u/Economy-Department47

I just got this from apple

I just got the swag bag

Built this because I couldn't find a native macOS encryption app that was fully local and transparent about it.

Filebit uses apple's crypto kit for AES-256-GCM encryption after creating your vault you can unlock it with Touch ID unlock with Secure Enclave / Keychain. You can share encrypted files with a custom password (recipient just needs the password + FileBit) No accounts, no subscriptions, no telemetry

macOS 15+ required. One-time purchase on the App Store.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/filebit-encrypt-lock-files/id6760589273?mt=12

Hello fellow users of macOS,

In my free time I have been building Devly to make my life easier and hopefully yours.

This app has been live for a month or two now and the feedback I have received has been amazing and in V2 I even added a CLI version of the app that you can download for free but you still need the app.

This app is 100% native Swift. Yes even the CLI is written in Swift :) 100% Privacy First the app does not use the internet unless you use the markdown tool and have something that the app needs to fetch to display the markdown properly. As an example a image.

So I use this app heavily myself as a developer and a software engineer.

The concept of this app is simple take a bunch of developer tools put it all into one app and make Devly your one stop shop for over 50 of your most commonly used Developer tools.

Now lets talk about price...the app is $4.99 on the App Store. One time and you get access to all of the future updates. I wanted to share this to make other developer's lives easier :)

Anyway here is the app on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/devly/id6759269801?mt=12

I would love to hear feedback on what I can add. Sorry for any grammar mistakes I don't want to use AI to make this post so I decided to type it out myself :)

It's called Drops. When you click anywhere on your Mac, a small ripple plays right at your cursor.

I built it because I kept getting "where did you click?" comments on my screen recordings. I went looking for existing tools and the ones I found either needed Accessibility permissions or looked terrible. So I spent a few weekends making one that didn't.

No permissions needed, no dock icon, lives in the menu bar. Three styles (ink, water, soft), a few colors, and you can set a different effect for left and right clicks. There's also a modifier key overlay that shows a floating label when you hold Command, Shift, Option, or Control, which I use constantly for walkthroughs.

$1.99 one-time on the Mac App Store.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/drops-cursor-effects/id6766129085

The thing I wasn't expecting was how much I'd keep it on outside of recording sessions. It just makes the Mac feel more alive somehow.

I do a lot of screen recordings for work, tutorials mostly, and for the longest time the feedback I kept getting was some version of "I couldn't follow where you were clicking." I tried narrating every single action out loud but it made everything feel slow. I tried zooming in more but then you lose the context of what's on screen.

I've been using a small Mac app called Drops for a few months now and it's the first thing that fixed this without adding friction. It draws a ripple animation at your cursor position every time you click, across every app, every window, on every screen. No setup, no configuration, just open it and it works.

The two things that actually matter for productivity use: there's a Presenter Mode that makes the ripple bigger and more visible for screen shares and recordings, and there's a modifier key overlay that shows a small floating label whenever you hold Command, Shift, Option, or Control. That second one has probably saved me more re-recording time than anything else because viewers can now follow keyboard shortcuts without me spelling them out.

One price, $1.99, no subscription, no account. Lives in the menu bar.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/drops-cursor-effects/id6766129085

I am the developer btw

Started this because I was recording coding tutorials and kept getting comments like "where are you clicking?" I looked at the existing options and they all either needed Accessibility permissions or looked like they were designed in 2009.

So I built Drops over a few weekends. It puts a small ripple animation right where your cursor clicks, system-wide, across every app. Three styles (ink, water, soft), a handful of colors, and you can set a different style for left and right clicks. There's also a modifier key overlay that shows a floating label whenever you hold Command, Shift, Option, or Control, which turned out to be the thing I actually use most.

The build was interesting because the first version used a low-level event tap API that Apple rejected during review. I had to rethink the input detection entirely and switched to a standard AppKit API. No permissions required now. It just works when you open it.

$1.99 on the Mac App Store.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/drops-cursor-effects/id6766129085 

Website: https://drops.techfixpro.net/

Happy to answer questions about building it. The App Store review process was a whole thing.

Started this because I was recording coding tutorials and kept getting comments like "where are you clicking?" I looked at the existing options and they all either needed Accessibility permissions or looked like they were designed in 2009.

So I built Drops over a few weekends. It puts a small ripple animation right where your cursor clicks, system-wide, across every app. Three styles (ink, water, soft), a handful of colors, and you can set a different style for left and right clicks. There's also a modifier key overlay that shows a floating label whenever you hold Command, Shift, Option, or Control, which turned out to be the thing I actually use most.

The build was interesting because the first version used a low-level event tap API that Apple rejected during review. I had to rethink the input detection entirely and switched to a standard AppKit API. No permissions required now. It just works when you open it.

$1.99 on the Mac App Store.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/drops-cursor-effects/id6766129085 

Website: https://drops.techfixpro.net/

Happy to answer questions about building it. The App Store review process was a whole thing.

I wanted to add a terminal interface to my macOS menu bar app so you could pipe things through it in scripts. Seemed simple. Turned out to be the most annoying part of the whole project.

The problem is sandboxing. The CLI binary and the main app can't just talk to each other normally. You can't write to shared temp files, you can't use localhost sockets cleanly, and XPC felt like overkill for what I needed.

What actually worked was App Groups. The CLI writes the job input to a file in the shared container, fires a URL scheme to wake the app, then polls for an output file. The main app reads the input, runs the tool, writes the result back. The CLI picks it up and prints it.

It's a bit clunky but it survives the sandbox completely and passed App Store review first try. The trickiest part was making the polling feel instant without hammering the CPU, I ended up using a short sleep loop with a timeout rather than a file system watcher, which turned out to be more reliable.

The app is Devly if anyone wants to look at the result. 50+ dev tools in the menu bar, CLI included.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/devly/id6759269801

Happy to go deeper on the App Groups IPC pattern if anyone's doing something similar.

I wanted to add a terminal interface to my macOS menu bar app so you could pipe things through it in scripts. Seemed simple. Turned out to be the most annoying part of the whole project.

The problem is sandboxing. The CLI binary and the main app can't just talk to each other normally. You can't write to shared temp files, you can't use localhost sockets cleanly, and XPC felt like overkill for what I needed.

What actually worked was App Groups. The CLI writes the job input to a file in the shared container, fires a URL scheme to wake the app, then polls for an output file. The main app reads the input, runs the tool, writes the result back. The CLI picks it up and prints it.

It's a bit clunky but it survives the sandbox completely and passed App Store review first try. The trickiest part was making the polling feel instant without hammering the CPU, I ended up using a short sleep loop with a timeout rather than a file system watcher, which turned out to be more reliable.

The app is Devly if anyone wants to look at the result. 50+ dev tools in the menu bar, CLI included. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/devly/id6759269801

Happy to go deeper on the App Groups IPC pattern if anyone's doing something similar.

I kept googling the same things every day as a dev. Base64 decode, JSON format, generate a UUID. Decided to stop doing that and just build something.

It took about 4 months. SwiftUI, fully sandboxed, works offline. 50 tools across encoding, hashing, formatting, regex, color conversion, cron parsing, JWT decoding, all of it. Sits in your menu bar and opens with a hotkey.

The thing that surprised me most was how many people used the CLI. I added a terminal interface almost as an afterthought and it ended up being one of the most mentioned features in reviews.

Honest lesson: I priced it too low. $4.99 felt safe but I think $9.99 would have been fine.

Would love feedback on anything missing.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/devly/id6759269801

Hey everyone, first time posting here. Launched Skylog a little while ago, its a GPS journey tracker for iPhone. Wanted to share the story because I think the core technical decision I made is actually pretty relevant to anyone building travel or outdoor apps.

The problem I kept running into with other trackers is that they all depend on an internet connection to render the map. Which sounds fine until you're on a plane, hiking somewhere remote, or traveling abroad without a data plan. Blank screen. Useless.

So I went a different route (pun intended). Instead of MapKit or Google Maps I used MapLibre GL Native and bundled a full PMTiles world map file directly into the app. The map loads instantly with zero network dependency. No API key, no blank tiles, works in airplane mode. I honestly couldnt believe more apps dont do this, setting it up was tricky but the result is so much cleaner for the user.

But here's the part I'm actually really proud of. When you ARE online and you have Pro, the app automatically switches over to Apple Maps via MapKit. So you go from the clean offline map to full Apple Maps with all the detail, buildings, satellite, points of interest, the works. It just swaps in seamlessly without you doing anything. Same journey, same recording, just a much richer map underneath it.

And it works the other way too. If you lose signal mid trip the app detects it and falls back to the offline map automatically. There's a little "offline" badge that appears so you know whats happening. Honestly getting that dual map engine switching to feel smooth was probably the hardest single thing to build in the whole app. But when it works it feels really nice, like the app is just quietly handling everything for you.

The app supports 6 travel modes: flights, drives, trains, ferries, cycling and walking. Draws your route in realtime, tracks distance speed and duration, saves to a journey log with iCloud sync. Theres a home screen widget too.

Pricing wise I went with free core + one time $4.99 pro upgrade (no subscription). The Pro unlocks the Apple Maps layer, altitude charts, and nearby places. Honestly I just really hate subscription pricing for utility apps so I didnt want to do that to people.

Some things I learned shipping solo:

• The widget was harder than expected because WidgetKit cant access SwiftData directly, had to use App Group UserDefaults to pass a snapshot
• Getting the GPS lock UX right took way more iterations than I thought it would. Users get anxious when the app just says "waiting for GPS" with no feedback
• StoreKit 2 is nice to work with compared to the old way

App is live now if you wanna check it out: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/skylog-gps-journey-tracker/id6763947359

Website: http://skylog.techfixpro.net

Happy to answer questions about the tech stack or the launch process. This community has been really helpful to read through while building so figured id finally contribute something back