标签：#MacOS

The notch on a MacBook is strange real estate. It is always there. It sits at the top of the screen, close to the menu bar, close to system controls, close to whatever you are doing. But most of the time it is treated like a cutout to design around instead of a place software can use. That felt like a missed opportunity. So I built SwiftNotch , a macOS menu bar app that turns the notch area into an expandable productivity dashboard. Hover near the notch or press Option + Space , and the quiet black shape becomes a small command center for widgets, files, media, shortcuts, developer tools, and window actions. Website: swiftnotch.xyz Demo video: Launch note: SwiftNotch 1.x is free during beta . I want early Mac users to try the full experience, share feedback, and help shape the app before SwiftNotch 2.0 introduces paid plans. The idea I did not want to build another large dashboard that asks you to leave your current app. The goal was the opposite: make useful tools available in the smallest possible space, without breaking flow. The notch is perfect for this because it already behaves like a visual anchor. You know where it is without thinking. If it can expand only when needed, it becomes a temporary interface layer instead of another permanent panel. SwiftNotch starts collapsed. When activated, it opens into a compact dashboard with the widgets and actions you choose. What SwiftNotch does The current app includes 31 built-in widgets across productivity, system utilities, media, automation, and developer workflows. Some examples: Media Control for Spotify, Apple Music, VLC, YouTube, and browser players Shelf for drag-and-drop file staging, quick sharing, paths, iCloud actions, and zip workflows Clipboard History for snippets, links, and quick paste Calendar Events , Reminders , Notes , Weather , World Clock , and Pomodoro Quick Toggles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Dark Mode, and volume Window Snapping with layouts for halves, thirds, quarters, and custom grids Developer H

Moving from Windows to macOS often creates a small workflow problem for developers: where did my familiar SSH tools go? PuTTY has been a classic SSH and Telnet client for Windows for many years. Many developers know its interface and workflow, so after switching platforms, the first thought is usually finding a macOS version. The reality is that the macOS ecosystem works differently. There are several practical options depending on how you manage remote systems. Option 1: Use the built-in SSH client on macOS For many developers, the SSH client that ships with macOS is already enough. A typical workflow looks like this: Use the terminal for server access Manage hosts through ~/.ssh/config Store aliases, usernames, ports, and key settings in one place Automate common connection tasks with scripts For example: ssh production-server can replace a long connection command when your SSH configuration is organized properly. This approach works especially well for developers who prefer command-line workflows and manage Linux servers regularly. Option 2: Use a GUI SSH client Some developers prefer a graphical interface because they manage many machines, protocols, or connection profiles. A good GUI client can help with: Organizing dozens or hundreds of servers Saving authentication settings Switching between SSH, RDP, VNC, and other protocols Reducing repetitive configuration work The macOS App Store has many SSH clients available. The right choice depends on whether you only need SSH or you need a complete remote management workflow. Tools like DartShell are designed around this multi-protocol scenario, where developers may need SSH for Linux servers, RDP for Windows machines, and other remote access methods in one place. Choosing the right workflow The decision usually comes down to how you work: A few Linux servers: macOS Terminal + SSH config is usually enough. Many servers and different protocols: a GUI management tool can save time. Team environments: centralized connec

If you've ever localized an iOS or macOS app, you know the drill: you've got a .plist file full of UI strings sitting in Base.lproj , and now you need the same file in fr.lproj , th.lproj , de.lproj ... and so on for every language you support. You can pay for a translation service, hand it to a freelancer, or sit there manually retyping strings into fifteen copies of the same file. I didn't want to do any of those things, so I spent a day building pListTranslatorApp — a small SwiftUI macOS app that opens an Xcode plist, finds the string values you want translated, batch-translates them using Apple's built-in Translation framework, and writes out a ready-to-use localized plist. It's free, it runs entirely on-device, and it's now sitting on GitHub for anyone who wants it. The constraint that shaped the whole thing I'm developing on a MacBook Air with a 256GB SSD and 8GB of RAM — not a lot of headroom. That ruled out a couple of obvious approaches: Cloud translation APIs (DeepL, Google Cloud Translate, etc.) work well, but even a generous free tier means an external dependency, an API key to manage, and a network round-trip for something that's ultimately just short UI strings. Downloading a pile of on-device language models "just in case" eats real disk space fast — Apple's Translation framework models are shared system-wide across apps, which helps, but they still add up if you're not paying attention. So the app leans entirely on Apple's Translation framework , downloading exactly one language pack at a time, on demand, and lets you delete it once you're done with that language. What it actually does Open a plist. Pick any Xcode .plist via a standard file importer. Choose which keys to translate. Originally I hardcoded it to look for a key called itemTitle , but that's obviously too narrow for anyone else's project — so it's now a comma-separated text field. Type itemTitle, title, label and it'll pick up all of them, anywhere in the plist's nested dictionaries and

My previous piece, " Making a launchd Job Unload Itself ," built a job that runs exactly once and then unloads itself. This time it's the mirror image: a pattern designed around the assumption that the job will die mid-run — it fires several slots a day and delivers "retry until it succeeds, then quit immediately on success." Every morning I hand Claude Code the task of updating my Obsidian Vault, and it kept dying partway through — killed by macOS sleep, no network on wake, or a claude timeout. Instead of trying to prevent every failure perfectly, I decided "it can die overnight as long as it's done by the time I wake up" was the more realistic goal, and I redesigned around that. The problem: "started but didn't finish" piles up silently There are three ways a launchd job fails to run to completion. Lid-close sleep (on battery) — caffeinate -s only works on AC power. On battery, the job freezes the instant you close the lid, and gets reaped by timeout after wake. No network — right after wake, WiFi isn't connected yet. git push and claude's API calls time out. claude timeout — an ingest that chews through 28 hours of conversation logs doesn't fit in a single slot and times out (this happened three days in a row, 2026-06-11 to 13). All three can look like "the job started, exit code 0," so you notice late. Overall design: 4 slots + a done-marker The fix is simple: stuff multiple StartCalendarInterval entries into the plist, and at the top of the script check "if today's run already succeeded, exit 0 immediately." <!-- com.shun.vault-auto-ingest.plist (StartCalendarInterval excerpt) --> <key> StartCalendarInterval </key> <array> <dict> <key> Hour </key><integer> 4 </integer><key> Minute </key><integer> 55 </integer> </dict> <dict> <key> Hour </key><integer> 8 </integer><key> Minute </key><integer> 20 </integer> </dict> <dict> <key> Hour </key><integer> 10 </integer><key> Minute </key><integer> 45 </integer> </dict> <dict> <key> Hour </key><integer> 12 </integer><key>

An AppleCare Plus subscription for a Mac or iPad will cost more soon, with prices going up by $0.50 per month or $5 per year for new sign-ups while remaining the same for existing subscribers, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Gurman says that under the new AppleCare Plus pricing, "a plan for a new 13-inch […]

The macOS 27 Golden Gate public beta is here, and anyone with an M-series Mac now has easier access to test-drive Apple's latest changes - including a more subdued Liquid Glass aesthetic. That's reason enough to be at least a little excited for macOS 27 (particularly if you're on Tahoe and disliking all the transparency). […]

As I sat in my RV, sipping coffee and staring at lines of code, I couldn't help but think of Alan Turing. The father of computer science, Turing's work on the theoretical foundations of modern computer science is still widely influential today. I've always been fascinated by the story of how he cracked the Enigma code, and how that achievement played a significant role in the Allied victory in World War II. This got me thinking about the balance between human intuition and machine automation in our work as developers. One particular challenge I faced while building Tab Reminder, a Chrome extension that allows users to schedule tabs to reopen later, was finding the right balance between automation and user input. From a technical standpoint, implementing the scheduling feature required a deep dive into Chrome's extension APIs, particularly the alarms API. I had to ensure that the extension could reliably store and retrieve scheduled tabs, even when the user closed their browser or restarted their computer. The key insight here was using the alarms API to trigger a background script that would reopen the scheduled tabs at the specified time. One lesson I learned from this experience is that while automation can greatly simplify many tasks, there are still areas where human judgment and oversight are essential. For instance, when a user schedules a tab to reopen, they may have specific intentions or context in mind that the machine can't fully understand. By providing a simple, intuitive interface for scheduling tabs, Tab Reminder fills a gap that more automated solutions might overlook. You can try it out for yourself at https://go.sg1-labs.us/tab-reminder . As developers, we must recognize the limitations of automation and ensure that our tools and applications are designed to augment, rather than replace, human capabilities.

This is a follow-up to my earlier post, " Automating a config migration with a one-shot launchd job ." Some breaking changes come with a known expiration date, and you can prepare for them long before they land. This time the external event was the end-of-life of Fable 5 (2026-07-07), and I'll walk through how I designed a launchd job you set up today, that fires only on the target day, and that removes itself once it's done. The whole thing started with the thought, "manually fixing this on the shutdown day is going to be annoying." But I also didn't want to run a script every morning that needlessly rewrites JSON. What I landed on was a three-part set: a date gate, a jq rewrite with a backup, and self-unload. The problem: on the day I learn about a deprecation, I want to plant a job that "only runs on the target day" Right now, ~/.claude/settings.json looks like this: { "model" : "claude-fable-5[1m]" , ... } The moment I learned Fable 5 would end on 2026-07-07, creating a calendar reminder to manually rewrite this "model" felt too flimsy — I'll forget. On the other hand, making "a daemon that checks the date every time it boots" is overkill. What I wanted was a job I could set once and leave alone, that runs when the day arrives, and then disappears. launchd can fire at a specified time via StartCalendarInterval . But you can't express "just once at 9:00 on 7/7"; you need a combination of recurring and date-fixed slots. Specifying multiple slots and absorbing the redundancy with idempotency is the standard trick on macOS launchd. The implementation: the three-part set Here's the full ~/.claude/scripts/model-transition-0707.sh (comments omitted). #!/bin/bash set -uo pipefail SETTINGS = " $HOME /.claude/settings.json" LOG = " $HOME /.claude/logs/model-transition.log" PLIST = " $HOME /Library/LaunchAgents/com.shun.model-transition-0707.plist" log () { echo "[ $( date '+%F %T' ) ] $* " >> " $LOG " ; } # ① 日付ゲート if [ " $( date +%Y%m%d ) " -lt 20260707 ] ; then log "ski

"I'll just write a quick button style... and a text field with validation... and a card component..." Two weeks later you have a bespoke design system that only half the app uses, three slightly different buttons, and nothing shipped. If you're building with an AI coding agent, the drift problem is worse, not better. Ask Claude, Cursor, or Codex to "add a settings screen" three separate times and you'll get three different paddings, three different corner radii, and a button style that quietly forked itself somewhere around commit 40. Agents are great at writing plausible SwiftUI and bad at remembering what the rest of your app already decided. DesignFoundation is an open-source SwiftUI package that gives you a token-based theming engine, 25 components, and 6 feedback/overlay modifiers that all read from the same theme. You set it once at the app root, and everything underneath updates. That's the whole idea — and it ships with CLAUDE.md , AGENTS.md , and Cursor rules already written, so an agent working in your repo reaches for DFButton instead of inventing a new one. In this tutorial you'll go from zero to a themed, consistent SwiftUI UI — without writing a single custom button style. What We're Building By the end you'll have: A working app that uses DesignFoundation's theme system A themed form with inputs, validation states, and feedback components A custom theme built from tokens An understanding of how the style system composes Requirements: Xcode 16+, iOS 18+ / macOS 15+ target, Swift 6. Installation Via Xcode File → Add Package Dependencies Paste https://github.com/NerdSnipe-Inc/design-foundation Set the version rule to Up to Next Major from 1.0.0 Add DesignFoundation to your target Via Package.swift dependencies : [ . package ( url : "https://github.com/NerdSnipe-Inc/design-foundation" , from : "1.0.0" ) ], targets : [ . target ( name : "YourApp" , dependencies : [ "DesignFoundation" ]) ] Step 1: One Line Instead of a ThemeManager Singleton Every app that

Part 2 of 2. This tutorial builds on Part 1 — DesignFoundation core . If you haven't added the base package and theme yet, start there. The core package gives you tokens and primitives. DesignFoundationPro adds what comes next — 29 blocks, 47 screens, 18 navigation shells, and 9 runnable composition examples across auth, onboarding, charts, data tables, and full product verticals. The docs claim ~87% fewer lines of code versus building from scratch. That's the bet. This matters even more if an AI coding agent is doing the building. Ask an agent for a CRM screen and a settings screen in the same session and, without guardrails, you'll get two different takes on spacing, two different sidebar behaviors, and a table that's native on Mac in one screen and a scroll view pretending to be a table in the other. Pro ships with that guardrail already in place — more on that in Where to go from here. How the two packages relate Pro sits on top of Foundation and re-exports it. Import only DesignFoundationPro and you get everything from both: YourApp your models, data, routing DesignFoundationPro 29 blocks · 47 screens · 18 shells · 9 examples DesignFoundation tokens · primitives · validation · theme engine · MIT Access: Foundation is MIT and public. Pro is a commercial add-on — repo access is granted after purchase. Licenses are lifetime (no subscription); annual updates are $39/year and entirely optional. Pricing: $149 individual · $449 team (up to 5 devs). Before buying, browse everything in DFPlayground — a free macOS app that lets you preview all 29 blocks, 47 screens, and 18 shells with live theming. Step 1: Add DesignFoundationPro Pro declares Foundation as its own dependency and re-exports it via @_exported import DesignFoundation . Add only the Pro package — Foundation comes with it automatically. The Pro repo URL is provided after purchase — contact nerdsnipe.inc@gmail.com or visit the Pro page to get access. dependencies : [ . package ( url : "https://github.com/NerdS

The discovery underscores the increased effort being poured into Mac infostealers.

As a solo developer working out of an RV, I've learned to appreciate the importance of staying organized, especially when it comes to managing user data in my Chrome extension, Tab Reminder. One of the key challenges I faced was efficiently storing and retrieving user-scheduled tabs, which led me to explore the world of popular tags in browser storage. During the development of Tab Reminder, I realized that using a simple key-value pair system wasn't enough to manage the complexity of user data. I needed a way to categorize and prioritize scheduled tabs, which is where popular tags came into play. By utilizing the localStorage API, I was able to store user-defined tags and associate them with specific tabs, making it easier for users to manage their scheduled tabs. One technical insight I gained from this experience was the importance of using a robust data structure to store user data. In my case, I used a combination of arrays and objects to store tag information, which allowed me to efficiently query and update user data. For example, when a user schedules a new tab, I use the following code to store the tag information: // Store tag information in localStorage const tags = JSON . parse ( localStorage . getItem ( ' tags ' )) || {}; tags [ tabId ] = tagName ; localStorage . setItem ( ' tags ' , JSON . stringify ( tags )); One lesson I learned from this experience is that even small, useful tools like Tab Reminder require careful consideration of data management. By leveraging popular tags and a robust data structure, I was able to create a seamless user experience that allows users to efficiently manage their scheduled tabs. If you're interested in trying out Tab Reminder, you can check it out at https://go.sg1-labs.us/tab-reminder .

Currently available as a beta in Xcode 27, Swift 6.4 introduces a range of enhancements: better C interoperability, simplified OS availability check, fine-grained warning control, async support in defer, efficient iteration for non-noncopyable types, up to 4x faster URL parsing, and improved interoperability between Swift Testing and XCTest. By Sergio De Simone

You built a Mac app, you want to sell it outside the App Store, and now you need licensing: a key the customer enters, an activation that sticks, and feature gates that hold up offline. Here's how to do it in an afternoon without standing up a backend. Note: this is cross-posted from the Keylight blog . I build Keylight, so this uses it as the worked example — the shape of the solution applies whatever SDK you choose. The three things licensing actually has to do Strip away the marketing and every licensing system does exactly three jobs: Activate — turn a key the user pastes in into proof-of-purchase bound to this device. Verify — on every launch, confirm that proof is still valid, including offline . Gate — unlock features based on the tier/entitlements the license carries. If you build this by hand you're writing a server, a crypto layer, and a state machine. The point of an SDK is to skip all three. 1. Add the SDK Add the Swift package in Xcode (File ▸ Add Package Dependencies) pointing at the Keylight Swift SDK, then configure it once with your tenant key at app launch: import Keylight let keylight = Keylight ( tenant : "your_tenant_key" ) 2. Activate a key Give the user a text field and call activate . This is the one online step — it exchanges the key for a signed, device-bound lease that's stored locally: do { try await keylight . activate ( key : enteredKey ) // lease stored — the app is now licensed on this device } catch { // show the user why: invalid key, device limit reached, etc. } 3. Verify on launch (offline-safe) On every subsequent launch you don't hit the network. The SDK verifies the stored lease's Ed25519 signature locally and hands you a state: switch keylight . checkOnLaunch () { case . licensed ( let lease ): unlockApp ( entitlements : lease . entitlements ) case . trial ( let daysLeft ): runTrial ( daysLeft : daysLeft ) case . expired , . invalid : showActivationScreen () } No server call, so the app opens instantly and works on a plane. Th

I needed to license a macOS app I sell outside the App Store. I went down the rabbit hole so you don't have to. Here's the honest breakdown — what each tool is genuinely good at, and where it stops. No tool is "best"; they're good at different things. The two questions that decide everything Before the tools, answer these: Do you need real offline verification? (Desktop apps usually do — see firewalls, planes, air-gapped machines.) This eliminates the "license key is just a string you check over HTTP" options for serious use. Do you want payments handled too, or do you already have Stripe? Some of these are licensing-only; some are merchant-of-record that also do keys. The licensing-first tools Keygen — the one most people name first. Language-agnostic API, deep policy engine, open-source, self-hostable. Genuinely powerful. The cost is that it's primitives : you bring your own payments, wire the webhooks, and write the client code. Pick it when you want maximum control and don't mind assembling the flow. Cryptolens — classic license-key system with offline verification via signed responses. Strong .NET heritage. Solid if you're on Windows/.NET and want the traditional key + activation-count model. LicenseSpring — enterprise-leaning. Floating licenses, air-gapped activation, node-locking. Overkill for a solo indie app, right at home if you're selling into companies with offline/dark-site requirements. The payments-first tools (keys as a feature) Lemon Squeezy / Polar — merchant of record, so they handle sales tax for you, with a license-key API bolted on (activate / validate / deactivate). Great for getting paid fast across borders. The licensing side is basic — keys are essentially strings with an activation limit; offline verification isn't really their thing. Gumroad — the simplest possible "sell a thing, get a license key, verify over one endpoint." Fine for a cheap utility where piracy isn't worth fighting. Not infrastructure. StoreKit — only relevant if you shi

If you ship a desktop app outside an app store, you eventually hit the same wall: how do you check a license when the user is on a plane, behind a corporate firewall, or just offline? Calling your server on every launch isn't an option. Here's how offline activation actually works, without the hand-waving. The naive version, and why it breaks The first thing everyone reaches for is "call home on launch, get back yes/no." It works in the demo and fails in the wild: No network = no app. Fail-closed locks out paying customers. Fail-open means anyone who blocks your domain runs free. Both are bad. A boolean is forgeable. If your app trusts a {"valid": true} response, a proxy or a patched DNS entry returns that for free. The fix isn't a better endpoint. It's moving the trust off the network and onto cryptography. The model that works: signed leases The durable pattern is a cryptographically signed lease (Keygen calls these license files, Keylight calls them leases — same idea): On first activation, the device talks to the server once . The server returns a small signed document: the license state, an expiry, the device binding, and any entitlements (which features/tiers are unlocked). The document is signed with the server's private key (Ed25519 is the modern choice — small, fast, boring in the good way). Your app ships the matching public key and verifies the signature locally on every launch. No network needed. Because the app only ever verifies with a public key, there's nothing secret in the binary to steal, and a forged lease fails the signature check. That's the whole trick: the server vouches once, math vouches forever after. first launch ──► server signs lease (Ed25519, private key) ──► stored on device every launch ──► app verifies signature (public key) ──► no network Device binding (so one key isn't infinite installs) A lease is bound to a device so a single license can't be pasted onto a thousand machines. The lease embeds a device fingerprint, and the SDK ch

Why a simple string match beat Apple's NLEmbedding for local RAG how apple's nlembedding drove me crazy and how i built my own hybrid search engine recently, while working on my personal ai agent (pheronagent), i was focused on perfecting its memory and retrieval system. everyone is talking about that famous acronym: rag (retrieval-augmented generation). the system is simple: i feed the agent my documents, it converts them into vectors (embeddings), and when i ask a question, it finds the most similar vectors and answers me. sounds perfect on paper, right? so, like any loyal apple ecosystem developer, instead of downloading massive models from external sources (or burning money on apis), i decided to use nlembedding—the native capability of the operating system that runs directly on-device. after all, apple had embedded this into the os; it was both fast and privacy-focused. but real life, as it turns out, doesn't progress as smoothly as wwdc presentations... where have i worked? - the first explosion it all started with a very innocent question. i had uploaded my cv to the system. while chatting with my agent, i casually asked: "where have i worked?" i expected the agent to fire up the metal cores in the background within seconds, find my cv, and list the companies for me. instead, the agent stared blankly. i opened the logs to see what the hell the search engine was doing behind the scenes. the shocking scenario was exactly this: cosine similarity between the query and my actual cv text: 0.587 the threshold i set for relevance: 0.60 it missed it by a hair! "no worries," i thought. "we can just lower the threshold a bit, make it 0.55, and call it a day." but then i saw the truly terrifying thing just one line below. for the exact same query, guess what score a completely irrelevant, junk record in the system—a list of files containing .ds_store—got? 0.59 - 0.60! wait a minute... my detailed, multi-page resume gets a score of 0.587 just because it doesn't contain th

At WWDC 26, Apple announced the Core AI framework, the official successor to Core ML. It is designed to allow developers to run large language models and generative AI entirely on-device, supporting both custom-converted PyTorch models and pre-optimized open-source models. By Sergio De Simone

Apple’s fall macOS release will let you build Shortcuts by typing what you want to happen. But Claude Code and Codex users don’t have to wait.

Apple is planning to raise prices in response to the ongoing memory shortage. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Apple CEO Tim Cook says "price increases are unavoidable:" We're doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we've been trying to shield our customers from the […]