r/macapps

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Every project starts the same way - same folder structure, same starter files, same boilerplate. Prefab lets you capture all of that once and deploy it whenever you need it. It started with a focus for development, but having used it for the last couple months, I have created templates for pretty much everything.

Most alternatives are either CLI-only scaffolding tools (cookiecutter, yeoman) that require config files and terminal knowledge, or they only handle folder structures without file contents. Prefab gives you a native Mac GUI - folders, files with content, variables in names and content, and post-creation automations like git init or opening in your editor - no terminal required. Finder integration for quick creation anywhere on your Mac - just right click and pick a template.

Cost: 100% Free, Always Free

I'd love to hear what you think and what features would make this more useful for you. Always happy to chat about the development side of the project as well.

App Store
Prefab
Prefab Docs

6 months ago I left a decade of fintech engineering in London to build Lyra solo ,a Mac writing assistant that fixes your writing as you type, in every app.

The problem I built it for: everyone I worked with had the same ritual. Type a message, re-read it four times, paste it into some tool, fix it, paste it back, tweak the tone, send. Multiply by 50 messages a day. And the tools that "help" all have the same flaws — they live in a separate window, they interrupt you with underlines while you're mid-thought, and they sand everyone down to the same polished-robot voice, whether you're messaging your boss or your best mate.

So Lyra works differently: you just type. Pause, and a small pill shows a better version — press Tab, done. No panel, no copy-paste, no clicks. It works in Gmail, Outlook, Slack, WhatsApp, your browser, wherever you write. And it learns how you write to each specific person, so your message to a client and your message to a friend don't come out sounding like the same press release.

Launched quietly in July. Show HN flagged my post. Reddit: silence. X: silence. Then one person paid ,a guy in France. I was thrilled for about an hour, which is how long it took him to uninstall: Lyra was freezing his Mac every minute.

Here's what that month taught me. I assumed the worst (memory leak), built instrumentation, ran controlled tests on identical hardware and my confident assumption was wrong. The real cause was a design decision I'd shipped without questioning. Fixed it, the freezing died, and he told me he'd reinstall ,he'd called Lyra "a really great product" while uninstalling it, which is the strangest compliment I've ever received.

Since then: fixed the biggest issues my ~30 early users hit, rebuilt the rough edges, made a proper demo. Relaunching today.

Mac only. 14-day full trial, free tier after, $9.99/mo for Pro.

Happy to answer anything , the debugging saga, why the first launch flopped, what one uninstall taught me that 30 signups didn't, or the unglamorous reality of marketing as a solo dev.

Try Lyra here Get Lyra

I realized that I use tilling windows manager a lot, (When I'm not on Gnome)
I always put inner gap to separate windows on a workspace, that feels great.
And I put this idea into my app launcher, this is pretty fast. Linux and windows ver is made with Tauri. (MacOS ver is pure native swift) and core in rust (btw).
Repo: https://github.com/kunkka19xx/look
Not only app launching but also finding, copying, ... with files, folders, we have built-in commands like pomodoro, todo,... and you can also search web results.
This was tested on Gnome, sway, (arch, nixos, ubuntu)
If you're looking for a new app launcher, this is free and always open-source, community driven (we got many interesting ideas from many great guys) launcher.
Thank you, we'd love to hear your feedback :)

Problem:
Planning a trip means juggling Google Maps, Notes, spreadsheets, and booking confirmations across half a dozen apps. Nothing keeps the itinerary, the budget, and the map in one place — and most travel apps want an account and a subscription before they'll even let you start.

Comparison:
Tripit charges $49/year and hasn't meaningfully changed in years. Wanderlog is free but ad-supported and account-required. Both upload your trip data to their servers. Trovelo stores everything locally and syncs through your own iCloud — no Trovelo servers, no account.

What's new on Mac since the last update:

• Significant improvements to the MCP integration — tell Claude "plan me 4 days in Rome" and watch the trip build itself inside Trovelo. Days, cards, times, prices, map pins. Faster, more reliable, and handling far more complex requests than at launch. Works with Claude desktop, Claude Code, Codex, or any MCP-compatible client. Runs entirely locally, off by default.
• 8 languages with smart parsing — type a card in Spanish, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean or Chinese and it picks up the time, price and type automatically
• Board view, route optimization, expenses with live exchange rates, curated guides, My Spots world map
• Universal Purchase — one payment covers Mac, iPhone and iPad

Pricing:

• Free: up to 3 active trips and 50 cards
• Pro: one-time $3.99 (normally $9.99) — yours forever, no subscription

→ App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6760258252

→ Redeem: https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=6760258252&code=TROVELO399
→ Or in-app: Settings → Redeem → TROVELO399

Feature requests and ideas at r/trovelo 🖤

tl;dr An AI Notetaker that uses your ChatGPT subscription for everything

Problem

You might have noticed that your ChatGPT subscription gives you access to an insane amount of intelligence, even the free one.

• It gives you speech-to-text through the dictation feature in the ChatGPT app
• It gives you an insane amount of LLM usage

Then, why are you paying for AI notetakers like otter or granola? You already have everything you need included in your subscription.

So, all I really did was combine these to create a simple notetaker. And as it uses OpenAI's speech-to-text api, it is much more powerful then any local model and barely uses any battery.

Comparison

Granola has unlimited free tier, but capped meeting history visibility at 30 days. Simbi has no limits and it is trivial to move data in/out of the app. Other local AI based apps don't perform well in any languages other then English and drains battery. Simbi uses ChatGPT's speech-to-text, so high accuracy in multiple languages and low battery drain.

Pricing

Free

Downloads

https://getsimbi.app/

https://github.com/predict-woo/simbi

Transparency

Hi, I'm Andrew, a CS grad student from South Korea, currently studying at ETH Zurich.

• Developer: Andrew Sangwoo Ye https://www.linkedin.com/in/predict-woo/
• Contact: me@predict-woo.com
• Privacy Policy: https://getsimbi.app/privacy/
• Terms of Service: https://getsimbi.app/terms/

Hey r/macapps! I'm the developer of Type, a small Mac app I originally built because I wanted to capture something without switching away from whatever I was doing.

Global shortcut → type → Enter → back to work.

I just released Type 1.6, and the biggest addition is proper support for Obsidian Daily Notes.

Problem

I love the idea of Daily Notes, but quick capture shouldn't require bringing Obsidian forward, finding today's note, putting the thought in the right place, then switching back to what I was doing.

With Type, you connect your Obsidian vault once. It picks up your Daily Notes folder, date format and template, creates today's note automatically, and sends new captures straight into it.

You can also tell Type to insert entries under a specific heading, and choose whether captures use timestamps, bullets, checkboxes, etc.

Comparison

Type isn't trying to replace Obsidian. It's more like a companion app.

Obsidian is where you organize and work with your notes. Type is just the tiny capture layer in front of it.

You can absolutely build similar workflows with Raycast, Shortcuts or plugins. Type is deliberately more boring: press one shortcut, write something, press Enter, and it's in your local Markdown file.

It also works with regular text/Markdown files if you don't use Obsidian.

Pricing

Type is $19.99 one-time, with a 7-day free trial. No subscription.

https://usetype.app/obsidian-quick-capture

Mac App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/app/quick-note-taking-type/id1664249924

I'd love feedback from people who live in Daily Notes.

When you quick-capture something, do you usually want it appended to the bottom, or inserted under a heading like ## Inbox, ## Log, etc.?

Hey r/macapps!

I built TideGlass because I focus better with something calm beside my work, and everything I tried was either a video loop or a light show, or content in some algorithm that wanted me to continue watching. So I built worlds instead.

TideGlass fills a spare monitor with living nature scenes: oceans, forests, night skies, deep space. Each world is a real simulation running on your GPU, optimized for Macs and Metal: waves roll and fade by their own physics, orcas hunt, stars rise, weather passes through. It is there to help you focus. It asks nothing of you, and no two minutes are the same.

The video shows it better than screenshots.

A few of the things it does:

A whole library of worlds, from a moonlit sea to a herring ball under hunting orcas to the Pillars of Creation built from the real JWST plate. Every world keeps its own clock: things happen in them while you work.

Play music and everything moves with it. It listens to whatever is playing (Apple Music, Spotify, anything through system audio) and the world answers: wind rises with the track, swells deepen, storms build on the phrases. The music becomes weather, never bars and spectrums.

A focus timer that fits the room: a Pomodoro pill in the corner whose whole background is the progress bar, next to a now-playing card for the track you have on.

Standing desk support, new this month: turn it on and the timer also says when to sit and when to stand. Sessions alternate on the rhythm the ergonomics research recommends, and when a break ends with a posture change the whole screen says so.

The part I want to call out

The worlds are simulations, not videos. The orca pod is the example I keep showing people: the school is a real flocking simulation, the orcas are agents that patrol, take turns attacking, and slap through the wall of fish, and the marine snow drifts through light rays computed every frame. When your music picks up, the whole hunt quickens. None of it is footage. That is the entire idea of the app.

Comparison

The closest things are Aerial and the video wallpapers built into macOS. Both play beautifully shot footage, and footage loops: the same drone pass, the same seam. TideGlass renders its worlds live, so they never repeat and they can react to your music, which a video cannot do. And where wallpaper apps live under your windows, TideGlass holds a spare monitor as its own calm place, with a focus timer in it.

Pricing

- Ten worlds free forever. No account, no card, nothing to expire.

- 12 dollars, one-time, opens the whole library. No renewals or subscriptions

- We donate 20% of every sale to environmental non-profits, protecting oceans and dark skies.

Transparency

I'm Chris, building this on my own. TideGlass is native Swift and Metal, signed and notarized, for macOS 15 or later on Apple silicon.

Website: https://tideglass.app

Contact: hello@tideglass.app

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

Terms of Service: https://tideglass.app/terms

If you try it, tell me which world you end up leaving on, and what still needs work.

Cheers

A year ago my Mac workflow was a pile of little tools: a clipboard manager, a drag-and-drop shelf, a window snapper, a screenshot tool, a pomodoro timer, a converter that uploaded my files to someone else's cloud, and a menu bar app to manage the other menu bar apps. Each one fine on its own, together a mess of subscriptions and settings.

So I built Droppy. Without experience and never having touched Xcode before, I started my journey. It was a crazy experience, started out as a hobby but turned into a much bigger project very quickly. Countless nights without sleep and watching YouTube videos on how to build apps brought me here. Droppy lives at the top of your screen, around the notch if you have one, as a Dynamic Island style pill if you don't, and puts everything one hover away:

- File shelf: drag anything up and it holds your files until you drop them where they belong. Jiggle a drag and a basket flies in to catch it.
- Clipboard manager: every copy kept and searchable, ready to paste again.
- A fully free cloud sharing service; Droppy Cloud. With a full online environment to view/download and share files.
- Notifications with inline reply for iMessage, WhatsApp and Telegram, right in the notch.
- Full media controls with the Playing Next queue, AirPlay picker and live lyrics.
- A revamped lock screen: album art, widgets, and brightness and volume sliders before you even log in.
- 27 free add-ons (Droplets) you toggle per workflow: window snapping, screenshots with OCR, pomodoro, a calendar with natural language input, LocalSend to move files to any phone or PC on your network, on-device file conversion, meeting controls for Zoom, Teams and Meet, Obsidian, Spotify, a terminal, and more. Off means off, they only run when you enable them.

The video shows it better than I can write it.

Also SUPER cool: an iOS app is coming, it's been built and published to TestFlight at this very moment. It syncs everything Droppy does with your iPhone (files, clipboard history, Droppy Cloud etc.)

Honest notes:
- Native Swift, signed and notarized, no Electron. Local-first: your clipboard and files never leave your Mac unless you explicitly share them.
- macOS 14+, Apple Silicon and Intel, works on every display. The notch is genuinely optional.
- Pricing: 3-day free trial, then $9.99 one time for 2 Macs. No subscription, ever.
- There's a lot to uncover, but you can keep it as minimalistic as you want.

I ship updates almost every week and the last few features came straight from user feedback, so if you try it and something annoys you, tell me here.

Site: https://getdroppy.app
Privacy policy: https://getdroppy.app/privacy-policy

Problems:

Most transcription tools rely heavily on the cloud, forcing you to upload sensitive business meetings, private data, and confidential conversations to external servers — creating massive privacy risks and locking you into expensive, ongoing monthly subscriptions. And even after the meeting ends, the workflow still isn't done: your transcript sits in some web dashboard, disconnected from your calendar, and you're left manually copying summaries into emails, renaming files, and chasing down which recording belongs to which meeting. The recording was automated, but everything after it is still manual busywork.

Comparison:

AI meeting tools like Granola, Otter, and Fireflies offer polished automated note-taking and follow-up emails, but they do it by processing your conversations on their servers — with recurring monthly subscriptions, and in some cases bots that visibly join your calls. TranscribeX now delivers that same end-to-end automation — auto-record, auto-transcribe, AI summary, calendar context, and summaries emailed out automatically — but runs the entire pipeline 100% locally on your Apple Silicon Mac using local ASR and local LLMs (like Qwen and Gemma). Total data privacy, zero cloud processing, zero AI token costs, and a one-time payment instead of a subscription. The only thing that ever leaves your Mac is the summary email — and only when you tell it to. Plus, with the new CLI and MCP support, TranscribeX does something the cloud tools can't: it plugs your transcripts directly into Claude, agents, and your own scripts — no API middleman.

Quick recap for anyone new: TranscribeX transcribes meetings, dictation, and recordings entirely on your Mac — local ASR + local LLMs (Qwen, Gemma) running on Apple Silicon. No AI bots joining your calls, no audio uploaded to anyone's servers, no monthly subscription, no API keys or token costs.

What's new since v8.5:

📧 Meeting Summaries & Transcripts, Emailed Automatically: When a meeting ends, TranscribeX can now automatically email the AI summary and full transcript to whoever needs them — or you can email any summary or transcript manually with one click. No more copy-pasting notes into Mail after every call, and no more "I'll send the notes later." Your audio still never leaves the machine; the only thing that goes out is the email you choose to send.

📅 Deep Calendar Integration: TranscribeX now supports multiple calendars (work, personal, shared team calendars), and you can manually link any calendar event to any recording — so even ad-hoc calls get proper context. Exported files now include the meeting details from the linked event (title, time, attendees), and you can pick which calendar names your recordings. Exports finally know what meeting they came from.

⌨️ CLI + MCP Support: This one's for the power users. TranscribeX now has a full command-line interface, and it speaks Model Context Protocol — meaning you can wire your local transcription engine directly into Claude, agents, and your own automation scripts. Your transcripts become programmable, still without touching the cloud.

🔄 The Full Cycle, Completely Hands-Free: This is the release where everything clicks together into one automated pipeline. Your meeting starts → TranscribeX detects it and records → transcription kicks in the moment it ends → the local AI writes the summary → the calendar event links in the meeting context → and the notes land in everyone's inbox. From "meeting started" to "notes delivered" without touching a single button. This is the workflow we've been building toward since v1.

🖱️ Interactive Transcripts: Click any word in the transcript and playback jumps to that exact moment, with live word and segment highlighting. Finding "wait, what did they actually say?" now takes one click instead of scrubbing.

🤖 Smarter Automatic Recording: Transcription now starts automatically the moment a meeting recording ends, the default microphone is selected for you, and Teams auto-detection got a polish pass. Record → transcribe → summarize → email, hands-free, end to end.

🗂️ Quality of Life: Automatic + manual job archiving to keep your library clean, search inside Settings, smarter export filenames (timestamp first, so files sort chronologically), custom AI timeout and cancellable AI requests, a new fine-tuned Whisper Large model for Hinglish, and support for the ElevenLabs Scribe v2 Realtime model for those who want it. Plus a lot of bug fixes and performance work across the board.

Please view the changelog for the full details. https://www.transcribex.io/changelog.html

TranscribeX is actively developed — we're working closely with beta testers across diverse hardware setups to keep pushing local ASR speed and accuracy on macOS.

Pricing:

One-Time Payment (20% OFF). (No subscriptions, no monthly fees)

Website: https://www.transcribex.io (Click "Get it on Gumroad" and select the Pro version).

App Store version: If you prefer the App Store, you can find it here. https://apps.apple.com/nz/app/transcribex/id6752823664?mt=12

Some features are limited due to App Store restrictions. This version is mainly provided to verify that I'm a trusted developer per r/macapps rules.

🎮 And now, the surprise for PS5 owners...

TranscribeX isn't the only thing I build. Meet ConsoleWise — a Mac app that combines PS5 Remote Play and PlayStation cloud streaming in one experience, so you can play your PS5 right on your Mac. It supports 4K upscaling, 60FPS, and HDR, with lower-latency streaming, manual bitrate control, and full DualSense support including haptic feedback and adaptive triggers (plus custom controller/keyboard mapping). Works at home on your local network or over the internet when you're away.

And in the same spirit as TranscribeX: one-time lifetime purchase, no subscription.

To celebrate this release, I'm giving r/macapps 50% off ConsoleWise: https://consolewise.aowlly.com/

Work on your Mac all day with TranscribeX, then game on it all night with ConsoleWise. 😄

I'd love your feedback — any suggestions or issues are very welcome 🙏

Enjoy!!!!

I’m Jeremy, a freelance product designer, and I’ve been building Queue solo for the past 6 years. It’s available on both Mac and iPhone.

Why make Queue?

I’m terrible at keeping in touch with the people I care about, both personally and professionally, and I want to be better. Queue helps me remember obvious things like texting on my friend’s birthday, but also meaningful things like calling on the anniversary of his father’s passing. It helps me remember business-y things like checking in with a previous client when it’s been a while, but also savvy things like sending an email at the moment she launches her new company on LinkedIn.

And it’s hard enough for me to remember to keep in touch; there’s no way I’m going to remember to keep a personal CRM up to date too. So Queue updates itself. It syncs and summarizes my iMessage conversations and Apple Mail threads completely locally on my Mac, notes my FaceTime chats and Phone calls, and pulls in events from my calendars. Whenever I’m caught up, Queue is too. No manual entry required.

Queue is a thoughtful reminder system, private catch-up timeline, and timely note-taking app for the people I care about most.

Some noteworthy technical details:

• Fully On-Device. Your text and email content is analyzed and summarized entirely on-device using Apple Foundation Models, and summaries are stored in your private iCloud (summaries require Apple Intelligence). No message content is ever sent to Queue’s server.
• No Full Disk Access. Queue only requests access to the specific folders on your Mac where your iMessages, phone and FaceTime calls, and emails are stored. You can pick and choose which, if any, sources you’d like to sync, and of course revoke them at any time.
• Entirely Native. Queue is a proper Mac-assed app, with keyboard shortcuts, undo, multiple window support, and more. It’s written in Swift + SwiftUI, and you won’t find any Electron or WebView jank here.

What are some alternatives?

Every indie hacker since the unix epoch has at some point built a personal CRM, and there’s a new one vibe-coded every day. I’m all for it, but there are two that have stood the test of time:

1. Dex. The biggest name in the personal CRM game, and the best option for anyone not in the Apple ecosystem. It’s built more for the professional market with support for teams, and cross-platform compatibility via a web app. It’s also about 3x more expensive than Queue at $12/month.
2. Monica. The open-source alternative, and the best option for anyone who wants to self-host. It’s entirely manual to keep up to date and doesn’t offer a mobile app, but is free.

How much does it cost?

$49.99/year, with a one-week free trial and both Mac and iPhone apps.

Queue is my primary project. I charge a subscription because so does my landlord and I need to pay rent. I hope you find it as valuable as I do, and I’m happy to chat anytime here or by email. You can learn more about Queue at https://queue.community.

Download on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/queue-personal-crm/id1451429218?mt=8

Hey everyone,

My name is Chris Nagy, I'm the founder and solo dev behind Curfew*.*
It's my first time releasing an app I made into the world!

TLDR;

>Curfew locks your Mac at night so you go to sleep instead of staying up late. You set a time when it should lock (eg. midnight) and it then covers your whole screen automatically. If you need to finish up something, you can snooze for 5 minutes by holding 5 random keys for 30 seconds. This is just enough annoyance to disrupt your dopamine stream and let you step away.

Problem

I couldn't get off my computer late into the night. I believed I must keep grinding and sleep is secondary. My mornings usually started around 3PM (!) because of this, and it was messing up my entire life. I don't really have self control to stop working, so I made something that just makes me step away.

How It Works

• Choose a bedtime between 10 PM and 2 AM.
• Curfew covers every display and Space automatically.
• It releases the screen at 6 AM and returns the following night.
• Hold five random keys for 30 seconds to get five minutes of use.
• Subsequent snoozes require a 60-second hold.
• It cannot be quit during curfew and restarts if force-killed.

Comparison

vs Cold Turkey? Cold Turkey has you build detailed blocks for websites, apps, or the whole computer. It is technically more customizable but it means you need to do all that customizing. Curfew is simple and focused on a single task. Instead of setting custom rules and blocksets, you just pick your bedtime and it takes over the whole screen automatically every night. CT is a general blocking app, while Curfew has one job: getting you off the Mac and into bed.

vs Freedom? Freedom is also a general blocker for apps, websites, and the internet across your devices. It can not block your whole screen though. Curfew is built specifically for bedtime. It covers the whole screen, so there is no unblocked app to drift into. The only way back is the five-key hold, and five minutes later Curfew locks again. Freedom would let you go into your Finder and watch old videos in your downloads folder until the sun comes up.

Pricing

• $19 once for up to 2 Macs
• Three full nights free, no credit card
• Free 10-second bedtime reminder after the trial
• 60-day money-back guarantee

👉 Download: usecurfew.app

Transparency

• App works fully offline, only uses the internet for initial licensing and updates.
• A paid copy does not check its license ever again, forever yours offline.
• There is no tracking in the app.
• Needs Accessibility permission to reliably lock and prevent unwanted keypresses.
• Signed and notarized .dmg by my company Sentium Inc.
• Privacy & Terms
• Song in the video was made with Suno but I wrote the lyrics!
• AI: I wrote all the text in this post, except some of the how-it-works and comparison sections.

Let me know what you think of Curfew as a whole! I am bringing updates to it weekly and patching all the bugs that come in. Feel free to DM me here if there's anything or contact me at Support.

I built a download manager similar to JDownloader for personal use. It currently only works with the AllDebrid API, but that’s the only one I use. I added most of the features I need and like from JDownloader, plus some that are missing.

I’m looking for any kind of feedback or tips — especially regarding download manager features, UX and functionality, but also the design. I’d like to give the app a bit more character and identity, so I’m particularly interested in ideas for what I could do to make it feel less generic and give it a bit more soul.

Happy to hear what you think!

here's a list of some features. 

• Clipboard monitoring & manual link paste
• DLC import & Click’nLoad server
• Filecrypt, Keeplinks & Snahp support with on-device OCR
• Automatic link resolution & availability checks
• macOS notifications
• Duplicate detection
• Activate/deactivate links & packages
• Queue-based download management
• Pause/resume & global pause
• Stop/deactivate downloads
• Adjustable bandwidth limit
• Automatic retry on transient errors
• RAR/ZIP/7z extraction with automatic password handling
• Archive password management
• Progress, speed & ETA per file
• AllDebrid API key & connection status
• Magnet slot check & recent-link deletion
• Default & Fallback download folder

I built AutoShelf, a macOS menu bar app that watches your folders and auto-organizes files based on rules. Think Hazel but simpler. And on the Mac App Store. And with MCP support so AI assistants can control it.

The pitch: set it and forget it. Downloads folder stays clean. Desktop does not look like a landfill. DMGs auto-delete after 3 days.

I am a solo dev. This is my first Mac app. I have been building it for about 8 months alongside my day job. It is on the Mac App Store for $19.99 one-time (no subscription). Free tier gets one rule. Pro unlocks everything.

It has:

- 13 file actions (move, copy, trash, rename, tag, archive, image optimize, convert, photos import)

- 12 condition types (file type, extension, download source, date, size, name)

- MCP integration so Claude/Cursor/opencode can create and run rules

- 9 built-in templates

- 19 languages

- A CLI tool (separate Go binary)

Current state: version 2.0.1. Working on 3.0 which adds custom conditions and actions.

Website: https://useautoshelf.com
AppStore: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/autoshelf-folder-organizer/id6762361021?mt=12

Roast away. Tell me why this dies or what I am doing wrong. I can take it.

ClipSync — Seamless file transfer & clipboard sync between Mac and Android

Ever used an Android phone with a Mac and thought: “Why the hell is this still so annoying?” 😭 That's basically why I made ClipSync.

The problem There are plenty of tools that let you move stuff between Android and Mac, but most of them still make you do the thing. Need a file on your Mac? Open the sharing app → find the file → share it → wait for it to transfer → open it on your Mac.

Need to quickly move an image or some text? Same story. And with a lot of clipboard-sync solutions, you still have to manually trigger the transfer. It works, but it doesn't feel seamless.

So... what does ClipSync do?

The goal is pretty simple: make your Android and Mac feel like they're the same device.

Clipboard sync

Copy text or an image on Android and just hit Cmd + V on your Mac. That's it. And it works the other way around too. The really nice part is that text and OTPs are synced over Bluetooth, so your devices don't even need to be on the same Wi-Fi network.

Got a verification code in an Android app? ClipSync can bring it straight to your Mac so you can just copy it. No more typing those damn 6-digit codes manually.

File transfers

Select a file → hit Share → ClipSync → done. There's also a Ultra Fast Transfer mode for large files, which can sometimes be faster than AirDrop by a good margin if you are on a Wifi 5 or 6 Network.

Local or Cloud During setup, ClipSync asks you how you want your devices to sync:

Hybrid Sync — Sync locally when your devices are nearby, and automatically switch to cloud sync when they're apart. Everything stays encrypted. Local Sync — Keep everything between your nearby devices using BLE/Wi-Fi. No cloud, no internet required, and your data stays on your local network.

And a few other things On the Mac side, ClipSync adds a macOS Finder Share Extension, so you can send files straight from Finder without even opening the menu bar icon or going to the app.

How does it compare?

LocalSend is awesome for straightforward local file transfers, but it doesn't try to be a complete clipboard + OTP + file-sharing experience.

KDE Connect has a ton of features and is incredibly capable, but that also makes it feel a bit more complicated than what I wanted for everyday Android to Mac sharing.

And then there's Apple's AirDrop + Universal Clipboard, which is basically the experience I'm trying to recreate for Android + Mac. 😅

Pricing Free & open source (MIT). I've honestly gone back and forth on whether ClipSync should be paid. But at the end of the day, I genuinely love building this thing, and I'd rather see more people actually use it than put a price tag in front of them.

If ClipSync saves you some headaches, you can support the project through Buy Me a Coffee. It helps me cover the server costs and gives me more room to keep building and improving it.I'm also trying to get an Apple Developer account so I can make the macOS side of ClipSync more polished and properly distributed. The annual developer fee is pretty expensive for me as a student, so if anyone would like to help sponsor the Apple Developer Program fee, I'd genuinely appreciate it.

GitHub: https://github.com/WinShell-Bhanu/ClipSync

If anyone wanna download the apps directly, here the link to MacOS and Android

Would love to hear what you guys think — especially from anyone actually using an Android + Mac setup and here's a video Demostration of the app : https://youtu.be/755zjYaHlEM

Hi r/macapps!

ClipScrub finds and removes personal data from screenshots, PDFs, documents, spreadsheets and screen recordings on your Mac. Everything runs on your machine and nothing is uploaded. PCP below. Full list of what it does not do is in my first comment.

The problem

You copy-paste a screenshot of a customer record into ChatGPT to ask what an error means. The name, email or account number accidentally gets uploaded in full. The same could happen with a support ticket, a log, a row from a CSV. Once it's sent, the private data is uploaded to the cloud.

Mac Preview has a tool for this and it works. Preview can delete private details from the file in a way that's not recoverable. But it doesn't solve a couple of things:

• The Markup rectangle, what people might accidentally use, is a drawing/shape and the text underneath is still selectable
• The real tool takes out what you manually select but only in PDFs

This is fine for a 2-page PDF. But it becomes arduous for a 40-row CSV export, a long scrolling screenshot or a screen recording where a name is in a sidebar for four frames. The failure is human and not tooling. Many times in the past, I kept manually removing PII from screenshots and files like this.

ClipScrub scans PDFs, Word and RTF, PNG and JPG, JSON and CSV and XML, MP4 and MOV, and more all on-device (never leaves your Mac). In the Mac app, it lists every identifier it finds before stripping, so you can review it first. Your original file is never modified. ClipScrub has shortcuts to do it without opening the Mac app window. There's a shortcut to capture part of the screen and another that removes sensitive information from your clipboard.

Comparison

BlurData ($39/year, or $69 once with their discount as of Aug 2026) is the closest direct comparison. It reads JPG, PNG and PDF, OCRs 15 languages against ClipScrub's five, and runs on macOS 13 (earlier version than mine).

What it does better: it takes the text out of the PDF file instead of flattening the page. ClipScrub rasterises every page instead. If your PDFs need to stay searchable afterwards, then ClipScrub won't do that today.

BlurData supports JPG, PNG and PDF formats but ClipScrub also supports identifiers in CSVs, .docx files and screen recordings. A .docx through ClipScrub comes back as .docx with the same formatting. The Mac app and the CLI that comes with the app do DICOM and EDF headers as well.

ClipScrub's pseudonymise mode replaces identifiers with stable tokens instead of blanking out every value, so the same email is the same "token" throughout the file. You can still group, join and count these tokens (e.g. EMAIL_9F3A is an email token). Stripping data usually destroys it but ClipScrub does its best to keep the relationships in the data.

BlurData's $69 tier is two years of updates on one Mac. ClipScrub is every 1.x update permanently, on three Macs.

CleanShot X ($29 for one Mac, one year of updates, then $19/year optional) is not a direct comparison but it's what most Mac users already have. It's a better screenshot tool and has a lot of capabilities. Its blur and pixelate are manual, like Preview's. It will hide anything you select and it won't tell you that you missed the account number in row 99.

Pricing

$29, paid once. No subscription, no renewal, no activation server to connect to (all on-device). Three Macs. Every ClipScrub 1.x update included permanently.

14 day free trial, fully functional, no account and no card. 30 day refund.

https://clipscrub.com/#pricing

Direct download, no email needed: https://clipscrub.com/download/ClipScrub.dmg

For r/macapps: 25% off with code MACAPPLAUNCHES25. Capped at the first 50 uses. There's no end date, it just runs out when it does.

I'm also giving licences to the first five people who use it on real files and email me what it gets wrong (thanks in advance for your patience if I'm slow to respond). Comment (without private data please!) and I will DM you one. My list of known limits is below but let me know if you find issues and I will add them to the backlog to address.

I look forward to your feedback and continuing to make the app better.

Caveats

Full caveats list is in my first comment.

E.g. ClipScrub reads what is inside a file, not the file's metadata. It writes a new file, so the original's author and title fields never go into the output. Check the source with exiftool if detecting input metadata matters for what you are doing.

Disclaimer: ClipScrub is not a compliance service, does not guarantee complete de-identification, and is not legal advice. Detection is not exhaustive. Review every result before sharing.

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• Mario Hayashi, Tugboat Coding Limited (UK 11118743)
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariohayashi/
• Contact: hello@clipscrub.com
• Privacy Policy: https://clipscrub.com/privacy
• Terms: https://clipscrub.com/terms
• Engine and CLI are Apache-2.0: https://github.com/tugboatcoding/clipscrub-core
• The app itself is closed source

I'm a builder who got tired of paying monthly for polished demo video tools and every tool I tried either didn't quite fit my workflow or was missing something I needed, like draw-on-screen annotations: a pen, a highlighter, and a way to point directly at what I'm talking about.

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Create stunning screen recordings in seconds, not hours your demos almost make themselves.

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It's still early, and I'm building it mostly solo, so I'd genuinely love your honest feedback. What would make this more useful for your demos? What am I missing compared to the tools you already use?

Happy to answer any questions, and contributions are always welcome.

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Leave a star on GitHub: https://github.com/SECHAK-AG/capptivo