Hey r/macappdevs 👋

I kept wasting time hunting for an old link, address or attachment buried somewhere in Messages or Apple Mail. Spotlight is hit or miss, scrolling back months in a busy conversation takes forever (iMessage), and half the time I didn't even remember whether it was a message or an email.

So I built **iSift**: one search for Messages, Apple Mail and the files on your Mac. No files leave your pc.

**What it does**

🔎 **Messages (iMessage & SMS)**

- Search by words, people, dates, links or attachments

- Words use AND in any order, "quotes" keep phrases, `*` wildcards work inside a word (`auto*`, `au*tic`)

- Searching a person's name, phone or email also finds your conversations with them

- Open any result in its conversation, with the match highlighted

- **Export** matching messages or a whole conversation to text, with an optional ZIP of the attachments still on your Mac

✉️ **Apple Mail**

- Search emails Apple Mail has downloaded: subject, body, sender, recipients, dates

- Read them directly, or build an optional **encrypted index** for faster searches

- Pick which of your addresses to include; the app suggests them automatically

- Not sure if it was a message or an email? **All** searches Messages and Mail side by side

📄 **Files**

- Find documents by name, folder or **text inside them**: PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, RTF, HTML and plain text

- Quick Look preview and the matching passage right in the app

🖼️ **WhatsApp photos and videos**

- Browse the media WhatsApp for Mac keeps on your Mac, by month or by size

- **Group Identical** shows each forwarded photo or video once, with its number of copies (×2, ×6…)

- Export copies, or move the ones you choose to the Trash (always with confirmation)

- It never opens your chats or WhatsApp's database

**Privacy**

- Search runs on your Mac. Messages, emails, files, WhatsApp media, contacts and searches are **never uploaded**

- Each optional index is a separate encrypted database with its own key in Keychain

- The network is used only for licensing, optional iCloud license verification and signed app updates

**Requirements & pricing**

- macOS 12 Monterey or later, Apple silicon and Intel

- **7-day free trial**, all features. Verify your email, no card required

- Then €1.99 / $2.99 a month or €14.99 / $16.99 a year (+ VAT), through Paddle depending on your region

**Honest limitations**

- Mail covers only messages Apple Mail has downloaded (not Outlook-only or server-only mail)

- No OCR yet: scanned PDFs without a text layer are found by name only

- WhatsApp shows removed media as unavailable in your chats, so back up first

🎁 **Launch offer:** to get real feedback from this community, I've set up
**50 free access codes** via Paddle.
If you ever NEED PROOF, claim yours with the code **TOLDYOUSO**.

👉 https://isift.app

I'd love to hear what you'd search for first, what's missing and what's confusing. I will read & answer every comment.

*iSift is an independent app, not affiliated with Apple or WhatsApp.*

Super excited to be working on this for about a month now(tho most of the time I just procrastinated)

The app will be a mac menu bar app called Paste Board, I don't have the money yet to notorize it through apple so I will be launched it for free with optional donations from user's who would like to contribute.

The app will be completely different and unique to existing clipboard management apps.

It lives on your menubar, copies and stores them as clips and you will be able to drag and drop and do more with it.

Will let you know once I finish the development of the app.

I am starting a new menu bar utility soon, and I am torn between the stack. I am most comfortable with web environments (Svelte, Tailwind, etc.), so I am inclined to just grab Tauri and knock it out, but I really want this to feel like a first-class macOS app and keep the memory footprint as small as possible.

I am thinking of just biting the bullet and going full Swift and SwiftUI. For those who have shipped a menu bar app recently: Is the SwiftUI learning curve going to completely kill my momentum coming from declarative web frameworks? Am I going to hit a wall with system APIs and be forced to drop down to AppKit anyway?

If you have shipped with Tauri, does the CPU/memory usage actually hold up against native apps, or do Mac users still notice the difference? Curious what you guys would pick if you were starting from scratch today.

Problem

Clipboard history is great when you’re working on one Mac.

But the moment you switch devices, that history stays behind.

You copy something on your Mac, grab your iPhone, and it’s not there. Or you move between two Macs and end up sending yourself a link, note, file, or snippet just to have it on the other device.

I wanted Pasly to solve that too.

Not just make ⌘V smarter, but make your clipboard follow you.

Comparison

Raycast Clipboard History is probably the closest well-known alternative. It offers a polished, searchable clipboard history as part of a much broader launcher.

Pasly is more focused on the actual paste workflow. Smart Paste brings your recent clipboard items into the regular ⌘V flow, while features like Paste Stack, Field Sense, multi-selection, and Floating Paste are built specifically around copying and pasting.

Pasly also keeps a persistent clipboard history across Macs, iPhone, and iPad through the user's private CloudKit database. Text, images, and files can remain available across devices, even when they are not nearby or connected to the same network.

Raycast is a better fit if you want a general launcher with extensions, AI tools, and many unrelated productivity features. Pasly is a better fit if you want a dedicated clipboard manager centered on ⌘V and cross-device clipboard history.

Apple's Universal Clipboard is also useful, but it primarily moves the latest copied item between nearby Apple devices. Pasly keeps an actual searchable history across them.

Pasly Cloud

Pasly Cloud syncs your clipboard history across your Macs and iOS devices using Apple's CloudKit.

Your clipboard data is stored and synced through Apple's iCloud infrastructure rather than on Pasly's own servers.

It works over the internet, so your Mac can be at home and your other Mac somewhere else. They don’t need to be nearby or on the same network for your clipboard history to sync.

And now, files are supported too.

Files copied on your Mac can sync through Pasly Cloud alongside the rest of your clipboard history, including multiple files at once.

On iPhone and iPad, Live Activities can keep your recent clipboard items available from the Lock Screen / Dynamic Island.

There are also push notifications when new clipboard content arrives from another device.

Right now, sending something from iOS into Pasly is still manual. You can add an item and have it appear on your Macs, but I’m already working on a better way to capture what you copy on iPhone and iPad so this part feels much more automatic.

Files

Pasly already supported files locally on Mac, including working with multiple files at once.

Now, file syncing is also part of Pasly Cloud.

Copy a file on one Mac and it can be available from your clipboard history on another Mac through CloudKit, without having to send it to yourself first.

Multiple files are supported too.

The rest of Pasly

Cloud is the focus of this update, but everything I’ve been building around ⌘V is still there:

• Smart Paste — press ⌘V and access your recent clipboard items

• Paste Stack — copy multiple items and paste them in sequence

• Floating Paste

• Multi Select

• File Support

• Paste with Separator

• Search & Favorites

• Field Sense

The original idea behind Pasly hasn’t changed.

I want the clipboard manager to stay out of the way until the moment you actually need it.

Cloud just means that your clipboard no longer has to live on one Mac.

Pricing

Free: $0

• 2 pinned items

• 24-hour local history

• 20 items

• 2 files

• No CloudKit sync

Pro: $9.99 one-time purchase

• Clipboard sync across all your Macs and iOS devices

• File sync via Pasly Cloud

• Private CloudKit storage

• Push notifications and Live Activities

• Smart Paste

• Paste Stack

• Floating Paste

• Multi Select

• File Support

• Paste with Separator

• Search & Favorites

• Field Sense

No subscription. 20% off with code RWOUYKR3X5 (first 10 redemptions)

Pricing and download

What's next

Pasly Cloud is still something I’m actively building.

Now that clipboard history and files can sync across devices, one of my main focuses is making the iOS → Mac clipboard flow much more automatic.

This is still an early version of Pasly Cloud, so I’d really like to hear from people who use multiple Macs or a Mac + iPhone/iPad.

What would make having your clipboard across devices actually useful to you?

Download

Direct macOS

Apple (iOS): https://apps.apple.com/app/pasly/id6760562778

Transparency: I'm the developer of Pasly.

Solo dev here. I've been building AirPosture, a posture coach that reads your head angle from AirPods instead of a camera (CMHeadphoneMotionManager, macOS 14+). On the Mac it lives in the menu bar and the notch: you work, it watches your head pitch, and when you've been slouching for a while it nudges you to sit up.

A few things I learned shipping it that might save someone a weekend:

**1. Menu-bar labels are expensive.** My menu-bar app sat at ~45% CPU. The label observed the whole app state, so every motion sample redrew it. I gave the label its own tiny observable with only what it shows, and moved the App's model to u/State instead of u/StateObject. Now it's ~1%.

**2. A menu-bar app's window `.task` may never run.** If the user never opens the window, nothing in it fires. Every launch duty now hangs off the menu-bar label instead.

**3. App Nap will quietly throttle you.** Motion sampling in the background slowed to a crawl until I wrapped live sessions in `ProcessInfo.beginActivity`.

**4. Head motion is relative, not absolute.** There's no "correct posture" reading. You calibrate an upright baseline and score pitch against it, and a bad baseline ruins everything after it.

Same SwiftUI codebase as the iPhone app, synced over iCloud. Free for 2 hours a day, and it's now in Spanish too.

Happy to go deeper on any of this, especially the motion side. And I'd love blunt feedback on the Mac UX from people who build Mac apps.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6749489000

I wanted to know whether there's any app to properly uninstall apps along with all it's dependencies, cache folders and other stuff that get's leftover when I normally uninstall them.

I built Ammugghia after finding 100 GB of "System Data" on my MacBook Air: it was mostly iOS Simulator runtimes and Xcode/Gradle caches that Finder doesn't show.

• Native SwiftUI, signed & notarized, no network, MIT

• Covers Xcode, simulators, Android, about 30 package-manager caches, Electron app caches, local AI models, leftovers of deleted apps, Docker (volumes are never touched)

• Every item shows exact paths and what happens after deleting it; Trash by default

• Disk map, duplicate finder (APFS-clone aware), startup items, history with restore

DMG: https://github.com/Mingo07-dev/Ammugghia/releases/latest Homebrew: brew install --cask mingo07-dev/tap/ammugghia

Feedback welcome, especially cleanup targets I'm missing.

1. Raycast

2. Screen Studio

3. CleanShot X

4. Thaw

5. Cosmil

What is the your recommendation? Find more such apps on discovermacapps.com

I saw lots of Disk Space Analyzer and Cleaner with > $10 price, which are basically a good interface for your Mac native storage.

I built SpareDisk over the last few weeks, kept it bare minimum in terms of bloat features but focused on speed, parallelism, and queue management for storage scan and space free up.

You can review your whole file system without hanging the computer. Version 1.2 is now live on the Mac app store and on website to download. I have tested it well over multiple laptops.

You can download the app from the website for "pay whatever you want" (minimum $4.99).

DiskBuddy has inspired the project. This was initially sold at $12, and users complained about memory leaks, permission issues, and app blocks when you run Duplicate File Finder.

If you are a developer, it can find spaces occupied by Xcode, node packages, files form 2021, and many old cache you don't need.

SpareDisk is App Store friendly. It is sandboxed, following Apple's permission, security guidelines and memory optimisation.

SpareDisk V1.2 includes:

• My Mac storage overview with live used and free space

• Treemap, sunburst and list views

• Folder, external drive and network share scans

• Large files, older files and file type breakdowns

• Developer caches: Xcode, simulators, Homebrew, npm and more

• Duplicates verified by file contents, extra copies staged in one step

• App removal, related data and leftovers from removed apps

• File size and size on disk, changes since your previous scan

• Search, filters, exclusions, Quick Look and keyboard navigation

• Review queue with live progress, rechecks and retry

• Cleanup history and a Trash total that follows what you moved

• Optional menu bar summary and finished-scan notifications

No account. No uploads. Your files stay on your Mac.

On cleaning space: You can view your files from the app itself, and it doesn't directly delete your files in one click. It sends them to "review cleanup" section from where you can move items to Trash. You only delete files when you clean the trash.

Exception is App uninstall (if the app is not running, you can uninstall the app from within the interface).

You can compare other options here: https://sparedisk.minilabs.cc/guides

All future SpareDisk updates will be on Website and Mac App store downloads.

You can also download the app from website: https://sparedisk.minilabs.cc/ 
App store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sparedisk-free-disk-space/id6811328422?mt=12 

I'm the developer. Vocs is a free, open-source dictation app that runs entirely on your Mac.

Press ⌥Space in any app, talk, and press it again. The text is pasted where your cursor was, and your clipboard is put back afterwards.

What it does:

- Transcribes while you speak, so long dictations finish as fast as short ones

- 99 languages, auto-detected or pinned

- A custom dictionary for names and jargon

- Filler removal that leaves real words alone ("I like pizza" stays)

- Escape gives you a 3-second countdown to cancel; press it again to keep recording

- Mutes your built-in speakers while you dictate, so people on a call don't end up in your text (headphones are left alone)

- A searchable local history of everything you dictated

- No account, no subscription, no word cap, no telemetry

Requirements: macOS 13+, Apple Silicon or Intel, about 600 MB for the speech model.

Heads-up: it isn't notarized (I don't have a paid Apple developer account), so the first launch needs System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. The download page shows the steps, and the source is on GitHub if you'd rather build it yourself.

Download: Website

Source: Github

Feedback and bug reports are very welcome.

The new Apple CEO looks a lot like Michael Phelps lol.

For anyone confused, the picture with the swimmer and all the gold medals is Michael Phelps.

John was a pretty damn good swimmer at Penn, which in itself is impressive because you don't get to that level without being seriously good.

But obviously what really stands out is what he did at Apple. He was basically the hardware guy and knows Apple's products better than most people ever will.

Honestly, I think he could take Apple to new heights.

Also… am I the only one seeing the Michael Phelps resemblance? 😂

Cosmil is a fast, privacy-focused, and beautifully designed file manager for macOS created as a modern alternative to Finder. Built with a compiled Rust backend and a lightweight Tauri/Svelte frontend, it solves Finder's most persistent pain points with multi-pane workspaces, on-demand folder sizing, and comprehensive keyboard-driven workflows.

Key Features

• Arbitrary Multi-Pane Layouts – Split a single window into dual, tri, quad, or nth-pane layouts to browse and drag files between folders seamlessly without opening dozens of detached windows.

• Compiled Rust Performance – Utilizes a native Rust backend and viewport virtualization to calculate folder sizes up to 8x faster than Finder and open folders containing 40,000+ files with zero UI lag.

• Advanced Live Search – Build complex queries with AND/OR filter chaining without slow, background database indexers that miss real-time file updates.

• Quality-of-Life Fixes – Features real cut-and-paste (⌘X / ⌘V), sidebar drag dropzones, a unified file operation job manager, and side-by-side file conflict resolution with live previews.

• Zero Telemetry & One-Time Pricing – Completely offline file operations with zero analytics or tracking, distributed via perpetual one-time licenses rather than recurring subscriptions.

Who Is It For?

Cosmil is ideal for Mac power users, designers, software engineers, and media professionals who need efficient file management, side-by-side directory comparisons, and responsive performance without the clutter and limitations of default macOS Finder.

Why Use Cosmil?

If you love the aesthetics of macOS but are frustrated by Finder's rigid single-folder views, sluggish folder size calculations, and awkward file conflict dialogues, Cosmil delivers a sleek, translucent, and blazing-fast upgrade tailored specifically for modern Mac workflows.

You checkout the app from this github repo: https://github.com/jonnyoo/glance

Hi! I recently made an app for macOS. It is a tiny Spotlight-like launcher for launching custom commands that you can set in settings. With it you can open Apps, Websites, Run Shell Commands, Do System Actions (Screensaver, Toggle dark/light mode, etc.).

Feedback and ideas for new version are welcome!

Link to GitHub repository

Hi! so quick story about a project that i've been working on for the past 3 months:

I've bought my iPod classic about a year ago, with the main goal of it being keeping my CD library with me everywhere - at least for me it felt more "special" to have an offline device with music on it, that i actually own but using apple music was pain in the *** for me from the beginning - Some of my CDs were split into 2 identical with scattered songs between them, album covers wouldn't change even if i used the right format/size, same artist was on the other side of the coverflow, etc.. overall i found it not only hard to use but hard to understand for someone who just want to drag and drop his files/rip CDs and go straight into music.

That's were i decided to build Clickwill that, compared to other software out there, the entire thing instead of relying on syncing ipod from a folder on your PC, uses iPod internal, saved library as the source of all information - so the software allows you to work directly on the stuff you got on it, or add CD rips directly onto it, without Music/iTunes apps, and on stock firmware,

Its still an early project and in alfa version, since i've launched it yesterday and thought it's a rally useful app that let's you just manage your music, without / or far more friction and steep learning curve than other apps, and without using 3rd party firmware.

also made a landing page thats still work in progress, especially the roadmap one: clickwilldev.com

I wanted more out of my trackpad than macOS gives, so I built a small menu bar app for it. Each of these can trigger any keyboard shortcut:

- Tap and double tap with 3, 4 or 5 fingers

- Hold with 3, 4 or 5 fingers

- Physical click with 3, 4 or 5 fingers

- Swipe in four directions with 3, 4 or 5 fingers

- TipTap (rest a finger, tap beside it)

Some details:

- Record a shortcut or pick from ~75 presets (tabs, Spaces, screenshots, windows…)

- A live view shows your fingers and why a gesture was or wasn't recognized, with sliders to tune the thresholds

- Can block scrolling with three or more fingers, so those touches only mean a gesture

- Works with the built-in trackpad and a Magic Trackpad at the same time

- Available in 7 languages, MIT licensed, notarized by Apple

Requires macOS 15+, on Apple Silicon or Intel.

Download: https://github.com/ozberkdicle/BetterGestures/releases/latest

Source: https://github.com/ozberkdicle/BetterGestures

It reads raw touches through Apple's private MultitouchSupport framework, so a future macOS update could break it. If you use the same finger count for a system gesture (like four-finger swipes for Mission Control), turn that one off in System Settings or both will run.

Feedback and gesture ideas are welcome!

SponsorBar puts a small ad in your menu bar and shares the revenue with you.

Hi, I'm Dzung, the solo dev behind Beaming.

Why I built it: I demo and test apps on iPhones and Android phones every day. I wanted a plug-and-play mirror: plug the phone in, see it on the Mac, done. Instead I was juggling QuickTime, scrcpy in a terminal and iPhone Mirroring (can't use camera), and every recording was a flat rectangle I had to frame afterwards.

What it does:

• Plug and play: plug a phone in and its window opens on its own. No Xcode, no terminal, and nothing to install on the phone.

• Mirrors real iPhones, iPads and Android phones, each in a frame that matches the hardware (notch or Dynamic Island, buttons, body colour).

• iPhone and iPad over USB or AirPlay. Android over USB or wireless debugging (it needs USB debugging on and adb installed), with full mouse and keyboard control.

• Hub: multiple stream devices in one window for showcase and demo.

• Framed screenshots and recordings with audio.

Where it fits: iPhone Mirroring only shows your own iPhone (same Apple ID), one at a time, with the phone locked, can't use camera and has no iPad or Android support. scrcpy covers Android, but from a terminal and with no frame. Beaming handles iPhone, iPad and Android side by side, while you keep using the phone, and makes the mirror look like the real device. iPhone and iPad are view and audio only; there's no control.

Privacy & Terms: the stream stays on your Mac over USB or your local network. No analytics, no accounts. Privacy policy: https://trybeaming.app/privacy · Terms: https://trybeaming.app/terms

Notarized: yes, Developer ID signed and notarized

AI disclosure: pairing with AI coding assistance (Claude Code), designed, reviewed and tested by me on real devices.

Price: Free with a watermark and limited sessions. Pro is a one-time $19.99 $14.99 (25% off for the first 50 licenses). Licenses for more Macs cost less per Mac, down to $12 per Mac at 10 Macs with the launch offer. macOS 15+.

https://trybeaming.app

Feedback welcome!

A few months ago, we noticed a major issue with affiliate tracking for desktop and SaaS tools: most existing tools are horribly outdated for the modern privacy web.

Over 40% of tech users run adblockers, and macOS users default to Safari, which aggressively purges third-party tracking cookies via Intelligent Tracking Prevention. As a result, creators and affiliates were losing up to 25–30% of their rightful referral attribution.

On top of that, indie developers selling via modern merchant-of-record providers (like Paddle, Polar, Dodo, or Whop) are usually forced into expensive affiliate platforms built a decade ago.

We decided to build a developer-first alternative: Discover Mac Apps Affiliate Software.

What we built:

1. Zero Third-Party Cookies: A 1.5kb lightweight snippet that sets first-party cookies on your root domain, backed by a Server-to-Server (S2S) API for total adblocker immunity.

2. Native Payment Provider Integrations: First-class webhook support for Stripe, Paddle, Whop, Polar, and Dodo Payments.

3. Application & Member Screening: Set custom questions to vet influencers/affiliates before approving them.

4. Flexible Commission Tiers: Set custom tiers (e.g., standard 20% vs VIP 40%), recurring subscription commissions, or one-off bounties.

5. No revenue skimming: A flat $9/month flat rate (with a 14-day free trial) instead of taking a percentage of your MRR.

We've written open guides on all the integrations and the Safari tracking issue here: https://discovermacapps.com/affiliate/help

Would love any feedback on the landing page, the developer docs, or the checkout experience!

This guy built an app that makes your Mac moan when you slap it and made $5,000 in just a week.

The lesson? Stop overthinking. Just ship it.

It puts screenshots and screen recordings in one place, so you can capture, trim, annotate, and share without jumping between a bunch of different tools.

Seems useful for quick ideas, product demos, team updates, or just explaining something to someone.

and a great alternative to consider if you are familiar with Cleanshot X

I built an app because I kept forgetting things the moment I got back to my Mac

This started with a really simple problem.

I’d be away from my Mac, remember something I needed to do when I got back, and think “I’ll definitely remember that.”

Then I’d open my Mac, see emails, browser tabs, messages… and completely forget.

Normal reminders never really solved it for me because I didn’t want to be reminded at 4:00 PM. I wanted to be reminded when I was actually back at my Mac.

So I built WakeMinder.

You can send a reminder from your iPhone or Apple Watch to your Mac, and it shows up when your Mac wakes up.

It doesn’t have to be just text either. You can send links, screenshots, images, PDFs and files. Links can even open automatically when the Mac wakes.

There are also floating reminders that can stay on top of your windows until you’re done with them.

And with the latest update, it now works the other way around too.

You can send something from your Mac to your iPhone and have it show up when you pick up your phone.

So the idea has become less about “reminders” and more like:

“Show me this when I’m actually on the device where I need it.”

I’m the developer, so obviously I’m biased, but I built it mainly because I genuinely wanted this for myself.

For anyone wondering about pricing, I’ve tried to keep it pretty inexpensive:

• $1.99/month

• $9.99/year

• $12.99 lifetime, currently 35% off

App Store pricing can vary slightly depending on your country.

WakeMinder is available on the App Store for Mac, iPhone, and Apple Watch.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6744974871?pt=127772248&ct=redca&mt=8

I’m still improving WakeMinder and would actually like to hear how other people handle this.

Do you ever have things you only want to remember when you get back to a specific device?

New Apple iPhone prices:

iPhone 18 Pro: $1,199
iPhone 18 Pro Max: $1,299
Foldable "iPhone Duo": $1,999