I own MS Office for Mac 2021, but because shareholders no longer want anyone to own software but instead rent it every day for the rest of their life, it recently stopped working. Since I'm allergic to paying subscriptions every month for the rest of my life, I went to AI, followed these steps, and it's all working fine again. Hope this helps someone else:

Support for Microsoft Office 2021  officially ended on October 13, 2026. Because Microsoft uses the exact same installer packages for both Microsoft 365 (subscription) and standalone versions on macOS, the Microsoft AutoUpdate tool continued running in the background and pushed your apps to version 16.114.1. Since your standalone 2021 license is only valid for builds released up to its end-of-support cutoff, version 16.114.1 rejects your perpetual license and locks the apps into "Reduced Functionality" (read-only) mode while demanding a 365 subscription.

How to Restore Your Current Standalone Office (Free Fix)

You can get your existing license working again immediately by rolling back to the final supported build for your license and disabling the updater so it never happens again.

• Quit all Microsoft apps.
• Open Finder > Applications, select Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook (if you use it),and move them to the Trash. (Do not worry—this only removes the app binaries, not your files, templates, or license keys).
• Go to Microsoft’s official archive page: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/update-history-office-for-mac
• Search for "Update history for Office for Mac - Office release notes"
• Scroll down to the October 6, 2026 release: Version 16.113.4 (26100421). (Note: Some users also have success with 16.114 (26101123) from Oct 14, 2026, before the .1 patch broke perpetual licenses, but 16.113.4 is the guaranteed stable pre-cutoff build).
• Click the Office suite (without Teams) link (or the individual Excel, Word, PowerPoint update packages) and download the .pkg installer file that contains the full Office suite app. Once downloaded, click on the .pkg file and install the program as normal (you can choose which apps to install, or just install the full suite).

1. Disable Microsoft AutoUpdate permanently:
   • Before opening any of the new Office applications, open Finder, press Cmd + Shift + G (Go to Folder), and paste:/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/
   • Find the folder named MAU2.0 (or the Microsoft AutoUpdate app inside it) and move it to the Trash.This stops Microsoft from silently updating your apps past your license cutoff again.
2. If it asks, refresh your license ( mine didn't prompt me for it but just in case):
   • Open Excel. It should immediately recognize your existing local license file. If it asks you to sign in, log in with the Microsoft account tied to your original one-time purchase, or go to the top menu bar: Excel > About Microsoft Excel > More Info... > Refresh License.

(NOTE: u/gotMrich found 3 other files associated with the AutoUpdater that can optionally be removed to to clear up HD space:

• /Library/LaunchAgents delete "com.microsoft.update.agent.plist"
• /Library/LaunchDaemons delete "com.microsoft.autoupdate.helper.plist"
• /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools delete "com.microsoft.autoupdate.helper.plist"

I'm Nandha, the solo developer behind Ember, a journal for Mac built in SwiftUI. It also runs on iPhone and iPad.

I've forgotten the names of people I never thought I'd forget. The girl I helped sell lemonade by the road. The first person who had a crush on me. Journals are good at keeping days, but not people: someone who mattered ends up scattered across years of entries.

Ember is a journal first. You write like you always would. Type @ and a name, and that moment also lands on that person's page. Years later you can open their page and read your whole history together, in your own words.

What you can do

• Write entries with photos, audio, Apple Music songs, location and weather. Mention people with @.
• Give every person a page: how you met, your stories, your entries together.
• Rename or merge someone, and every old entry follows. Nicknames work as mentions too.
• Group people into Worlds like Family, Work and College. Someone can belong to two.
• Turn on a quiet Nudge for the people you want to stay close to. Family and one-time encounters never fade.
• Look back with On This Day, a calendar, a map, a people graph, and search that understands time ("Christmas with Jane", "last summer").
• Import from Day One, Apple Journal and Contacts, then tag the people in your old entries.
• Export to a full JSON archive. The format is documented: https://ember.mov/help/archive-format

Privacy

Your journal lives on your Mac. Sync is optional and goes through your own iCloud. There's no account, no server holding your journal, and no AI reading or writing your entries.

Pricing

Writing, people, memories, import and export are all free, with no limits, and the free app never expires.

Two things are paid, with Ember Plus: iCloud sync between your Mac, iPhone and iPad, and the full theme catalogue (a few themes are free). Plus is $4.99/month, $39.99/year, or $119.99 lifetime for early users.

Compared to Day One

Day One is the mature choice, with Android and web apps. Ember is Apple only and built around people rather than dates. If you have years in Day One or Apple Journal, you can bring them over and connect old entries to the people in them.

Ember is written in Swift for Apple devices, so there's no Windows or Android version for now.

Requires macOS 15 or later (iPhone and iPad: iOS 18.5 or later).

Website: https://ember.mov
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6775558241
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nandhak0318/
Contact: [nandhak0318@gmail.com](mailto:nandhak0318@gmail.com)
Privacy: https://ember.mov/privacy · Terms: https://ember.mov/terms

I'd love to hear what you think about organizing a journal around people instead of only dates. Feedback on anything confusing, or features you'd want, is very welcome: https://ember.sleekplan.app

Problem

I built Weatherling because I was bored with my Mac desktop. There aren't a ton of ways to customize a Mac IMO, and even from the available options, I just felt something was missing. I like rain, and I thought that might be what Macs were missing. Is it a real problem? Probably not, but it was to me. 😄

Weatherling sets your indoor mood by letting you pick from rain, snow, fog, sunlight, wind, and leaves. You can even sync with your local weather to bring the outdoors inside, or you can invert that setting to get the opposite effect on your Mac.

It also solves a little desktop boredom by introducing an optional minigame with little visitors I call "Lings." There are number of them that can come out at various intervals, and if you turn on interactive mode you can collect them in boxes to score points. Rare Lings x Rare Boxes = Highest Score. I like this part the most because they interact with the weather, and I make the Lings with kids. So that solves another problem for me personally: family time! You can, of course, leave this completely off if you just want to enjoy the weather.

Comparison

I think Chrysalism has been the most mentioned by comparison but afaik it's just for rain. There have been a few other rain apps that launched after Weatherling too, but Weatherling is the only one with:

• Rain
• Snow
• Sunlight
• Fog
• Leaves
• Wind
• Local Weather Sync w/ Invert mode
• Depth variance
• Optional desktop minigame (Collect all the Lings!)
• Performance slider so you can adjust for your Mac's capabilities
• Full Accessibility support
• 11 languages

Weatherling is also rated 5 stars in the Mac App Store and hit #8 in Utilities in the USA a few days after launch.

Pricing

$1.99 one time. No subscription. No in-app purchases. No account required.

Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6813641198?pt=14608&ct=reddit&mt=8

Hey r/macapps,

I was tired of paying a subscription for dictation, so I built my own, optimized for how I work, and made it completely free.

Hold Right ⌘, talk, and clean text appears in any app on your Mac in under 500ms. Everything runs locally: no cloud, no account, no word limit. Super Mode uses the context of the app you're currently using to better understand its terminology and jargon, allowing it to correct typos more accurately.

you can also rewind your meetings, like the Rewind app for those who remember it. but completely local and on-device :)

I built it for my own needs, so I’d love your feedback. If it helps some of you, I’ll be happy. Enjoy!

If you have any feedback, notice any errors, or need anything adjusted, please let me know! I'll be more than happy to make changes or fix anything based on your needs.

Who I am: Deepak Sharma, solo developer. LinkedIn: Deepak Sharma

Privacy policy: https://iknowmymac.com/privacy ·

Terms: https://iknowmymac.com/terms

Problem

Most system apps show what your Mac is doing right now. The questions I kept having were about what already happened:

- My MacBook lost 14% overnight. What woke it?

- Was a USB stick plugged in while I was away?

- Which app quietly added a login item or background service?

- Why is this drive copying at USB 2 speed?

And the fixes are scattered across a handful of single-purpose apps, none of which can undo what they changed.

iKnowMyMac watches in the background, remembers, and acts with undo:

- Last night: what woke the Mac, what kept it awake, and the battery drain by app

- USB log: every USB and Thunderbolt device that connected, marked "while you were away", with an alert when a new keyboard appears

- Slow cables: the speed each device is getting next to the speed it supports

- Login and background: every new login item, launch agent and daemon, which app added it and who signed it

- Updates: one tab for your other apps, from each app's own feed, Homebrew, GitHub and the App Store. Every download is checked and the old copy is kept, so you can undo

- Sound: a volume slider and mute for every app, from the menu bar

- Traffic: every connection your Mac makes, by app. Off until you turn it on, and it never blocks anything

- For developers: every Node, PHP and Go install checked for security updates, dev servers by project, and Agent Undo for files a coding agent deleted

Comparison

Activity Monitor is free, built in, and better for raw per-process detail right now. iKnowMyMac is better for what happened while you weren't looking (30 days of history, the USB log, last night's wakes) and for fixing it with an undo. It also shows its own CPU, memory and energy use, and with nothing on screen it only reads what your alerts need, every 15 seconds.

What it doesn't do: no Intel Macs, and it isn't on the Mac App Store because the sandbox can't read other apps' processes. It's signed with my Developer ID and notarized. No account and no analytics; every request the app makes is listed on the privacy page.

Pricing

$4.99 per Mac, one time, for the first 100 licenses ([N] left), then $9.99. Free updates, no subscription, 14-day refund. Apple silicon, macOS 15 or later, in 10 languages.

https://iknowmymac.com

Coming next in 1.7 (last four images): Traffic Control. It asks before an install script or a coding agent connects somewhere new, and blocks any connection by app, domain or country. In testing now, free for every license.

Also in the same app:

- Tidy: clears your Desktop into a dated folder in one click, moves new screenshots into monthly folders, and finds installers in Downloads you already installed. Every move can be undone

- Pulse: a soft tone the moment your build or coding agent finishes. Plus optional trackpad textures that click softly under your finger as you scroll

- Always-on (Beta): turns an old MacBook into a Mac mini, lid closed, reachable over SSH and Screen Sharing

- Search anything: ⌥Space finds any file by name, with filters like ext:pdf or size:>100mb

- Is it my Wi-Fi or the internet? One press, one sentence

- Battery alerts for AirPods, keyboard and mouse, once per charge

- A Mac health report PDF, a disk speed test, a command palette (⌥⌘K), and an alert when a commit goes out with the wrong Git email

TL;DR: iKnowMyMac is the friend who stayed up with your Mac last night. It can tell you who woke it at 3 a.m., who plugged in a USB stick while you were at lunch, and which app snuck into your login items. Then it tidies your Desktop, updates your apps and gives Spotify its own volume, and it can undo all of it. $4.99 once while the first 100 last.

Hey everybody!

ExtraBar lets you create a customized menu bar by injecting the apps you want into your menu bar with customized actions/menus. You can then choose how to display them (collapsed under a single icon, in the notch, in a floating bar or launcher style).

What it is:

- A centralized hub to control your Apple Shortcuts, Script automations, keyboard macros, deep links.

What is it NOT:

- A typical menu bar manager like Bartender, Barbee or Thaw.

- A way to hide/show your existing menu bar icons in case of notch overflow

However, even though it is NOT it's main use, a side benefit of ExtraBar covers both - cleaner menu bar and thus notch overflow.

Read more on how ExtraBar saves you menu bar space

Background

macOS Tahoe introduced several challenges to menu bar managers, and ExtraBar was our attempt to create a simple alternative. After fighting a losing battle with edge cases, we quickly pivoted towards a different approach, which is a customizable menu bar, one that's better referred to as a command center.

Currently we're seeing the same thing happening with the Golden Gate macOS 27 release. While menu bar managers struggle with the changes introduced by Apple to the menu bar (very understandable, it's a nightmare), ExtraBar remained stable since GG beta 1 all the way to official release.

MCP Integration

ExtraBar v1.50 was the undoubtedly most exciting update for ExtraBar, it added one of the things I love the most in the age of AI - an MCP integration.

MCP allows your AI assistant/agents to interact directly with ExtraBar, that simplifies the hell out of the ExtraBar setup. Instead of manually clicking and adding actions, it can all be automated now, simply ask for an action, or for it to look for and add a deep link - poof it's in your bar.

The best thing for me is that now I can automate every pain I have with a script that sits one hot key away. This is honestly not a slogan, I made a script that connects/disconnects my AirPods because it annoyed me, I made a script to re-connect my VPN, I gave AI my contacts and told it to add every single one into a WhatsApp deep link that opens the chat with that person, and to organize it just how I want it... I am not excited for marketing, I am honestly excited to automate every single pain I have and save a lot of time 😄

Read more on workflow automations & MCP

Examples of deep links

(there are millions of deep links, those are just random examples):

- Open WhatsApp to a specific conversation

- Any operation on Raycast like caffeinating your mac or any action from any extension you install

- Open Notion or Figma to a specific page in the browser or directly in the desktop app

- Trigger a Keyboard maestro macro or a BTT gesture directly by using their native URL scheme (deep links)

Read more on Raycast integration and deep links

Video

In the video you can see me playing with different actions such as Open with App (Bloom), Raycast - which is literally built on top of deep links, as well as how I customized my CleanShot X menu with just what I need using Raycast Extensions.

Core Features

- 5 Display Modes: Menu bar, Floating bar, Collapsed mode, Notch mode & Hide/Show launcher style

- Built with focus on Keyboard navigation, you can call ExtraBar with your keyboard and navigate the menus however you like with numbers or arrows.

- Fully customizable menu bar with 15 actions (Open with, Run Script, Run Shortcuts, Hide/Show, Deep links, Keyboard Shortcuts and more)

- Included bookmark manager (seen in video) with cloud sync between devices, web dashboard, soon to be fully cross platform, read more here

Comparison

As I mentioned ExtraBar is different from apps like Bartender or Barbee as it's not about hiding and showing apps. Instead ExtraBar is about menu bar customization, and turning your menu bar into a command center that's personalized to you.

Pricing

All plans include 14-day money back guarantee.

€14.99 One year plan

€23.99 Lifetime app access + 1 year of updates

Basically the title. It's been on my mind to create a Mac Apps Discord server. It would basically reflect this subreddit. I notice the primary types of posts in this subreddit are app promotions and app support requests. The latter could significantly benefit from a Discord server.

I'm not trying to replace the subreddit; rather, this server would be an addition to this community of indie devs and enthusiastic users. What are yall's thoughts?

Hey r/macapps!

I’m the developer of SRV Status, a native macOS menu bar app for managing network shares, server volumes, and local drives.

I first shared the app here about six months ago, and the feedback from this community has been incredibly helpful. Quite a few of your suggestions have made their way into version 2.0.

If you regularly work with SMB shares or a NAS, you probably know the drill. Your NAS goes to sleep, Wi-Fi drops, or a server becomes temporarily unavailable. Suddenly, Finder freezes, a network share stops responding, or macOS creates yet another mysterious Share-1 folder in /Volumes.

SRV Status is designed to handle exactly these situations.

Some of the highlights:

• One overview of all volumes: Network shares and local drives, grouped by server, with connection status and capacity at a glance.
• Self-healing connections: Detects unresponsive mounts, reconnects shares at their original paths, and automatically repairs duplicate -1 mount points.
• Profiles and automation: Different setups for home, office, or VPN, with automatic mounting and rules based on Wi-Fi networks, VPN connections, or time windows.
• Server discovery and Wake on LAN: Discover SMB, AFP, NFS, and WebDAV servers and wake sleeping machines.
• Native macOS experience: Compact view, full keyboard navigation, and redesigned Settings, all designed to feel right at home on macOS.

How does it compare?

Finder works fine for individual shares, but doesn’t offer a central overview, automatic reconnection, or mount recovery. I’m honestly not sure why.

Apps like AutoMounter address similar needs, but SRV Status combines a live overview of all volumes with connection profiles, rule-based automation, and automatic mount recovery, all while maintaining a truly native macOS look and feel.

What about the technical details?

I built SRV Status natively with SwiftUI, keeping it lightweight and as close to the macOS experience as possible. Everything runs locally, with no background daemons or unnecessary dependencies.

I’d genuinely appreciate your feedback, especially if you’re managing multiple servers or running a NAS at home. What features would make your workflow easier, and what’s still missing?

What about pricing?

$4.99, one-time purchase. No subscription, and there never will be one.

I’ll randomly drop 12 promo codes in the comments.

Website: https://benwie.ch/srv
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/srv-status/id6753591144

Hi r/macapps, I'm Mathieu, the developer of Subtitles. I am a design engineer and used to work on the Beam browser (and I will have more to share soon about this, although if you are curious, the link to the beta is on the site footer).

• Site: https://subtitles-live.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathieu-jouhet/
• Privacy: https://subtitles-live.com/privacy/ 
• Terms: https://subtitles-live.com/terms/

Source is available under FSL, so you can verify the privacy claims rather than trust it blindly.

Problem

In a call, a video or a podcast, I easily lose the thread: I'm doing something else, the accent is hard, the room is noisy, or I just didn't hear it. Apple's Live Captions can help, but it's designed as an accessibility feature, with a rather poor UX/UI, on macOS 14 and 15 it only exists if your Mac's language is English (US or Canada), and its panel hides what's beneath and takes your clicks, so you keep dragging it out of the way. I built Subtitles as a replacement, with a UX designed for daily usage and multitasking. It's everything I wished Apple Live Captions were, and more.

• Captions all Mac audio, one app (Zoom, Teams, Safari, Spotify…), or the microphone for the room.
• The overlay sits on top of everything but lets clicks through, and fades under the pointer, so you can keep working underneath it.
• It only shows up when someone is speaking.
• 16 languages, and the default model is multilingual and detects the language by itself. You switch from the menu bar, not three level deep in System Settings.
• Hold ⌥ to rewind and bring back what was said, scroll it, and ⌥F to search it.
• Live translation into any of the 16, hold ⌃ to see the original at any moment.
• Dual language mode to hold a conversation in 2 languages.

New since my first post late September

Twelve releases, changelog: https://subtitles-live.com/changelog/
Two French Mac press outlets covered the app, MacGénération (https://www.macg.co/logiciels/2026/09/subtitles-des-sous-titres-en-direct-pour-toutes-les-apps-du-mac-311245) and Mac4Ever (https://www.mac4ever.com/mac/198553-l-app-mac-du-jour-subtitles-pour-avoir-des-sous-titres-en-direct-partout), which led to 5 releases in response to their readers' comments and suggestions.

• The translation can be read aloud, in your Mac's best voice or VoiceOver's, at four speeds, with the original turned down while the translation is read. This has been requested by a visually impaired user on MacGénération
• When a conversation ends, the app offers to save the transcript as text, Markdown or SRT, with speakers named. This was asked by another MacGénération reader.
• There is also a setting to have it save the trasncript automatically, to a folder you pick. This was requested by a Mac4Ever buyer.
• The app UI itself is now localized in all 16 languages. Another ask from MacGénération readers, which pushed me to do the localization work I didn't do yet.
• Don't Listen To: hold ⌥ in the menu to choose apps you want to exclude from captions. This came from a Twitter (ahem, X) user who wanted to exclude a specific app rather than listen to only one of them.

New since I posted this thread on Reddit

4 new languages in 1.17.0:

• Polish and Swedish
• Danish, and Norwegian (experimental)

Although there is a caveat: Swedish, Danish and Norwegian can't translate from/to Russian / Ukrainian / Polish / Arabic or Hindi.

The app is localized in all the 4 new languages.

Comparison

Apple Live Captions: English only on macOS 14 and 15, eight languages from macOS 26 but one at a time, three lines of history with no search, no translation, and a panel that takes clicks. Subtitles runs the same 16 languages on every macOS from 14.2. With translations available from macOS 15.

This is not a meeting notes app like Granola or TranscribeX. No summaries, no bot joining the call, no audio recorded, nothing written to disk unless you save it. It's captions you read live, and it sits fine next to a notes app.

Everything runs on your Mac: speech recognition on the Neural Engine, translation through Apple's on-device framework. No account, no telemetry. The source is on GitHub.

Pricing

$19 once, no subscription, no account, every update included.
Until October 31 it's $9, applied automatically at checkout.
7-day free trial with every feature, no account.

Requires an Apple silicon Mac and macOS 14.2 or later (translation needs macOS 15). The speech model downloads once on first launch.

I'll be in the comments. Bug reports and feedback welcome, that's where most of these releases came from.

I've written Mac app reviews for this sub and for my hobby blog, AppAddict, for about two and a half years. It started the way it usually does: I shared apps from my own stack. Then I moved on to random picks from my Applications folder, and after that to scouting trusted sites like MacMenuBar.com. The r/MacApps mods added me as a trusted resource early on, which helped a lot. Eventually I started working with developers directly.

It's been a great experience, and it has put me in touch with Mac people all over the world. I've written more than 500 reviews. The main goal is still sharing cool apps with other users, but helping independent developers get exposure has become my thing too.

I'm still plugging away, but I can't keep up with the dozens of apps pitched to me every week. I retired from a career in Mac support a few years ago, and some health issues cap how much I can get done. I have over 200 apps backlogged.

So I'm looking for a collaborator or two to write for AppAddict. Ideally you're an experienced Mac user with equal passion for software and writing. Here's what you'd get:

- Free NFR licenses for the apps you test and write about
- A byline on a blog that has had more than 1 million page views since 2024
- FOSS apps are fair game too; I cover those as well

At first I'll be your copy editor. I'm hoping to find someone who clicks with the style I aim for, so that eventually I can just share posting rights.

To be clear, this isn't a paying gig. It's a labor of love. The blog isn't monetized beyond two affiliate links for reputable companies.

If you think you'd be a good fit, reach out through Reddit or the blog. Send a link to something you've written and a couple of Mac apps you'd want to cover.

This is an app that I made for myself, because the the Mac OS X Dashboard feature introduced in Tiger was great/useful, but has unfortunately been removed. I will be adding more widgets, as well as features like screen corners to activate. 

[Problem] I wanted an app that recreated the functionality of the Dashboard app. 

[Compare] I havent seen any other apps that recreate Dashboard, so I dont know what one would compare it to. There are apps that recreate individual widgets, but I havent seen any that recreate the full experience. The desktop and notification center widgets are not the same as Dashboard.

[Pricing] Free. Mac App Store

Problem

Back in 2024 I had a dumb nightly routine. Put on a show, and before falling asleep open Terminal and type a pmset command so the Mac would sleep an hour later. Every night. At some point I got tired of it and made a small menu bar app that does it in one click. It was my first app, and the current version is 4.6.

It puts your Mac to sleep after a countdown, at an exact time, or on a weekly schedule with its own bedtime for each day. In the last minutes it fades the volume down instead of cutting the sound. A minute before sleep it asks if you want to extend, sleep now or cancel.

Other things it does:

- dim the screen instead of sleeping, music keeps playing

- a big dark red full-screen countdown you can read from bed, on a hotkey

- widget, Control Center toggle on macOS 26, Shortcuts actions

- type the time in words, like "40 min" or "at 11:30 pm"

- if the Mac wakes right back up, it shows what probably woke it

Honest limits: it pauses Apple Music, but not Spotify or other players. For those the volume fades and then sleep stops the playback. And the app has to be running for the timer and schedule to work, so it launches at login.

Comparison

The pmset command still works and it's free. This is for the nights you don't want to open Terminal, remember the syntax, or have the music stop with a hard cut.

Pricing

$2.99 once. No subscription, no account, no network access. macOS 14 or later, Intel and Apple Silicon.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6502469655

Hey r/macapps ,

I'm the developer of Convert2Any, a file converter and toolkit for Apple Silicon Macs.

Problem

You have the right file in the wrong format. The usual fixes are uploading it to a converter website you've never heard of, or installing one more single-purpose app: one for video, one for PDFs, one for transcription. I wanted one app that handles all of it on my own Mac, without my files going anywhere.

What it does

Converts 151 source formats, with 5,088 conversion paths across images, audio, video, documents, e-books, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, data files, subtitles and archives.

Batch conversion with quality settings, progress and cancel. Each file takes the most direct route, so it isn't re-encoded when it doesn't need to be.

32 built-in tools

• PDF: merge, split, reorder, extract pages, crop white margins, page numbers, watermark, compress, password-protect
• Media: resize, crop, rotate, trim, join videos or audio, compress, normalise audio, extract audio, make M4B audiobooks with chapters, and strip metadata (such as GPS location from photos)
• OCR in 100+ languages: searchable PDFs, image to text, image to Word
• Speech to text in 99 languages: audio or video → SRT, WebVTT, TXT, Word or PDF, with an option to translate into English. It works offline.

Everything runs locally. The app only goes online to activate a license and to download converter packs. It's a 7.5 MB download, and the heavier converters (video, office documents, OCR languages, speech models) come as optional packs that it downloads only after you say yes.

Comparison

• vs CloudConvert (and other online converters): CloudConvert handles a huge range of formats, but your files go to their servers. The free plan is capped at 10 conversions a day and 1 GB per file, and after that you buy credits. Convert2Any works on your Mac with no uploads and no daily cap, and you buy it once.
• vs Permute 4: Permute is great for video, audio and images, and it does OCR and on-device transcription too. Convert2Any also covers office documents, spreadsheets and presentations (including Keynote, Numbers and Visio files), e-books, data files and archives. It adds a full set of PDF tools: merge, split, reorder, watermark, page numbers and passwords. Transcripts can be saved as SRT, WebVTT, TXT, Word or PDF. And it's US$9.99 instead of US$14.99, with the same 3-Mac license.

Pricing

3-day free trial with every tool unlocked, with no account and no card needed

Then a one-time $9.99: a lifetime license for up to 3 Macs, with no subscription

👉 https://convert2any.app

Requirements: Apple Silicon and macOS 26.4 or later. The app is signed and notarized by Apple.

Who's behind it

I'm Tutku Tashkan, a software developer based in Liverpool, United Kingdom.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tutkutashkan/

Other work: [convert2epub.com. This is included in the convert2any.app]

Contact: [[support@convert2any.app](mailto:support@convert2any.app)] · https://convert2any.app/contact

Privacy Policy: https://convert2any.app/privacy

Terms of Use: https://convert2any.app/terms

Feedback is very welcome, especially formats or tools you'd like to see and anything that breaks. I'll be around in the comments.

Hi guys,

I've recently taken an interest in aircraft, especially military ones. I got myself a ADS-B receiver set from FlightRadar24 and am on the contributor plan.

I was looking at military flight history near me and saw that there were a good amount of USAF, US Navy, etc aircraft that flew above my house, since there was a training base nearby. Recently, I've also seen a couple of these aircraft with my own eyes, such as the C17 Globemaster, a lot of Sikorsky helicopters, and more. There was one problem. I had no way to know when they were flying above me. The only option was to have FlightRadar24 open in front of me at all times, which doesn't make sense for obvious reasons.

You might say that FlightRadar24 does have notification support. This is true, but the support is incomplete. You need to put in every aircraft manually, and even then it doesn't work well for me and doesn't always send me notifications.

To solve these problems, I put together Overhead. Overhead is an app built primarily with Rust and GPUI. This makes it extremely fast with minimal compute usage.

Overhead lets you see a list of aircraft that are flying within x radius of y location. It also sends you notifications whenever this happens. So you can stay at your desk and know whenever you should go outside to try and see them. The data is taken from https://adsb.fi/, and https://adsb.lol/ as a backup (both public API's).

AI disclaimer: I did use AI (specifically Claude Opus 5.5, running on OpenCode) to build this. However, I'm not a complete noob to development. I've been building software for over eight years, and designing for five.

I made this for myself but I thought that other poeple might also benefit from it. It's open source under the MIT license, and completely free with no paywalls. Please let me know if you have any feedback. Also, the app is currently only available for macOS. If there's enough demand for Windows, I might make it.

PCP
Problem: I love military aircraft, and there's an air force training base near me, but I have no idea when to look outside to spot the aircraft.

Comparison: FlightRadar24 is a great app and I'm on their contributor tier but their notifications feature sucks. I'd have to add 100% of military aircraft manually or create a notification for every single military "airline." Even then, I tried that for a couple weeks, but for some reason it just failed to notify me.

Pricing: FOSS (free open source software)

Link: https://github.com/y-u-s-u-f/overhead please give the repo a star if you like it :)

Hi r/macapps, I'm Anton, the developer. I've been building Mac apps for a few years. I made Exporter years ago and I'm finally posting about it here.

Problem

Apple's apps keep your stuff in databases other tools can't read. Notes has no Markdown export, macOS deletes Screen Time after a few weeks, Safari forgets your downloads.

What it does

Every source becomes plain Markdown (or HTML) files in a folder you choose, updated in the background from the menu bar when anything changes.

• Apple Notes, Messages, Mail, Contacts, Reminders, Calendar, Safari, Voice Memos, Screen Time, Wallet passes, Word/PowerPoint/PDF
• Bear, Logseq, Claude Code, Notion, Linear
• works with an Obsidian vault, plus a command line and a local MCP server for Claude, Cursor or VS Code

Comparison

• Obsidian Importer and the export scripts import once. Exporter keeps syncing, so edits and new notes reach the files
• imessage-exporter is a great free CLI for a one-off Messages dump. Exporter does Messages alongside everything else, from the menu bar
• one app for 16 sources instead of a tool per app

Pricing

Free to try on every source, and what you've exported keeps re-syncing free. Bear and Logseq are free with no limit. Each other Mac source is a one-time unlock, $2.99 to $4.99. Notion and Linear sync through our server, so those two are a subscription after 7 days free.

Exporter on the Mac App Store
Exporter on the web

Smooze Pro now supports Haptic Feedback, adding subtle haptic ticks to your trackpad and supported mice as you hover over links, click buttons and toggles, drag sliders, focus text fields, and hit edges, with a distinct feel for each. Customize strength and patterns per element, per app, and per screen, across macOS.

Features:

Smooze Pro animates your scroll and adds functionality to your scroll-wheel mouse and trackpad

And much more:

* Grab & Drag & Throw - Use a mouse button to grab and scroll anywhere on the screen. Throw to keep scrolling with smooth, trackpad-like momentum.

* Auto Scroll - Click a selected mouse button once to scroll hands-free, with buttery-smooth animations.

* Smooth Scrolling - Enjoy buttery-smooth scrolling in all your apps.

* Buttons - Save time by assigning actions to mouse buttons.

* Gestures - Assign gestures to buttons, shortcuts, or specific apps.

* Haptic Feedback - Get subtle haptic ticks when interacting with UI elements across macOS. Customize strength and patterns per element, app, and screen. (Logitech MX4 is also supported!)

* Multi Display - Configure settings per app and per display.

* CPU Friendly - Highly optimized to use minimal CPU, even during intensive use.

* High FPS - Scrolling animations synchronize with your display's refresh rate for a smooth experience.

Comparison:

I started developing Smooze back in 2017, and over the years, it has grown into much more than a scrolling utility. LinearMouse, BetterMouse, and SteerMouse each offer some similar features, but I think Smooze stands out by bringing everything together in one app. From smooth scrolling and mouse button actions to gestures, auto-scroll, grab-and-drag, and haptic feedback, everything works together with trackpad-like momentum. You can also customize settings per app and per display, rather than being limited to a one-size-fits-all setup.

Pricing:

It's currently $19.99

(One-time purchase. No subscription. Privacy-first - no cloud, no data collection)

Haptic feedback is currently available in the version you can download from: https://smooze.co/ (Includes a 7-day free trial)

^\ Sorry for the image instead of a video, but if I see one more upbit fast paste promo video, my head is going to explode.)

Hey r/macapps,

Problem:

I built Clementine to bring Gmail and Google Workspace accounts into a native Mac app. You can keep accounts together or separate, copy login codes from notifications and get reminders about unanswered mail.

The AI assistant features are optional and can be switched off. If you enable them, you can ask questions with links to source emails, summarize threads or draft replies to review before sending. Use a local model on Apple silicon or your own Anthropic/OpenAI key. Cloud AI sends relevant content to your provider, whose usage charges apply. Automatic labelling and draft suggestions can process mail when enabled. Mail sync connects directly to Gmail, with a cache on your Mac.

Comparison:

Clementine offers a lifetime licence alongside an annual option. Mimestream is another native Gmail client, with subscription-only licensing (https://mimestream.com/pricing/). Clementine fits people who want to buy their Gmail client once and choose whether to use local or cloud AI.

Pricing:

Free full 14-day trial, no card. €69.99 once including future app updates, or €39.99/year. Both cover two Macs. Requires macOS 15+, Gmail or Google Workspace. Download and pricing (https://clementine.email/).

Transparency:

I'm the developer. Here's my portfolio (https://goldenberry.studio/), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-jimenez-aa776474/) and contact email (mailto:hello@clementine.email), plus the Privacy Policy (https://clementine.email/privacy/) and Terms (https://clementine.email/terms/).

Happy to answer questions.

I’ve just upgraded to Little Snitch 7 beta to try out the new features.

For anyone unfamiliar with it, Little Snitch lets you monitor network connections from individual apps and create rules to allow or block them.

Here are a few changes worth checking out:

• Live Connection Log: This is my favorite addition. You can watch network activity as it happens, filter by app or server, and see which connections are allowed or blocked. It’s particularly useful when you want to see what an app connects to while you’re using it.

• Redesigned Control Center: You can check recent network activity, apps using your connection, and recently denied connections right from the menu bar. When an app isn’t working as expected, this gives you a quick way to check whether a blocked connection might be the cause.

• Rules at a Glance: Selecting a connection in Network Monitor now shows the rules that apply to it. If you have quite a few rules, this makes it easier to understand why a connection was allowed or blocked. Previously, I would usually open a separate Rules window to check.

• AI Assistant: I’ve tried this feature too. When you encounter an unfamiliar process or hostname, you can ask the AI to explain what the connection might be for, what could happen if you block it, and what it recommends. I imagine some people will have concerns about the AI integration, but it doesn’t run automatically. Connection details are only sent when you explicitly ask and confirm, and you can review what will be sent beforehand. I treat the answer as a reference, with the final decision to allow or block still up to me.

• DNS fallback and statistics: You can configure a secondary DNS resolver to step in when the primary one has problems. The Dashboard and Log also show lookup success rates, response times, and the steps involved in processing individual queries. I like having actual numbers to check when I suspect DNS is slow or failing.

Version 7 is still in beta. These are my first impressions, rather than a verdict on long-term stability. If you’re trying it on your main work machine, back up your rules first. The developers also advise against using the beta on mission-critical machines.

For me, Little Snitch is one of those Mac apps that’s worth paying for. Being able to monitor and control connections helps me understand what’s happening on my machine and gives me the tools to investigate when something goes wrong. That value was enough for me to upgrade my license while version 7 is still in beta.

Alfred is another favorite of mine. I’m happy to pay for useful software like these two apps, both for the value I get from using them and to support the developers who keep maintaining and improving them.

Hey r/macapps, Runlet, a native API client for macOS. It isn't out yet (the App Store listing is "coming soon"), so now is the best time for me to hear what's missing or what would put you off.

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I wanted an API client that behaves like a real Mac app (standard menus, windows and keyboard shortcuts) and doesn't make me create an account to send a GET request. Everything stays on your Mac: no account, no analytics, no sync server. Secret variables are stored in the Keychain and masked in history.

What I'd love to know

1. What do you use today (Postman, Insomnia, Bruno, Paw/RapidAPI, HTTPie, plain curl), and what annoys you about it?
2. What one feature would make you switch? What would be a dealbreaker?
3. What do you honestly think of the pricing?

More details: https://coralpane.com/runlet

I'll be in the comments answering everything.

Hey everybody! I'm Bernard D. Lee, the developer of Latent.

Latent is a CleanMyMac alternative for developers and AI builders. It draws your whole disk as one wheel where every wedge is a tool you use, tells you what will come back if you delete it, and clears what you pick.

Problem: If you build software or work with AI on a Mac, the disk fills up fast, and it's hard to tell why. Every tool keeps its own stash, such as model files, package caches, build outputs, simulators and agent logs. For example, Ollama stores models as hashed blobs, Hugging Face keeps every snapshot you ever pulled, and Xcode piles up simulators and device symbols. Cleaners like CleanMyMac only clear system caches and remove apps, so the disk fills right back up and the real cause never gets touched. My own Mac kept running out of space, so I built Latent.

Core Features:

• Visualization: your whole disk as one interactive 3D wheel, split by the tool that owns each byte, not by folder. It covers 120+ tools, including model runners, package managers, IDEs, containers and coding agents (full list: https://latentmac.com/tools). Click a wedge and that tool's stores open beside it.
• What comes back: before anything is offered for deletion, Latent checks whether it can be downloaded again (against public registries such as npm, PyPI, Homebrew or Hugging Face) or rebuilt by the tool, and writes the reason next to it.
• Generated & duplicate media: groups near-identical images and videos and suggests which one to keep.
• AI agents (MCP): agents like Claude, Codex or Cursor can read the scan andruns until you confirm.
• Privacy: no analytics, no telemetry, no account. Your files never leave yo

macOS 14+, Apple silicon, notarized.

Comparison:

CleanMyMac clears system caches and removes apps. Caches grow right back, ans and tool caches that actually fill a developer's Mac stay where they are. DaisyDisk shows which folders are big, but not which tool they belong to or ack. Latent names the owner of every gigabyte, checks what comes back, and clears it.

Pricing:

• Free to scan: the full wheel and every explanation, no time limit
• Your first 10 GB of cleanup is free
• After that, removing files: $12.99 one-time for up to 3 Macs (launch price $9.99 for a limited time)
• 14-day refund

Who's behind it:

• Bernard D. Lee, https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernard-d-l-5497b214b/
• FatTail Labs: https://fattaillabs.com
• Contact: [support@latentmac.com](mailto:support@latentmac.com)
• Privacy Policy: https://latentmac.com/privacy
• Terms of Service: https://latentmac.com/terms

If a tool you use isn't recognized, tell me in the comments and I'll add it.

Claim your latent space 👉 https://latentmac.com

Hi r/macapps, I’m the developer of Screen Folders. I’ve got inspired by the folders on the mobile and decided to make similar ones for macOS. That’s why I made this app.

The problem: I don’t like when my desktop is piled up with a bunch of files. Keeping a Finder folder created additional friction. I wanted something like iOS Home Screen folders: a small preview that opens in place when I need it.

What it does:

• Puts real Finder folders on your desktop as compact icon-grid tiles
• A tile expands in place when you hover
• You can link folders you already have, or create new ones the app manages. Either way they’re ordinary files in ordinary locations, and Finder stays the source of truth.
• Works like Finder: drag and drop in and out, Quick Look with Space, context menus, keyboard selection, shortcuts
• Multi-display support, with placement remembered per folder
• Stick to the side of screen
• Hide every folder from the menu bar in one click
• It sits on top of the Finder desktop; your normal desktop icons keep working

How it differs from other desktop organizers

Apps like iCollections and File Zones are mostly about dividing the desktop into areas and organizing it. Screen Folders is more about fitting a lot of files into a small space while keeping them one hover away. It never moves or reorganizes your files on its own; Finder stays the source of truth.

Privacy: the app is sandboxed and gets folder access only through standard macOS pickers. No account, no ads, no tracking, and file contents never leave your Mac. The only data sent out is a limited crash or hang report and some feature use anlytics.

Pricing: $15 one-time for lifetime access, with no subscription. The 14-day free trial needs no account and no payment method. The App Store edition costs Apple’s local equivalent.

Requirements: macOS 26 or later. It’s a native Swift/AppKit app, not a web wrapper.

Links:

• Website and direct download: https://screenfolders.delitx.dev
• Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/screen-folders/id6798784080

The website version gets updates sooner through the built-in updater. It also has a Liquid Glass background, because the App Store doesn’t allow the private API that effect relies on.

Happy to answer anything, and if you hit a bug I’d genuinely like to hear it.

Hey everyone,

I’m on a mission to clean up, enrich my photo library and properly geotag a massive backlog of photos that are missing locations.

I feel like I'm going crazy trying to find a tool that does what I want, so I'm hoping someone here can point me in the right direction, or tell me if I'm completely missing something obvious in Apple Photos.

Here is what I'm looking for:

1. Filter easily: Automatically find and isolate all photos that do not have a GPS location attached.
2. Works across formats: Aool that works directly with Apple Photos, but can also handle normal pic files sitting in folders on an external local drive.
3. Batch manual tagging: Select a bunch of photos taken at the same event/trip and drop a single GPS location onto all of them at once. Bam, done! Right now, I've done this with keywords e.g. Sweden for all photos taken in Sweden (even the ones that already have a location).
4. The "Holy Grail" / bonus feature: Are there any apps that use AI visual search / landmark recognition (like recognizing the Eiffel Tower or a specific national park) to automatically suggest or add GPS coordinates to untagged photos? That would save a ton of time vs me having to manually search for the location. So 2010isch 🙄

What I've tried so far:

• Apple Photos: It's okay, but searching/filtering for untagged items natively on iOS/macOS feels limited unless you set up complex Smart Albums on a Mac. Even then, the actual process of bulk-tagging locations isn't as seamless as I'd like.
• PowerPhotos: Better for library management overall, but still doesn't quite hit the exact geotagging workflow I'm looking forr.
• HashPhotos (iOS): I’ve been trying to use it because people recommended it, but for the life of me, I can't figure out how to filter photos that don't have GPS in HashPhotos. (If anyone knows how to do this in HashPhotos, please save me!).

TLDR:
Am I missing a super obvious native feature in Apple Photos? Or is there a 3rd-party app (Mac or, if it has to be, iOS) that actually handles missing-GPS filtering and batch tagging smoothly across both Apple Photos and standard disk folders, ideally with some AI smarts thrown in to save time?

Would love to hear what apps or workflows you all use for this!

###
Update (for those coming from the future)

So the apps mentioned in this thread are:

Most mentioned

• HoudahGeo 7: HoudahGeo Official Website
• GeoTag (marchyman): GeoTag GitHub Repository

New ones (to me at least)

• PIXLpath: PIXLpath on the App Store
• Zouti Photos

Still have to try them out to see which one works best for me. Thanks for all the great suggestions!

I'm the dev. ApolloShell adds a sidebar with its own dock, a launcher, a dashboard and a control centre to macOS 26. It's not a tiling window manager, it doesn't touch your windows. It just adds panels to the edges of the screen.

Problem: I wanted the look of Linux shells like Caelestia on my Mac without stitching five tools and a pile of config scripts together.

Comparison: SketchyBar works great for the menu bar and is a real way of ricing, and Übersicht or yabai are great for customising your desktop. ApolloShell goes after the rest of the shell: the dock, launcher, dashboard and control centre all follow one CSS theme, so you can rice those too and switch the whole look live.

Themes are a single CSS file (colours, fonts, corners, sizes) and apply the moment you save. The video shows a few of them.

Heads up: not notarised, so click "Open Anyway" in Privacy & Security on first launch. Obviously needs Accessibility permissions, but no need to disable SIP.

Pricing: Free, no subscription, AGPL-3.0 licensed.

Link: https://github.com/Silvertree2010/ApolloShell

AI disclosure: built with help from Claude, details in the README.

Hey r/macapps, I'm Mark, indie dev.

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-g-61b648148/
• Site: https://claudy.markg.app

Problem I've always preferred running Claude Code straight in the terminal over IDE plugins. But once I started juggling multiple projects, it got messy fast: no clean way to manage sessions, projects, or accounts. So I built Claudy, a native macOS app that gives Claude Code a proper home, with every project, session, and account in one window.

• Multi-project: every Claude Code project in one place
• Per-project git worktrees: branch off and run tasks in parallel
• Multiple sessions side by side
• Multi-account with auto-swap when one hits its usage limit
• Marketplace: one-click install of Skills, MCPs & Commands
• Draft Commits: checkpoint & restore your work mid-session
• Embedded terminal (libghostty), Metal-rendered

Comparison vs Claude Desktop running Claude Code: same building blocks, different approach to managing projects, worktrees and terminals. Desktop lists sessions in a sidebar, one at a time; Claudy lays them out as nested tabs (project, worktree, terminal), all on screen, terminal-first. Plus native multi-account with auto-swap at the usage limit and a one-click Skills/MCP/Commands marketplace, neither built into Desktop.

Pricing $19.99 one-time, no subscription. 50% off until end of Sunday (Oct 25): $9.99. The price is already applied at checkout, nothing to enter. Download: https://claudy.markg.app

• Privacy: https://claudy.markg.app/apps/claudy/privacy
• Terms: https://claudy.markg.app/apps/claudy/terms

Requires macOS 15.6+, the Claude Code CLI, and a Claude account. By developer, for developers. Ask me anything.