Evidence-first research

[OS]Quick Update: Sonexis is Open to Contributions

Sonexis is now ready for open-source contributions! I've added a [CONTRIBUTING.md](http://CONTRIBUTING.md) with setup and contribution guidelines, and opened a few starter issues for bugs, improvements, and features that are ready to be worked on. Bug reports, feature ideas, and pull requests are welcome as well. If you're interested in macOS audio, Core Audio, DSP, Swift, or UI work, the repo is here: GitHub: [https://github.com/skanda-vyas-srinivasan/sonexis](https://github.com/skanda-vyas-srinivasan/sonexis) For some context on Sonexis: [https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1wm3sw3/comment/pb56juy/?screen\_view\_count=1](https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1wm3sw3/comment/pb56juy/?screen_view_count=1) Who am I? I'm Skanda lol. Here's my LinkedIn: [https://linkedin.com/in/skanda-vyas](https://linkedin.com/in/skanda-vyas). Feel free to reach out if you want to chat about literally anything.

Built a Mac developer memory tool for AI coding sessions, terminal history & clipboard smart actions (50 Free Promo Codes)

THE PROBLEM As a developer, my daily workflow is constantly losing critical context across tools: • AI Coding Agent Sessions: Losing track of which Claude, Cursor, Codex, or terminal AI session produced a specific solution, prompt, or architectural decision earlier this week. • Terminal History: Forgetting complex docker, k8s, or git commands with multi-flag parameters that I ran days ago. • Payload Context Switching: Copying a JWT, JSON payload, or cURL and having to jump into web tools or utilities just to decode, validate, or format it. • Screenshot Amnesia: Snapping error messages, architecture diagrams, or UI specs and having zero way to search the text inside them later. HOW L2CACHE COMPARES Standard Clipboard Apps (Maccy, Paste, Raycast): * Stores raw text and images only * No built-in AI session tracking or prompt indexing * No terminal history integration * Often requires subscriptions or cloud syncing L2Cache: * AI Coding Agent Memory: Indexes prompts, responses, and session context * Developer Smart Actions: Instant JWT decode, regex tester, JSON formatter, and QR code tools right on ⌘C * Terminal & Visual OCR: Search past CLI commands and search text inside screenshots * Session Analytics: Coding statistics and clipboard activity dashboard * 100% Local & Private: SQLite-backed on your Mac with zero telemetry or cloud sync * Pricing: One-time purchase ($4.99) with no subscriptions PRICING & GIVEAWAY • Regular Price: $4.99 (One-time purchase, lifetime access, no sub

Sablate: the subtitle app I built because caption tools wanted my footage on their servers

Every time I needed captions on a video, the tools wanted the file uploaded to their servers first and $20-40 a month after. For a job Whisper and ffmpeg can do on a laptop, that never made sense, and some footage just shouldn't leave the machine. MacWhisper is great at the transcript itself, but styling the captions and burning them into the video still meant a second app, and I work on Windows too. So I built Sablate to do the whole job locally, on both. What it does: drop in a video, get subtitles back, as a file or burned into the picture. * Transcribes on your machine with Whisper, from Fast (tiny) to Best (large-v3), \~100 languages with auto-detect * Translation is a layer on the same timing, so fixing one cue fixes every language. Argos runs offline, DeepL / OpenAI / Claude with your own key * Editor with video, cues and style side by side: drag cues on the timeline to retime, split/merge, find & replace * Custom vocabulary for names Whisper keeps getting wrong * 13 presets, e.g. Classic, Cinema, Hormozi, Karaoke with a word-by-word sweep. The preview uses the same renderer as the export, so what you see is what you get * Export .srt, .vtt, .txt, .ass, a soft-subbed .mkv with every language as a track, or an .mp4 with the captions burned in, optionally reframed to 9:16 or 1:1 * Runs entirely on your machine. Models download once, after that the only call home is a daily license check. Cloud engines are opt-in, with your own key * Windows 10+ and macOS 12+ Free, no acc

[Developer] Introducing VrushPDF Pre-release : A lightweight PDF reader + annotator

Hi r/macapps! I'm the developer of **VrushPDF**. I wanted a PDF app for everyday reviewing and signing: highlight, comment, fill in forms, sign, move pages around. I didn't want a subscription, an account or a 270 MB download for that, so I built one. **What it does** * **Annotate:** highlight, underline, strikeout and squiggly on selected text; pen and eraser; rectangles, ellipses, lines and arrows; text boxes; comments; image stamps; built-in APPROVED / DRAFT / CONFIDENTIAL stamps. Every annotation has colour, opacity and stroke width controls, and undo/redo covers everything. * **Signatures:** draw one once and reuse it. * **Forms:** fill in text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons and dropdowns. Your answers are saved into the PDF's real form fields. * **Pages:** reorder by dragging thumbnails, rotate, delete, insert blank pages, insert another PDF, or merge several PDFs into one. * **Viewing:** tabs, continuous scroll, whole-document search, bookmarks, thumbnails. * **Nothing gets flattened.** Annotations are saved as standard PDF annotation objects, so they stay editable in Preview, Acrobat and Chrome. You aren't locked into my app. **Mac-specific touches** * A full native menu bar, where Undo tells you what it will undo. * Liquid Glass toolbar and sidebars on macOS 26. * Follows your system accent colour. * Single-key tool shortcuts (V, H, T, P, E, R, O…) plus the usual ⌘ shortcuts. **Privacy:** no account, no telemetry, no cloud. The app never goes online. Even the lice

Show HN: I couldn't deal with another Claude Code tab

Ask HN: What vendor you'd switch out if a better option was available?

We all pay for things. Either personal (like Spotify) or at your company (Slack). Out of those, which one would you swap if a better thing was available?

I built a Mac app with animated vinyl, real-time lyrics and 4K live wallpapers

Hey! I’m one of the developers behind [Wallper](http://wallper.app). [Wallper](http://wallper.app) is a live wallpaper app for Mac with a large library of high-quality wallpapers, support for your own videos, native Lock Screen + Screen Saver playback, and very low resource usage. In this update, we expanded Music Sync and added a lot more layouts. Your wallpaper can now turn into animated vinyl, album art, real-time lyrics and more, all changing automatically with whatever is playing on your Mac. **Problem** macOS has great wallpapers, but you're pretty limited once you want to go beyond Apple's collection. Wallper brings live wallpapers to your Desktop, Lock Screen and Screen Saver, with 4K wallpapers from our library or your own videos. **Comparison** iWallpaper or Dynamic Wallpaper are good options if you mainly want live wallpapers. Apps like Sleeve and Dynamic Lyrics are great for album art, track info or synced lyrics. Wallper combines both sides: a large library of high-quality live wallpapers, your own videos, native Lock Screen and Screen Saver support, plus Music Sync that reacts to whatever is playing on your Mac. We’ve also spent a lot of time keeping it lightweight. **Wallper uses under 2% CPU** in our tests and pauses completely when the wallpaper is covered. **Pricing** You get a **7-day free trial right after downloading**. No account, no payment details and nothing to activate. After that, Wallper Pro is **$14.99 lifetime** for up to 3 Macs. [**https://wallp

Show HN: Doom or Bloom, map your AI worldview

Map your AI worldview by answering a few questions, and see how you compare with others. only takes a few minutes && free & open source && private by default && powered by Jev I think this is a really important question for everyone to be asking themselves, and my hope is that this lil project helps to move our conversations around AI futures in a more balanced, productive direction.

Show HN: I couldn't deal with another Claude Code tab

Ask HN: What vendor you'd switch out if a better option was available?

We all pay for things. Either personal (like Spotify) or at your company (Slack). Out of those, which one would you swap if a better thing was available?

I built a Mac app with animated vinyl, real-time lyrics and 4K live wallpapers

Hey! I’m one of the developers behind [Wallper](http://wallper.app). [Wallper](http://wallper.app) is a live wallpaper app for Mac with a large library of high-quality wallpapers, support for your own videos, native Lock Screen + Screen Saver playback, and very low resource usage. In this update, we expanded Music Sync and added a lot more layouts. Your wallpaper can now turn into animated vinyl, album art, real-time lyrics and more, all changing automatically with whatever is playing on your Mac. **Problem** macOS has great wallpapers, but you're pretty limited once you want to go beyond Apple's collection. Wallper brings live wallpapers to your Desktop, Lock Screen and Screen Saver, with 4K wallpapers from our library or your own videos. **Comparison** iWallpaper or Dynamic Wallpaper are good options if you mainly want live wallpapers. Apps like Sleeve and Dynamic Lyrics are great for album art, track info or synced lyrics. Wallper combines both sides: a large library of high-quality live wallpapers, your own videos, native Lock Screen and Screen Saver support, plus Music Sync that reacts to whatever is playing on your Mac. We’ve also spent a lot of time keeping it lightweight. **Wallper uses under 2% CPU** in our tests and pauses completely when the wallpaper is covered. **Pricing** You get a **7-day free trial right after downloading**. No account, no payment details and nothing to activate. After that, Wallper Pro is **$14.99 lifetime** for up to 3 Macs. [**https://wallp

Show HN: Doom or Bloom, map your AI worldview

Map your AI worldview by answering a few questions, and see how you compare with others. only takes a few minutes && free & open source && private by default && powered by Jev I think this is a really important question for everyone to be asking themselves, and my hope is that this lil project helps to move our conversations around AI futures in a more balanced, productive direction.

Kontakt Artwork: I made a Mac app that fixes the blank and stretched cover art in Native Instruments Kontakt (pay what you want)

Developer here. This is a small, single-purpose Mac app and I'm the one who made it. If you use Kontakt 8 for sample libraries, the browser is full of covers that look soft or are just a grey folder. The cause: Kontakt wants a 420x316 tile per library, and when one isn't shipped it stretches a 134x66 thumbnail from an older version to fill the slot. On my Mac that's 74 of 195 libraries. Kontakt Artwork reads your library list from Kontakt's own database, shows which ones are actually missing a tile, finds a picture (search built in) or takes one you drag in, and installs it at the sizes Kontakt reads. There's a layer editor if you want to go further: mirror a picture across the wide banner, lift lettering off a cover, add a name, backdrop or sticky note. It also reorders the library browser, which Kontakt doesn't let you do, and backs everything up to iCloud or Dropbox for a new Mac. Safety: it archives every original before touching it and one button restores them. Never touches samples. Developer ID signed and notarised. macOS 13+, Apple silicon and Intel, Kontakt 8 required. Pay what you want from $3: [https://allgoodfolks.com/kontakt-artwork](https://allgoodfolks.com/kontakt-artwork) Happy to answer anything about how it works.

Making the best macOS screen recorder and pro video editor, now with best AI editing and 3D mockups: ScreenKite 2.0. Imagine CapCut + Screen Studio + Loom with Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex.

A lot of late nights later, ScreenKite 2.0 is here and I can't wait to show you. ScreenKite is a screen recorder and video editor for Mac. You can record your screen, take screenshots, and edit your video in one app, by hand or with AI. Version 2.0 brings a redesigned timeline and inspector, 3D device mockups, fast auto subtitles and translation, a screenshot editor with blur, and a new way to edit with AI. Last month I posted ScreenKite 1.16 here. You left a lot of great comments, and many of them are now in this update. Thank you. The goal is the same. I want ScreenKite to be the best screen recorder and video editor for Mac. No more recording in one app and finishing in another. [https://www.screenkite.com/](https://www.screenkite.com/) # Core features **1. Record and edit like a pro, in one app.** Most screen recorders only let you trim. ScreenKite has a real, pro-level video editor built in. That's the big difference. * **Record:** your screen, a window, an area, your iPhone, or your camera. Up to 144 fps, with HDR. Auto zoom follows your clicks while you record. * **Edit like a pro:** multi-track timeline, B-roll, transitions, speed changes, subtitles, backgrounds, camera layouts, noise removal, and music that gets quieter when you talk. * **Edit with AI:** use your own AI agent (Claude Code, Codex, Grok, Kimi, Antigravity, OpenCode) right in the AI chat in ScreenKite. ScreenKite doesn't charge for AI. **2. Redesigned timeline and inspector.** The timeline and the inspe

PixyCAD just shipped Loft, Swept, Sketch Text and more. Here's what's new.

Hi there! I am one of the developers behind PixyCAD. For those of you who don't know it yet, it’s a CAD app for Mac and iPad built around the sketch-extrude-print workflow and specifically designed for makers and 3D printing. It runs fully on your device and works with Apple Pencil seamlessly. **Problem** Most mainstream CAD tools are either too complex for casual use or too limited for real 3D printing workflows. We've been heads down fixing that, and in the last few months we have shipped lots of new cool features that have been requested by the community: * *Sketch Text*: you can now drop real text directly into your sketch. Pick a font, set the height, and it instantly becomes geometry you can extrude, emboss or cut into your model. Labels, name plates, logos, all in a single step. * *Loft*: select a series of profiles and PixyCAD builds a smooth solid that flows through all of them. Transitions, funnels, adapters and organic shapes that used to be a real pain are now a single operation. * *Swept*: drive a profile along a path and get tubes, handles, frames and curved geometry out the other side. A lot of you asked for this one on our feedback board at [https://feedback.pixycad.com](https://feedback.pixycad.com/), and it's finally here. * *Copy*, Transform, Paste: copy any element and transform it as part of the paste step. Reuse geometry you've already built without rebuilding it from scratch. * *Sidebar* folders by type: your Bodies and Sketches now live in their own co

MacPulse 1.3 — 6 months in: see which apps actually drain your battery (real watts, not estimates)

Hi everyone, This is my third MacPulse post here (\[previous update\](https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1umds44/macpulse\_update\_3\_months\_later\_your\_mac\_explained/)). Thanks to everyone who tried it and sent feedback. A lot of what's below came straight from those comments and from the GitHub feedback repo. \*\*Problem\*\* Raw system stats don't answer questions. MacPulse is a system monitor built around explaining your Mac instead of just displaying numbers: an Insights Engine that says in plain English what's happening and what to do about it, plus Ask Insights, where you can ask questions about your Mac's history, answered on-device. \*\*New in the last 3 months\*\* The big one is 1.3, which is mostly about power and connectivity: \- \*\*Energy by App.\*\* Which apps used the most energy over the last 24 hours or 7 days, in real watt-hours from the per-app energy counters macOS keeps, not a made-up "energy score". Filter to time on battery to see what actually drains it. Helper processes (Chrome renderers etc.) are grouped under their app. \- \*\*Power flow.\*\* Live watts from the charger, what your Mac is consuming, and whether the battery is charging or discharging. It warns you when a charger can't keep up (plugged in but still draining) and flags low-wattage chargers. \- \*\*Wi-Fi details.\*\* Signal and noise (with SNR), channel, band and width, link rate, Wi-Fi standard, security, router and DNS. \- \*\*Latency monitor.\*\* Current latency, average, ji