Evidence-first research

‎Music Player Classic - A Simple And Beautiful Offline Music App

This is an offline music app that I made for myself because I am not really a fan of the stock music app that comes with the Mac today. I couldn't find any alternatives that I liked, and running old versions of iTunes on current Macs - though sometimes possible - is often rife with problems. Running old versions of MacOS just to be able to run older versions of iTunes also has problems these days. Therefore, the only choice was to make the app myself. And this is the result, after multiple years of programming work and refinement. Along the way I decided to recreate the user interface of one of the best eras of computing, the Tiger/Leopard era. **\[Problem\]** I wanted an app that was very simple, like iTunes used to be. An easy way to play and organize all my local songs. But also be able to change the metadata and rate them. I also wanted to get back the great user interface elements and configuration of the past. I wanted the Aqua user interface back. **\[Compare\]** The stock Apple Music app has made many changes during its transition from iTunes. Many of those changes did not improve the experience in my opinion. The artwork view in the lower left was removed. The rating view was changed to include empty star outlines, making it more difficult to discern the rating of songs. The volume on the mini player was made to be in a submenu which is an extra click away, rather than on the face of the mini player like it used to be. The mini player was changed so that the title of

Anthropic is cutting Claude Code's current weekly limits by 17%

Show HN: Swarm, an offline family tree app for macOS

Hi HN! My wife and I got deep into our family genealogy and wanted to map out all our relatives - but keep the data on our own Macs instead of uploading it to a genealogy service. Nothing we found did that, so we built Swarm, a native macOS app in Swift. It's built on GEDCOM 5.5.1, the universal genealogy file standard, so your tree exports cleanly to other ancestry apps if you ever want out. Example trees of famous historical families are included to play with. Features: multiple ancestry views (tree, fan, world map), media files, GEDCOM import/export, PDF export, tree merging, and kinship naming. Fully open source, no AI in the app, no internet connection required, no account required. Would appreciate any feedback!

Any apps that help my change audio and mic source from the upper taskbar

Any apps that help me change audio and mic source from the upper taskbar? Getting tired of always going to settings to do it. Only looking to switch audio/mic source don't need anything to do with mixing. free or low cost is fine.

Greypaint: Mac app updates from Homebrew, Sparkle, GitHub, and the App Store

Problem: Mac apps update through Homebrew, Sparkle, GitHub Releases, or the App Store, making it easy to miss updates when checking each source separately. Comparison: Greypaint combines those sources into one searchable inventory and shows the correct update path for every app. It updates directly where supported and opens the official release or App Store page otherwise. Pricing: 14-day full-feature trial, then $6.49 for a one-time lifetime license. No subscription. [https://www.greypaint.app/](https://www.greypaint.app/) I’m the developer. Greypaint is distributed outside the Mac App Store and the DMG is Apple-notarized.

AltBrowse: A Mac Menubar Browser Picker & Default Browser Switcher

Hey everyone, I made AltBrowse. It's a browser picker that lives in your Mac menu bar. Problem: I keep several browsers open for different reasons :work profile in Chrome, personal in Safari, testing in Brave, etc. macOS lets you have exactly one default, and changing it means digging through System Settings every time. So I made AltBrowse: click a link and pick where it opens, or set a rule once and stop thinking about it. What it does: * Change your default browser from the menu bar in two clicks, or set "Ask Every Time" and decide link by link * 6 picker layouts: Grid, Dock, List, Hero, Radial, and Preview, which loads the actual page inside the picker so you can see what you're opening before you choose * Site rules: docs.google.com goes to Chrome, mybank.com goes to Safari. Subdomains included, and a specific subdomain rule overrides a broader one * App rules: links from Mail open in Safari, links from Terminal in Chrome and Brave * ⌘-click to open one link in several browsers at once, number keys 1-9 to pick instantly * Browsing history with search, so you can reopen something in a different browser Comparison: The closest apps are Openly. Openly has subscriptions, and the lifetime key is way too expensive. AltBrowse is for when you want an easy way to change default browser and also to see the choice: six picker layouts including a live Preview of the page, opening one link in several browsers at once, searchable history, and both site rules and app rules with a visibl

Lumae: The AI Agent Video Editor for Screen Recordings and Screenshots (Free)

Hey, I'm [Mathieu](http://legault.me), the developer behind Lumae. # Problem I make a lot of **short demo videos** and **annotate screenshots**, and capturing them was never the hard part. It was editing them the way I wanted, adding in all the effects, stitching other clips with it, re-recording certain takes, and most importantly nowadays, **editing through MCP with my local agent**! So Lumae aims to do it all in one studio! It remembers where you clicked while recording, so it can drop in zooms that follow your cursor, and it sets the video on a background with padding, rounded corners and a shadow so it looks great. You can add captions, voiceover and music as well. # Comparison Screen Studio is the obvious one to bring up, and honestly it's good at this. Three reasons you might try Lumae anyway: 1. It's **free**. 2. You can **stitch several recordings into one video**, along with any other clips you want to drop in, which Screen Studio won't do. Most of my demos turn out to be four takes and a bit of B roll, so this was the feature I wanted most. 3. has an **MCP server built in**, so if you live in Claude Code or Claude Desktop you can prompt your edits away! Every edit an agent makes is a normal undo step, so nothing runs away from you. CleanShot X is what a lot of folks here already have, and it's lovely for screenshots and quick clips. I also added to Lumae a full screenshot and annotation suite of tools to make it well-rounded! Since people always ask about this: ano

Went for coffee? Bathroom ? Mini heart attack that you left you Mac unlocked? Well no more.

**Problem** You walk away from your Mac and ten minutes later you cannot remember whether you locked it. A free macOS menu-bar helper reports lock, unlock, and sleep to your own private iCloud, and the iPhone app and its widgets read it back, so the answer sits on your Home Screen. Every reading shows when the Mac was last heard from. After 180 seconds of silence it goes amber and stops claiming to be live. "Locked, 12m ago" is honest, a bare confident "Locked" is not, because a wrong answer here is worse than none. You can also lock a Mac from the phone, behind a confirmation. It's the only remote action I'll add, because it's the only one that fails safe. Comparison. Find My tells you where the Mac is, not whether its screen is locked. Screens and Jump Desktop show you the actual screen, which is more than I give you, but you have to connect in and wait, and the Mac has to be awake. This is read-only and takes no taps. **Pricing** \- macOS helper, free: [https://lockstatus.app/downloads/LockStatus.dmg](https://lockstatus.app/downloads/LockStatus.dmg) \- iPhone app, free for current state and recent activity: [https://apps.apple.com/app/id6799870198](https://apps.apple.com/app/id6799870198) \- Pro, $1.99/month or $9.99/year with a 1 week trial: widgets, full history, usage insights. **Transparency** Site [https://lockstatus.app](https://lockstatus.app) privacy [https://lockstatus.app/privacy.html](https://lockstatus.app/privacy.html) No servers, no account, no analytics: the

Greypaint: Mac app updates from Homebrew, Sparkle, GitHub, and the App Store

Problem: Mac apps update through Homebrew, Sparkle, GitHub Releases, or the App Store, making it easy to miss updates when checking each source separately. Comparison: Greypaint combines those sources into one searchable inventory and shows the correct update path for every app. It updates directly where supported and opens the official release or App Store page otherwise. Pricing: 14-day full-feature trial, then $6.49 for a one-time lifetime license. No subscription. [https://www.greypaint.app/](https://www.greypaint.app/) I’m the developer. Greypaint is distributed outside the Mac App Store and the DMG is Apple-notarized.

AltBrowse: A Mac Menubar Browser Picker & Default Browser Switcher

Hey everyone, I made AltBrowse. It's a browser picker that lives in your Mac menu bar. Problem: I keep several browsers open for different reasons :work profile in Chrome, personal in Safari, testing in Brave, etc. macOS lets you have exactly one default, and changing it means digging through System Settings every time. So I made AltBrowse: click a link and pick where it opens, or set a rule once and stop thinking about it. What it does: * Change your default browser from the menu bar in two clicks, or set "Ask Every Time" and decide link by link * 6 picker layouts: Grid, Dock, List, Hero, Radial, and Preview, which loads the actual page inside the picker so you can see what you're opening before you choose * Site rules: docs.google.com goes to Chrome, mybank.com goes to Safari. Subdomains included, and a specific subdomain rule overrides a broader one * App rules: links from Mail open in Safari, links from Terminal in Chrome and Brave * ⌘-click to open one link in several browsers at once, number keys 1-9 to pick instantly * Browsing history with search, so you can reopen something in a different browser Comparison: The closest apps are Openly. Openly has subscriptions, and the lifetime key is way too expensive. AltBrowse is for when you want an easy way to change default browser and also to see the choice: six picker layouts including a live Preview of the page, opening one link in several browsers at once, searchable history, and both site rules and app rules with a visibl

Lumae: The AI Agent Video Editor for Screen Recordings and Screenshots (Free)

Hey, I'm [Mathieu](http://legault.me), the developer behind Lumae. # Problem I make a lot of **short demo videos** and **annotate screenshots**, and capturing them was never the hard part. It was editing them the way I wanted, adding in all the effects, stitching other clips with it, re-recording certain takes, and most importantly nowadays, **editing through MCP with my local agent**! So Lumae aims to do it all in one studio! It remembers where you clicked while recording, so it can drop in zooms that follow your cursor, and it sets the video on a background with padding, rounded corners and a shadow so it looks great. You can add captions, voiceover and music as well. # Comparison Screen Studio is the obvious one to bring up, and honestly it's good at this. Three reasons you might try Lumae anyway: 1. It's **free**. 2. You can **stitch several recordings into one video**, along with any other clips you want to drop in, which Screen Studio won't do. Most of my demos turn out to be four takes and a bit of B roll, so this was the feature I wanted most. 3. has an **MCP server built in**, so if you live in Claude Code or Claude Desktop you can prompt your edits away! Every edit an agent makes is a normal undo step, so nothing runs away from you. CleanShot X is what a lot of folks here already have, and it's lovely for screenshots and quick clips. I also added to Lumae a full screenshot and annotation suite of tools to make it well-rounded! Since people always ask about this: ano

Went for coffee? Bathroom ? Mini heart attack that you left you Mac unlocked? Well no more.

**Problem** You walk away from your Mac and ten minutes later you cannot remember whether you locked it. A free macOS menu-bar helper reports lock, unlock, and sleep to your own private iCloud, and the iPhone app and its widgets read it back, so the answer sits on your Home Screen. Every reading shows when the Mac was last heard from. After 180 seconds of silence it goes amber and stops claiming to be live. "Locked, 12m ago" is honest, a bare confident "Locked" is not, because a wrong answer here is worse than none. You can also lock a Mac from the phone, behind a confirmation. It's the only remote action I'll add, because it's the only one that fails safe. Comparison. Find My tells you where the Mac is, not whether its screen is locked. Screens and Jump Desktop show you the actual screen, which is more than I give you, but you have to connect in and wait, and the Mac has to be awake. This is read-only and takes no taps. **Pricing** \- macOS helper, free: [https://lockstatus.app/downloads/LockStatus.dmg](https://lockstatus.app/downloads/LockStatus.dmg) \- iPhone app, free for current state and recent activity: [https://apps.apple.com/app/id6799870198](https://apps.apple.com/app/id6799870198) \- Pro, $1.99/month or $9.99/year with a 1 week trial: widgets, full history, usage insights. **Transparency** Site [https://lockstatus.app](https://lockstatus.app) privacy [https://lockstatus.app/privacy.html](https://lockstatus.app/privacy.html) No servers, no account, no analytics: the

If AI coding is lowering your code quality, you're not managing quality right

I tried Brag for a product video and the result surprised me

Found a really cool Claude skill today for generating product videos: [https://github.com/latent-spaces/brag](https://github.com/latent-spaces/brag) I tried it on my Mac app, Unfiled, and what impressed me is that it scans the repo, figures out what the product does on its own, and generates the promo video without me having to explain the app or write a script. The result was honestly way better than I expected, so I’m sharing it here in case other indie Mac developers find it useful too. Here’s what it made for Unfiled: Disclosure: Unfiled is my app.

Best App to Find Duplicates Between Two or More Folders?

Hey, as per the title, I'm purging a lot of my files to make some room on my Mac, what would you guys suggest to find duplicates? Thanks. ETA: Wow, so many helpful replies. Thank you all. I'm gonna try dupeGuru and Nektony Duplicate File Finder and see how they play out.

Brilliant is Back! (and lifetime license holders get lifetime Personal)

[Brilliant](http://brilliant.design) is back, and if yuo bought a lifetime license you now have lifetime Personal. What is Brilliant: a design tool built around one idea, that the same canvas you design on is one an AI agent can read and edit. Under it is a Figma-class editor (frames, auto layout, components and libraries, Figma import, PNG/SVG/PDF/HTML/React/MOV/MP4 export) running on a native GPU engine, so it is fast on big files. Your designs are plain files on disk that diff in git, so an agent like Claude Code can work on a design the way it works on code, and Brilliant AI is built in if you don't bring your own key. It runs on Mac and Windows as a desktop app over at [brilliant.design](http://brilliant.design) About a year ago we made Brilliant free with "the platform" promise, for those who paid. Here is where it stands: 1. The platform is live. Everyone who bought a lifetime license ($29 to $89 per Mac, Brilliant or the old bananotate) has lifetime Personal, the plan that costs $240 a year. 2. Brilliant is now a full design tool: frames, auto layout, components, design systems, shaders, liquid glass, Figma import, and an AI that edits the canvas with you. 3. Brilliant is now available on both Mac, Windows and web. You can try it without signing up here: [brilliant.design/playground](http://brilliant.design/playground) To claim lifetime Personal: sign in with the email you purchased with (email code or Google) and the Founding Member plan applies by itself. Can't reme