Mac

You open a page to read one article and get a cookie banner, a video that starts on its own, and a prompt to sign in. Nook shows the article. Ads and trackers are blocked from the first page you open, reader mode keeps the text and pictures, and focus mode hides the tabs and toolbar. Cookies and cache are cleared when you quit. No account, no sync, no telemetry. macOS 13+, Apple silicon and Intel. Free.

Free, open source menu bar app that turns Ollama and Splash on and off in one click and unloads idle models from memory. It stops Ollama the way it started (Ollama.app, brew services or ollama serve). No accounts, no telemetry. macOS 14+.

Activity Monitor lists a thousand processes, a hundred of them called Google Chrome Helper. Vitals adds every helper to the app that launched it, so you see 60 apps instead of 1,000 processes, each with one figure for memory, CPU, energy, disk and network. It keeps 30 days of history, alerts you when an app misbehaves, finds forgotten dev servers, and shows temperatures, fans and battery. Every readout can sit in your menu bar, arranged your way. Pay once. No subscription, no account.

Press a shortcut, drag a box, and the shot comes back at your screen's real pixel size: on the clipboard, saved to a folder, and open in an editor with arrows, boxes, numbered steps, mosaic and crop. Pin a shot on top while you work, read its text or QR code offline, pick colours as HEX or SwiftUI. No network permission, no account, no analytics, no rating prompts, no cross-promotion. One purchase, English and Chinese, macOS 14 or later.

Every small file task on a Mac ends in a browser tab: upload, wait, download, close. Ricly puts 17 of those tools in the Finder right-click menu: send big files as a link, find duplicates, merge PDFs, strip the location data out of a photo, pull the text out of an image, remove a background, upscale, convert, compress. They run on your Mac, and nothing is uploaded unless you deliberately share a file. One price instead of five single-purpose subscriptions.

GroupShelf groups windows from any Mac app into tabs, like browser tabs for your whole desktop. Hold Shift and drag one window onto another to make or join a group. Move or resize one window and the whole group follows. Pull a tab off to split it again, color your tabs, name your groups. Native and lightweight, for macOS 15+ on Apple Silicon and Intel. $9.99 one-time, with a 30-day free trial of every feature.

FFFFinder is a fast media browser for macOS. Add any folder and browse images and videos from that folder and all of its subfolders together in one continuous grid. Filter, sort and search files, preview images and videos, and browse connected external drives. FFFFinder works directly with your original files. There’s no importing, no separate media library, no account and no cloud.

Tejora brings app-aware brightness to your Mac. Set a preferred brightness for individual apps and it automatically adjusts your display as you switch between them. You can also control system brightness and display resolution right from the menu bar, including external displays. Set it once, then let your Mac adapt to what you're doing.

FeedsBar streams high-signal headlines across your Mac desktop in a slim, always-on ticker, fed by the Signal 500: 500 sources hand-scored on editorial quality and ad restraint. Topic orbs reduce a cluster of headlines to three phrases. Play music and the ticker re-tunes to that artist. Add your own feeds and symbols, or send it full-screen as an ambient board. Native macOS, no account, no tracking. 7-day free trial, then $24.99 once, no subscription.

A desktop app for Mac where several AI agents work together as members of one workspace, and the room decides who takes what. Built on nostr and jev

Awnsy is a small menu bar translator for macOS. Select text in any app, press ⌘C twice, and the translation appears right over the window. For text you can't select, like images, scanned PDFs or video, drag a box around it and Awnsy reads and translates it. The translation model lives inside the app and runs on your Mac. No account, no API key, works offline, and what you translate stays on your machine. If you prefer cloud quality, add your own OpenAI or Anthropic key.

Apple removed Launchpad in macOS 26 and kept it out of 27. Launchie brings the grid back: arrange apps your way, unlimited folders, Spaces for separate app pages, and instant search. Free to use, Pro is a one-time purchase. Mac App Store and Homebrew.

Scan QR codes and barcodes from your screen or camera, see exactly what they contain, and act on them - without leaving your Mac. One keyboard shortcut to scan your screen. Nothing gets uploaded. All processing happens locally. Open payment QR codes directly in your banking app, launch links, or build barcode-based automations.

Bloop turns system audio or mic input into eight real-time shader skins - every frame reacts to what's actually playing. Keep it beside your work in the resizable Mini Player or send it to the menu bar. Drop in an MP3 playlist and export the whole thing as a finished video. Apple Silicon, notarized, no subscription. Two skins are free forever, and they're the full app, not a trial.

Naseem is a native AI agent for macOS, built entirely in Swift. It can work with your files, run terminal commands and Python, drive native Mac apps, automate and test apps in the iOS Simulator, use MCP and Skills, delegate to sub-agents, and work remotely through Telegram. Bring your own model or run locally with Ollama/MLX. Every consequential action requires your approval first, and autonomous mode is strictly opt-in. No Electron. No Node. It does real work on your Mac — with you in control.

Notchling is a tiny creature living in your MacBook notch. It watches your cursor, dozes off when you idle, feels your battery, and when you drag a file at it, it opens its mouth and carries it for you. Free, under a megabyte, and nothing leaves your Mac.

Keymap is a macOS menubar app that shows every menu shortcut in the app you're using. Double-press ⌘ to summon the panel. Local and private.

DockDuck is the native macOS file manager Finder should be — fast, beautiful, and 100% Swift. Tabs, dual-pane, a pinned Start dashboard, tags, instant search, batch rename, and connect to servers(SFTP/SMB) — all in one window that opens the moment you click. Pay once, no subscription. Your files never leave your Mac.

A native Mac app that exports one Messages conversation at a time into a searchable, iMessage-style offline website with the photos, videos and voice notes stored on your Mac. Reads your library without changing it. No account, no cloud, nothing leaves your Mac.

A native macOS terminal for serial, Bluetooth LE, Telnet and RFC 2217 consoles — with a TFTP/HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/SFTP server built in for firmware. Adapters by name, real break signals, byte-exact logs. No account, no analytics, no cloud.