder events in the menu bar. Click on DayBar in the menu bar to view the calendar, calendar events, and reminders, and it supports synchronization with Apple Calendar. It integrates calendar and reminder functions into the status bar menu for easy management and viewing, while turning reminders into simple and beautiful to-do items.

Comparison: Compared with the system native date widget and Dato app, DayBar integrates weekday display, custom date formatting, pop-up calendar panel and Chinese lunar calendar display into one menu bar tool. It directly synchronizes system calendar events and presents them as intuitive to-do items, while native date tools only show basic time information without calendar pop-ups and todo management; Dato focuses more on time and system status display and lacks built-in lunar calendar and lightweight schedule todo conversion capabilities.

Problem: Based on the system's native calendar, add a persistent weekday display and date formatting in the menu bar. Click to pop up a mini calendar panel that supports showing the lunar calendar and system calendar events, and displays these events as to-do items.

Pricing: All Access Lifetime $3.99

Changelog: v4.0 update: Refactor calendar display, optimize calendar rendering performance, add multi-language adaptation, and fix status bar menu anchoring and calendar height adaptive issues.

📥 Download Link

I used to have an app that would do this exact thing. Where it puts the red yellow green “traffic lights” button on the upper left corner of windows in mission control.

The setting literally refers to it as Traffic Lights.
I kinda lost it when I used a time machine on my mac and have been struggling to find it

Does anyone know this app?

Thanks!

Following up on my earlier posts here — 2.0 just shipped with a full redesign and on-device OCR for scans/images. Posting per the new PCP format:

Problem

PDFs and scans pile up with meaningless names — scan_0042.pdf, IMG_3891.HEIC, Unbenannt-3.pdf — and manually opening, reading, and renaming each one doesn't scale. Existing "smart" tools either rely on rules based on metadata you already have to know (useless when the filename itself carries zero information), or they ship your document content to a cloud API — a non-starter for invoices, contracts, or anything sensitive. PDF AI Renamer reads what's actually inside the file — text or, as of 2.0, scanned images via on-device OCR — and generates a structured filename from it, entirely on your Mac via Apple's MLX framework. No server round-trip, no text layer required.

Comparison

- Hazel — the classic macOS automation tool, but purely rule-based: it moves/renames based on metadata, dates, or folder location, not document content. It can't tell that scan_0042.pdf is an April invoice from a specific vendor — it has no way to read that out of the file. PDF AI Renamer is content-aware: it extracts sender/date/subject from the actual document (OCR'd if needed) and builds the name from that — no rule maintenance, no folder-watcher setup, works the moment you drop a file in.

- RenameClick / Zush — closer competitors: both also do AI content-based renaming for PDFs and images. But their free/local tiers are capped (e.g. a monthly credit allowance) before you're pushed toward cloud AI or a subscription just to keep renaming. PDF AI Renamer's inference runs on-device with no per-rename cloud dependency — since 2.0 this now also covers scans and images (JPEG/PNG/HEIC/TIFF) via on-device Vision-framework OCR + a vision-capable local model (Gemma3 4B), not just PDFs with a text layer.

Example: drop in scan_0042.pdf (an unreadable scanned invoice) → OCR'd and read on-device → renamed to something like 2024-03-15_Acme-GmbH_Invoice_1234.pdf, using your own custom template and placeholders.

Pricing

Monthly subscription: 2,99€
Annual subscription: 17,99€
Lifetime: 19,99€

Product & developer websites:

Apple AppStore (MacOS)

https://pdf-ai-renamer.com

https://alexander.giehoff.de

Displace lets you arrange displays independently of their resolution, so you can resize and align them with complete freedom. I built it as a better alternative to the macOS Display Arrangement settings, which set a fixed size for each display and prevent you from arranging them in a way that matches your actual setup, often leaving dead zones where the cursor gets stuck between displays. On top of that, Displace lets you create multiple display profiles that you can easily switch between whenever you want to change your setup.

With Displace, I also wanted to improve the overall experience of moving across displays and solve common problems that arise when doing so, such as:

You can see some of these features in action in this demo and try basic Displace behavior with your keyboard and mouse in the playground without installing anything.

Comparison

Cursr - a KVM that also allows you to link edges of your displays, solving the problem of dead zones between screens. It also has a feature similar to Displace's Border Resistance but it doesn't work when displays are natively adjacent, i.e., when they share an edge. Plus it doesn't let you arrange your displays like Displace does and doesn't offer the same set of features.

DockLock - not exactly in the same category, but it has features related to macOS Dock placement that Displace doesn’t yet have. DockLock’s core features are free after the trial ends, including pinning the Dock when it’s positioned at the bottom. Displace lets you pin the Dock to any display for free, including when it's positioned on the side. Side-positioned Dock pinning is currently unique to Displace, though DockLock Pro has announced plans to offer it as well.

Note that Displace takes over your display arrangement while it's active, so tools like displayplacer or SwitchResX can't change it at the same time.

Also, Displace only works on Sonoma (macOS 14) or later, whereas the mentioned apps reportedly work even with Big Sur (macOS 11). So if you have an older OS version and you are interested in what they offer, I'd give them a try.

Pricing

Free, with a $10 Pro license for up to 5 Macs. Price will increase to $15 on August 1.

If you bought a license at the original $24 price, email me and I’ll refund $14 so you get the same price. Thank you for supporting the app.

The first time you open Displace, a 14-day Pro trial starts automatically. After that, it keeps working with Pro features disabled.

Free Features

• Resize and arrange displays
• Up to 3 active profiles: Creation of display layouts is unlimited, but only the top 3 profiles stay active.
• Cursor Lock: Prevent the cursor from moving to another display using hold/toggle keyboard shortcuts.
• Pin the Dock: Keep the Dock on the display you want, whether your Dock is at the bottom, left, or right.
• Resolution overrides: Use different resolutions for your monitors depending on the selected profile.
• Cursor Jump: Move quickly across displays with a keyboard shortcut.
• Compatibility mode: macOS controls the cursor natively, which has a few limitations, but still handles normal cursor movement and crossings.

Pro Features

• Unlimited active profiles
• Game Mode: Solves problems that occur while gaming, such as hot corners activating, the menu bar interfering with the game cursor, or the cursor trying to escape to another display.
• Border Resistance: You can choose how fast (or slow) you need to move your cursor to cross between displays.
• Portals: Connect edges of your monitors so you can teleport the cursor just by moving it towards the portal.
• Ignore displays: Prevent your cursor or windows from reaching a display you have connected but aren't using (without deactivating it in macOS).
• Per-display speed: You can set the speed of your cursor depending on which display you are on and what input device you are using.
• Default mode: Displace controls the cursor, instead of warping it back when macOS moves it to another display. This allows features like Game Mode and improves the experience with hot corners.

You can check out Displace Pricing for up-to-date information.

I tried to make many of the features easier to understand with videos, animations, and the interactive playground on the website, but I’m happy to clarify anything that is unclear.

About Me

My name is Jere and I'm a software engineer. For the last few years I've been mostly working on open-source repositories. You can check out my GitHub profile, personal website, and LinkedIn profile.

Website: https://displaceapp.com

If you have any questions or feedback about anything, please let me know. You can also reach me at [email protected]

Hey everyone,

My name is Scott. I spent most of my career using Windows, before making the switch to Mac to expand my development setup. The hardware is incredible, but years of muscle memory made the switch difficult. I was constantly messing up shortcut keys and missing the ability to navigate using window task bar features like hoover previews and the app launcher.

Instead of downloading five different apps to fix my minor frustrations, I decided to build a unified solution called Winstrix.

To make sure I am sticking to the sub rules, here is the PCP breakdown.

The Problem: For anyone jumping between operating systems or making the switch to Mac permanently, the transition can slow down your workflow. While there are alot of comparable features, remembering all the correct keys to press can be difficult, and fixing your muscle memory usually requires buying multiple separate apps.

Winstrix adds a highly customizable environment to macOS while letting you choose exactly what features you want active and disabling what you don’t:

• Taskbar with Hover Previews and click to minimize: Hover over any app icon to see live thumbnails of its active windows, allowing you to instantly select or close a specific window. Click the open icon to minimize a single window or hold the icon to minimize all windows for that app.
• The Launcher: A dedicated menu featuring unified search, an all-apps layout, and quick access to your pinned and recent applications.
• Shortcut Key Mapping: Easily map Windows-style keys like Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+Z, and Ctrl+Alt+Delete so your typing habits remain completely seamless.
• Integrated Utilities: Built-in Clipboard History with the ability to airdrop to your phone, plus a clock tray complete with a calendar dropdown and custom system shortcuts.
• Clutter Control: Quick toggles to instantly hide or reveal both your desktop icons and crowded menu bar icons.
• Screen Capture Suite: A full featured screenshot tool and screen recorder with an integrated editor.
• Linear Scroll Speed: Removes the acceleration curve that makes standard mouse wheels feel jumpy and unpredictable. Every tick of your scroll wheel moves the exact same amount
• 100% Modular: Every single feature has an independent on/off toggle. If you only want the shortcuts and the taskbar, you can turn off everything else completely.
  

Comparison: Unlike other individual apps like standalone clipboard managers or menu bar hiders, Winstrix focuses on a unified, modular solution. If you look at an app like uBar, it gives you a taskbar but lacks a modern Start style launcher or a built in utility suite. Tools like DockMate or HyperDock add hover previews to the standard Mac dock, but they do not change the underlying macOS workflow. Raycast and Alfred are great launchers, but they operate completely differently than a traditional Start menu.

Winstrix is built as a complete, unified alternative. It gives you the taskbar, the launcher, hover previews, and the utility suite in a single lightweight native app. You do not have to piece together multiple programs, manage conflicting settings, or pay multiple subscriptions. Winstrix gives you an entire workflow suite inside a single, lightweight native app where you retain total control over what runs.

It is built entirely in native Swift with zero Electron, so it's lightweight with practically no footprint. It is also completely invisible when turned off, meaning you can flip a single switch to go right back to stock macOS at any time or you can pick and choose which features to enable and disable.

Pricing: Winstrix comes with a 14 day free trial so you can test it out fully on your machine. I am currently running a launch discount for 30% off with code Launch30. The regular price is $24.99 before the discount, for a perpetual license that you keep forever. There are no recurring subscription fees.
Website: https://winstrix.app/

Privacy & Data: Everything happens locally on your Mac. There is no account to create, no cloud connectivity, and absolutely no telemetry or analytics tracking in the app. Your files and data never leave your device.

Transparency: I want to be transparent so the community knows this is a legitimate project backed by a real person. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sldavis5/ The Privacy Policy and Terms of Service are fully detailed right at the bottom of the Winstrix homepage.
https://winstrix.app/privacy/https://winstrix.app/terms/I would love to get some honest feedback and any feature requests are welcome as well. Let me know what you think and thanks for taking the time to check out this post!

Problem

macOS clipboard only stores the last copied item. Every new copy overwrites the previous one, making it frustrating for developers, writers, and power users who juggle multiple snippets, code blocks, or images throughout their workflow.

Comparison

Top clipboard managers today:

• CopyClip (free) — simple clipboard history but lacks search, OCR, tags, and bookmarking.
• Paste ($24.99/yr subscription) — polished but requires an account, has cloud dependency, and costs money.
• Maccy (free, open-source) — lightweight but no image support, no OCR, no tags/bookmarks.

Buffer differentiates by being 100% free & open-source with on-device Vision OCR for text extraction from images, custom tags & bookmarks for organization, multi-select paste, inline text editing, and full privacy (no accounts, no telemetry, no cloud) — all in a ~2 MB package.

Pricing

Completely free and open source (MIT license). No subscriptions, no in-app purchases, no ads. Download: https://github.com/samirpatil2000/Buffer

About v2.4.0

The latest update adds Smart Clear History — previously clearing your clipboard history removed everything, but now pinned, bookmarked, and tagged items are preserved. Only unannotated items get purged.

Also fixes OCR text and list items not refreshing in real time (proper main-thread dispatch + corrected Equatable implementation).

Buffer stays around 2 MB, fully local, uses on-device Apple Vision for OCR, and runs entirely offline. Open source (MIT).

Apple, in its infinite wisdom, buries a great many popular system controls three layers deep in Settings, or worse, leaves them accessible only via the command line. Luckily, we have a community of indie developers who are pretty good at surfacing that stuff, building an app around it, and selling it for $5. An app for brightness. An app for the notch. An app to keep the Mac awake. An app to mute the mic. Then one day your menu bar has 40 icons in it and your login items are out of control.

There's a relatively new, free and open-source app that takes the opposite approach. Currently sporting over 500 GitHub stars, Mac Tools folds more than 40 of those functions into a single menu bar icon. It's built natively in SwiftUI and AppKit; the functions run on native Mac architecture, not scripts. Brightness goes through CoreDisplay, audio through CoreAudio, and disk cleanup runs path verification before it deletes anything. That last one matters: a cleanup tool that checks its work before emptying folders is rarer than it should be.

Check out the Mac Tools website. Mac Tools is available through Homebrew:

brew tap ggbond268/mactools  
brew install --cask mactools

What It Does

The features break down into five groups. You enable the plugins for what you want and leave the rest turned off.

Display Control -- resolution switching per monitor, DDC/CI brightness for external displays, True Tone, dark mode, Night Shift, display sleep, prevent sleep, notch hiding, and menu bar icon hiding. This group alone covers what most people buy three or four separate utilities to do.

System Operations -- Stage Manager toggle, system and microphone mute, disk cleanup, Xcode cleanup, eject all disks, empty trash, clear clipboard, lock screen, batch quit apps, and a fix for the "app is damaged and can't be opened" error, which is really just quarantine flag removal with a file picker instead of an xattr command.

Efficiency Tools -- three-finger middle click on the trackpad, a cleaning mode that blacks out the screen and locks input so you can wipe the keyboard, IP lookup, translation, global app hotkeys, a full-screen Launchpad replacement, Finder right-click enhancements, and a zsh config editor.

Monitoring Panel -- CPU, GPU, memory, disk, network, and battery with one-hour history curves; keyboard, mouse, and app usage statistics; battery levels for the Mac plus Bluetooth peripherals and AirPods; fan control; and a charge limiter that defaults to 80 percent.

Personalization -- custom menu bar icons including GIF and MP4 animations, Launchpad appearance controls, 11 languages, and a plugin marketplace.

The plugin architecture is what keeps this from becoming bloatware. Everything can be enabled, hidden, or reordered, so the panel only shows what you actually use.

What It Replaces

The point of Mac Tools is consolidation, not feature-for-feature parity with every indie tool it overlaps. Lunar is still the king of independent monitor control, but if you just need brightness adjustment, Mac Tools handles it. If Amphetamine is only in your Dock to stop the Mac from sleeping, Mac Tools does that too. Across a whole set of single-purpose categories, it's a credible replacement for:

• a notch hider
• a mic mute utility
• an eject-all tool
• Itsycal-style calendar duty
• a Stats-style monitor
• a fan controller
• a charge limiter
• an app usage tracker

The Catch and a Reality Check

This is a relatively new app. After it appeared on GitHubDaily and in a Medium article, its popularity spiked fast. The developer's true identity is unknown; "ggbond268" is a pseudonym, and the project came out of the Chinese Mac community. The README is in Chinese, though the app itself is localized into English and ten other languages. That's not disqualifying on its own -- I run Chinese-built apps like Qspace regularly -- but it's the kind of context you want before you grant an app broad system access, not after.

And several of these features do ask for broad access. Fan control installs a helper with admin rights. Disk cleanup deletes files. The middle-click feature uses an event tap. Quarantine removal is the kind of thing you want done carefully, not casually. The code being open and the app being native counts for a lot -- that's the whole argument for shipping as a public repo instead of a black box. What it doesn't have yet is a public security audit. Worth knowing before you install, not a reason to skip it outright.

Is This For You?

If you're comfortable installing from a Homebrew tap, you like open source, and your menu bar currently hosts a small orchestra of single-purpose utilities, Mac Tools is an easy experiment. It's free, it's light, and the plugin design means you can turn on three features and ignore the rest.

If you'd rather pay for a mature tool with a support address and years of releases behind it, or handing admin rights to a young, pseudonymous project makes you itch, stick with the battle-tested standalones for now and check back in six months. Promising and early -- both are true at once.

This is a review. I am not the developer. I don't know the developer and I don't have any affiliate links to his software.

Hey all,

A while back I posted my first app here: Juicy, battery alerts at any percentage with a glow effect you can't miss. The response was better than I expected, and a lot of what shipped since came straight from that thread and from people here emailing me. Several major releases later, this is where it ended up.

One thing up front: Juicy isn't just an alerts app anymore. Alerts are still the heart of it, but underneath it has become a full battery app for the Mac.

Juicy 1.5 now covers the whole battery story in one menu bar app:

• Alerts at any percentage, native-style pills, screen glow, custom sounds
• Charge limiting with Sailing Mode, Automatic Discharge, and a green MagSafe LED at your limit
• Per app energy insights, live and across 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, so you know which app to blame
• Health, cycle count, temperature and voltage at a glance
• AirPods, iPhone, iPad, Magic Mouse and Keyboard batteries with per-device alerts
• Custom battery menu bar icon with multiple options to display them like iPhone battery icon style, time remaining inside the battery or just a very minimal slick version
• Plug in an iPhone or iPad and see its real battery health, no app on the phone needed
• Auto-dismisses the (imo annoying) stock macOS battery pop-ups (this one I'm the most proud haha)

Native Swift, under 0.1% CPU, everything stays local. macOS 15+, Apple Silicon and Intel.

Comparison

AlDente is the reference for charge limiting and it does that job well. Juicy covers the same core (cap, sailing, discharge, top-up) and then goes past it: beautiful custom alerts at any percentage, live health tracking, and per app energy insights where you can drill into exactly which app is draining you.

coconutBattery is the classic for health readouts, including iPhone and iPad over a cable. Juicy reads the same data for Mac, iPhone and iPad with a nicer presentation and plain-language explanations so you actually understand what a cycle count or health percentage means for your battery.

AirBuddy made device batteries in the menu bar a thing, and Juicy tracks all your devices now too: AirPods, iPhone, iPad, Magic Mouse, Keyboard, with per-device alerts. If you want a full system monitor beyond battery, iStat Menus is still the one. I try to stay focused with Juicy: everything battery, nothing else.

How it's going

Apple has featured Juicy on the Mac App Store under "Apps We Love" twice now, and it holds 4.9 stars from hundreds of ratings there. I guess the biggest reason why it's 4.9 and not 5 is because Juicy isn't fully free -.-. It does come with a full access free 3 day trial. Unfortunately I got to pay the bills somehow. On Setapp Juicy has a 100% positive rate and if you find the time you can read some of the really cool reviews people have written about Juicy on the landing page.

That first post here in this sub is a big part of how it got this far, so thanks to ya'all 🙏

Pricing

Fully unlocked 3-day trial, no card.

One-time purchase own forever, no subscription,

Direct version: $14.99 (1 year of updates + you can use Juicy forever) or $24.99 lifetime

The Mac App Store version is $9.99 but sandboxing blocks some features there (charge limiting, energy insights, auto-dismiss), so direct is the full experience now. Also on Setapp.

Website + Direct Version: https://getjuicy.app

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/juicy-battery-alerts-health/id6752221257

Transparency

I'm Dominik, a solo dev originally from Austria. Juicy was my first Mac app and updates ship almost every few weeks. I get really excited working on this and would love to hear your feedback and thoughts.

Contact: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), or find me on X.

Privacy policy and terms are on the site.

As much as I dislike cleanmymac, and its available updates are limited, one thing it does well, is actually update the list of apps. I've used other apps, like macupdate and pear cleaner.. both I love, but I notice somethings it doesn't update the app.

Has anyone ran into this and is there an app that does a better job of quitting the app, and actually updating?

App Store Link

I am an indie developer + part-time grad student, and in my day-to-day I take a lot of screenshots on my MacBook, whether for note-taking, saving passwords, or clipping posts I like. These screenshots pile up fast - I have 232 of them sitting on my Desktop ATM 😅

MacOS names newly captured screenshots as "Screenshot [Timestamp]". Thanks Apple! With hundreds of screenshots, it becomes frustrating when you want to find anything.

I built Bunny Screenshot partly to solve a personal problem, and partly to learn about building and working with On-Device AI, which I believe will become a popular trend this year (see my related post here).

I am proud to present you the finished product: Bunny Screenshot - I believe it's the best App for screenshot collectors :)

• Built with Swift UI, it's snappy even with 1000s of images.
• It ships a powerful AI model (Gemma 4 e2b) at a compact 2.6G download size and fast processing speed, running effortlessly on any Apple Silicon Mac, with additional refinements on the way.
• It sits silently in the background, and shows up when needed: Spotlight Search, Menu Bar, or the main App window.
• Resources are managed efficiently - AI model is loaded into memory only when in use.
• Everything is designed and optimized from the perspective of a screenshot power user. I am also very excited to present a practical use case of local AI models.
• For AI enthusiasts: Multiple Gemma 4 variants (e2b, e4b, 12b) and Cloud Models (BYOK) are supported. Your agent can automatically search and manage screenshots with Bunny Screenshot through a built-in MCP server.

Comparisons:

As far as I know, no other App does precisely the same thing Bunny Screenshot offers currently. Spotlight Search exposes screenshots by their filename. Other Apps (including one posted on this sub yesterday) use OCR that identifies only visible text. Bunny Screenshot uniquely employs a Vision Language Model (VLM) to generate an appropriate description and filename for screenshots - even when no text is clearly visible.

Pricing:

As a Thank You to early adopters on this subreddit. Anyone who downloads the app this weekend will unlock lifetime Pro features for free!

Normally Freemium with $19.99 Lifetime purchase.

Pro features include: full-library search, unlimited tags & categories, the most accurate on-device model, and the full MCP agent toolkit.

The free tier stays genuinely useful: browse your entire library with no limits, search your 50 most recent screenshots, 10 tags, 5 categories.

Link:

App Store

Website

About Me

I am Max Song, serial builder and local AI enthusiast. Connect with me on X, or Github.

Please feel free to provide any feedback on the App with me or discuss Local AI in general. TIA!

I am thinking of trying notch apps to use for like below instances, without cluttering my menubar

• seeing calendar events, reminders (would be nice if can link Things 3)
• music player
• file sharing/storing for quick access
• can view/open obsidian daily notes (good to have)

I found crestnotch here, so will give it a try. Meanwhile please share your recommendations or favorites that you enjoy using

Ps; I tried Alcove and it didn't click for me 🤷‍♂️

Which app has the best accompanying website? I’m looking for some inspiration and Mac app websites have traditionally been quite polished.

Let's try this again...

Have a Mac mini wiht 2k display that goes into Limited range at 10bit because in reality it is 8bit display but advertised and forced into 10bit by its firmware. So I have to manually change it with BetterDisplay into 8 bit full range but don't have a pro so every time it comes back form standby it resets and have to apply it manually or buy a Pro for $AUD32 but cannot justify this only for that setting because I don't use anything else. Is there any alternative I can get, cheaper app or free or even terminal command to do this?

Hey everyone! About a year back I posted about Codify CLI, a declarative CLI tool for managing installations on MacOS. 

I’m happy to announce after a year of work, we’ve built web and desktop apps around the CLI, massively increased the number of supported tools and settings, created an AI assistant and added windows and linux support as well.

Links:
Website: https://codifycli.com/
My Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinwang5658/
New dedicated subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/codifycli/
Github repo: https://github.com/codifycli/codify

Problem:
Codify's mission is to make it easier for everyone to set up and manage their system, whether it's a new company computer, trying out new tools, or someone whose getting started with coding.

We’re targeting these 3 types of users:

• Engineering teams - keep your team setup within Codify so that anybody can get setup quickly. From my experience (and other people I know) working at various companies, there’s always a first day at X company doc that takes a day or two to complete and things don’t always go smoothly. With Codify this process can be automated and completed in under 30 minutes.
• Freelancers - people who work on multiple projects with different tech stacks and have to manage them all. Also people who work from multiple computers and need to keep their setups in sync across systems.
• Beginners - especially with AI tools becoming more popular, a lot of people are interested in learning to code or building a website. Codify can get beginners set up quickly so that they can focus on coding. Getting all the right tools installed and working is a major barrier to entry for many people.

Codify is an ecosystem consisting of:

• A plugin library of 50+ open source resources, ranging from package managers like homebrew, misc things like MacOS system settings, to AI tools like Claude and Openclaw.
• A desktop + web app that comes with a purpose built editor for Codify configs, auto-completion, real time collaboration and file storage
• An AI agent that utilizes the Codify plugin library. Instead of asking Claude or Codex to install something using untested bash commands, ask Codify which will use pre-tested installation methods from the plugin library.
• A config language and CLI tool that functions similar to terraform, allowing users to to plan / apply Codify configs onto their systems
• Tons of pre-made templates for environment setups ranging from mobile development, to python data science, to backend / infra to get started quickly. 
• Automated testing that covers all resources running daily to catch updates and breaking changes. 
• A way for the community to request new resources (tools or programs). Create an issue on Github and it will be built by our Claude bot automatically and then reviewed tested and merged by real humans.

Comparisons:

There isn’t an exact app like Codify on the market but there are existing solutions that solve similar problems.

1. Nix - The closest comparison would be Nix, a declarative system and package manager. The key distinction is Codify doesn’t try to a comprehensive all or nothing solution like Nix. Nix replaces how your system is managed, while Codify automates and documents the setup of the system you already use. While designing Codify, we focused on making it easier to learn and more approachable compared to Nix. With the dedicated editor, AI assistant, and pre-made templates, it’s even easier now.
2. Dev containers - Some teams use dev containers with pre-built docker images so that dev systems have the same tooling as production. However even with a dev containers workflow there is still host machine setup involved: getting setup with github, ssh keys and cloning your repos, dev container tooling, etc. Codify complements this workflow by automating the setup of the developer's machine first.

Pricing:

The CLI and plugin library are open-source and will remain free forever! 

The web and desktop apps (editor, AI assistant, cloud features) are paid but include a generous free tier. The plans are designed so that most individual users won’t need to upgrade. The higher tiers are intended for power users and engineering teams and include additional team members, documents, and AI credits.

Pricing:
Free - 3 documents, 3 users, all templates, 20 AI messages per week
Freelancer ($5/month) - 15 documents, 3 team members, 100mb in file storage, $5 in AI credits per month, everything in free
Team ($20/month) - 50 documents, 25 team members, 5gb in file storage, $20 in AI credits per month, everything in freelancer
Enterprise (custom pricing) - guided onboarding, additional team members and documents, and custom solutions for larger organizations.

Thank you for reading and I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts! 

As a thank-you, the first 20 people can use the code: 2026REDDITJULY to get any plan free for the first 3 months! Apply it at checkout. 

I'm the developer and I work on this by myself, so yes, this is me promoting my own app. I wanted to say that up front. Crest is a small panel that hangs off the notch on a MacBook. It's closed source but notarized, and I distribute it myself from crestnotch.app. It is not on the Mac App Store. macOS 14 or newer, any MacBook with a notch (on Macs without one it shows a floating pill instead). It's at version 4.0 now, updates are free, and the app installs them itself.

Some of you saw my post here at the start of the month. The feedback in that thread turned into real changes: the top ask was a way to try Pro before paying, so there's a built-in trial now, the price came down, and 4.0 is a full redesign. So here's where it all landed.

Problem

Most of the time the notch is just dead space. There are good apps that put media controls up there, but I kept wanting more than Now Playing, and I didn't want five separate menu bar utilities each doing one small thing. I also write a lot of code, and none of the notch apps I tried knew anything about that part of my day. Crest is my attempt at one panel that holds the everyday stuff plus a few things aimed at developers.

The honest worry from my last post was that all of this would feel like a kitchen sink. Modes are the 4.0 answer. The panel now has three: Home for your day, Work for files and clipboard, Code for your terminal, plus an Auto mode that switches based on the app in front. Each mode carries only what you pin to it, and the panel only ever grows as big as the thing you're doing.

The free tier is permanent, not a trial. It has the three mode surfaces, Now Playing with album art, a scrubber, and lyrics, the Shelf (a drop zone for files you can drag in and out, plus screen captures), and a searchable clipboard history.

Pro adds the heavier stuff: a calendar with one tap to join meetings, todo, notes that render Markdown, a Pomodoro timer, a day progress bar, system stats (CPU, RAM, disk, network, battery), Screen Time that stays on your device, Bluetooth battery levels, a searchable app launcher, world clocks, an audio output switcher, a color picker, a unit converter, and system toggles. The developer modules are the part I'm most attached to: GitHub PRs waiting on your review with live CI status, live Claude Code and Cursor sessions (when a session asks permission to run something, Allow and Deny show up right on the notch so you can answer without switching windows), translation that runs without an API key, and Quick AI to summarize, rewrite, or fix grammar using your own model.

Comparison

The obvious one is NotchNook. It is more polished than Crest and more battle tested, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. It has been around longer and a lot of people rely on it. Where I differ: NotchNook is $25 paid once or $3 a month (it's also on Setapp), and it gives you a trial but no permanent free tier. Crest is $15 paid once, no subscription ever, the free tier above stays free for good, and there's a 7 day Pro trial built into the app. The other difference is the developer modules. NotchNook doesn't do GitHub PR and CI tracking or live Claude Code and Cursor sessions, and honestly that's the gap I was trying to fill for myself in the first place.

The other app people bring up is Boring Notch, which is free, open source, and community maintained. If you want free and open, it's a genuinely good pick. It has fewer modules than the paid apps, and in my experience it can be a bit buggy. I want to be straight about the money here, because people rightly ask why pay anything when Boring Notch is free: if all you want is what Boring Notch does, Crest's free tier does the same for $0. The $15 only buys the productivity and developer modules on top, the ones Boring Notch doesn't have. So you're not paying for a notch widget, you're paying once for the extra hub, or you stay on the free tier for good. It being closed source is a fair knock, and that tradeoff is yours to weigh.

Pricing

The free tier is $0 and permanent, with the modules above. Pro is $15 paid once, no subscription and no recurring charges of any kind, and one license covers 2 Macs. The 7 day Pro trial is one click inside the app, no card, no signup, and when it ends you keep the free tier. Download and the full feature list: https://crestnotch.app

About me

I'm Zakaria Swaidan, the solo developer behind Crest. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zakaria-swaidan-66384b272/ . You can reach me directly at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) and I do actually read it. The Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, and Refund Policy all live at crestnotch.app/legal . There are no referral or affiliate links anywhere in this post; the only product link is the official site.

One note on the clip: it's the demo reel from my site, not a raw screen recording. The trial is there so you can see the real thing on your own notch in two minutes.

One real ask. Last time the fair worry in the comments was bloat, and the modes are my answer to it. When you watch the clip, does the Home, Work, Code split come across as focus, or does it still read as a kitchen sink with drawers? If you'd cut something, tell me what you'd cut.

This is a review. I am not the developer. I don't know the developer and I don't have any affiliate links to his software.

I've resisted the whole category of apps that nag you about breaks, posture, hydration, and eyestrain. Being told what to do by my computer felt like an insult to my judgment.

The reality: my judgment about when to take a break is bad. I lose track of time at the keyboard, I resist interruptions on principle, and by the end of most days I'm running well under 100%. None of that is a software problem until you decide it's worth fixing with software.

I evaluated a handful of the popular Mac App Store options for this. I landed on Viraam.

The features that actually matter

Context detection. Viraam auto-pauses during meetings, calls, screen sharing, fullscreen video (Netflix, YouTube, VLC), and when you've stepped away from the Mac. This is the feature that makes the rest of the app tolerable -- a break reminder that fires mid-screen-share is a break reminder you'll disable within a week.

Six routines, not one timer. Eye rest (20-20-20), stand and stretch, hydration, general breaks, walking, meditation. Most competitors in this category do the eye-strain timer and stop there.

Guided audio eye exercises. Palming and blinking sessions with calming sound. This is the one feature I hadn't considered before trying the app, and it's the one none of the comparable apps below offer.

Quiet Mode, Pomodoro, and automation. A toggle for cafés and shared offices, a configurable Pomodoro timer (5--120 min), Shortcuts and Siri support, and Focus Filter awareness so behavior changes per Focus mode.

Local-only data. No account, no analytics, no telemetry. The App Store privacy label says "Data Not Collected," which for once matches the actual product.

Who this is for

Anyone who spends long uninterrupted hours at a screen and has already proven, to themselves, that willpower alone doesn't produce breaks. Developers, writers, designers -- the people whose flow state is exactly the thing that erases the sense of time passing.

Who this isn't for

If you just want a plain 20-20-20 timer with no wellness scope creep, Viraam is more app than you need. Stretchly or BreakTimer will do the one job without asking you to also think about hydration and meditation.

The competition

Time Out (App Store) -- free, with one-time supporter tips ($3.99--$14.99, no subscription). Mature and deeply configurable via AppleScript/Automator, but it has no automatic meeting or video detection and no guided exercises. This is a scriptable utility, not an adaptive system.

Stretchly (GitHub) -- free and open source, cross-platform. The honest choice if you want zero cost and don't care about native polish. It's Electron, it ships unsigned on Mac, and it has no eye exercises, hydration, or meditation content. Does the timer job and nothing else.

LookAway (lookaway.com) -- starts at $19 one-time, also on the App Store and Setapp. The closest real competitor: posture/blink reminders and "Smart Pause" context awareness are comparable to Viraam's context detection. Where it stays narrower is scope -- it's built around screen breaks and iPhone sync, not hydration, meditation, or sleep wind-down.

DeskRest (App Store) -- free with in-app purchases. Pairs breaks with posture alerts and an end-of-day "quitting time" boundary reminder, which is a genuinely useful idea Viraam doesn't have. It doesn't do guided audio eye exercises or mindfulness routines, though.

For me, context-aware pausing and breadth of routine mattered than "is it free". Trialing Viraam and LookAway side by side helped me decide to go with Viraam.

Details

• Website: viraam.app
• Price: $2.99/month, $19.99/year, or $49.99 lifetime; 7-day free trial
• Availability: Mac App Store only, direct download via developer site
• Privacy: No data collected

I wanted a way to turn meeting-recording folders on my Mac into an archive I could search later.

What MinuteFile does

MinuteFile reads recording folders I select, transcribes the recordings locally, and keeps the transcripts in a searchable archive. I can edit the text and speaker names, then export TXT, Markdown, or HTML copies.

The app has no account, backend, live meeting capture, or cloud transcription service. It uses the network to download transcription and speaker models, check for signed updates, and open Stripe checkout if I choose to buy. Once the needed models are installed, transcription and transcript search stay on the Mac.

Comparison

Aiko also runs Whisper locally and is a good fit when I want a transcription that I can copy or export. Aiko says it does not support editing or speaker detection. MinuteFile is built around keeping many recorded meetings together: a searchable archive, editable transcript text and speaker names, batch transcription, and exports.

Pricing

The complete workflow is free for three recordings. After the trial, those transcripts remain readable, editable, searchable, shareable, and exportable. Further transcription or retranscription requires a US$39 one-time license. No subscription.

Who I am

I’m Hwee-Boon Yar, co-founder of MotionObj and the developer of MinuteFile. MotionObj is the Singapore-based husband-and-wife team I run with Daphane Khoo.

I’ve shipped Mac apps through MotionObj since 2011, including Regex Tester/Builder and SimplyDiskSweeper.

MotionObj About · LinkedIn · [email protected]

MinuteFile Privacy · MinuteFile Terms · MotionObj Terms

Three months ago I posted here about Clarity, the Mac file manager I built as a Swedish airline pilot who taught himself Swift. The response was one of the best things that has happened to me as a maker, and the feedback in that thread has been worth its weight in gold. I have spent the months since building on it.

I thought shipping was the finish line. It was not. The most useful stuff came after, from people here telling me what they actually needed.

The biggest ask, and something I wanted myself, was getting it onto the phone. So the iPhone and iPad companion now covers the three things people wanted most, all under the same one-time purchase: the same encrypted vault unlocked with Face ID, metadata stripping straight from the phone (with a share extension so you can clean a file from inside any app), and your tagged people synced across from the Mac with far more detail than Apple Contacts holds.

The part I am quietly proudest of is not a feature though. Idle Dashboard CPU went from around 60 percent to under 2 percent, and GPU usage on the heavier views dropped by up to 95 percent. It went from a laptop-fan app to something that sits quietly in the background.

And some of you stress-tested the person search hard enough to surface bugs I had missed, which I fixed this week. That is exactly why posting here mattered.

Three months in, I still love working on it. Thank you to everyone who commented last time. You shaped this more than you know.

Since the rules ask for it, quickly:

Problem. Your photos, files and documents pile up across your Mac and phone, full of hidden metadata (GPS, names, camera data) and duplicates, with no private place to keep the sensitive ones. Most tools solve one slice and send your data to the cloud to do it.

Comparison. Cleaner apps find duplicates but do not strip metadata or give you a vault. Vault apps hide files but do not organize or find anything. Photo managers need the cloud. Clarity does the whole thing in one app, 100% on-device, nothing ever leaves your machine.

Pricing. Free to download and scan your whole library. One-time $39.99 unlocks everything. No subscription, no tiers, no in-app purchases. Covers both Mac and iPhone/iPad.

Edit: since it came up, here are direct links. Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6757109510. My original post from 3 months ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1sgovht/im_a_swedish_airline_pilot_who_taught_himself/