I built Prism because I kept texting myself thoughts and links despite having Obsidian and Apple Notes. Now it’s on David Pierce’s home screen. He wrote in The Verge:

I have spent forever looking for a quick, transient way to jot stuff down and organize it later; Prism might be it.

I’m excited that Prism is reaching more people, including some pretty awesome people.

Prism feels like texting yourself - with collections, threads, and review to help you return to what you save. I appreciate this community for helping shape Prism (first post, follow-up). Your feedback led to iCloud sync, on-device AI, one-time pricing, great voice note support, and hundreds of small fixes.

Some new stuff:

• Apple Watch: Record voice notes from your watch.
• Apple Intelligence collection rules: Define instructions in English. A “brain dump” collection can turn a voice note into a checklist. A “read later” collection can add a three-sentence summary as a reply to a saved article.
• Shuffle review: Rediscover older notes in a random order. One user told me reviewing their notes has replaced a lot of their doomscrolling, which was great to hear.
• Connect your AI assistant on Mac: Search and read notes, create notes, and reply to threads through a local MCP server. Coming in the next week.

Compared with Apple Notes or Obsidian, Prism shows lots of small notes in a timeline view. Those apps are better for essays and wikis. Strflow is another self-messaging notes app but Prism has threads, a review system, and a one-time purchase. Some Prism users came from MyMind. It's more visually focused, whereas Prism puts voice and text first.

$12.99 for Mac, $6.99 for iPhone. One-time purchases, with a free 7-day trial. Prices will go up in two weeks.

Website · App Store · Discord

Hi r/macapps! I'm the developer of macmon. Last time I posted it was v0.4, and a lot has changed since then.

Problem

Activity Monitor doesn't show power, frequencies or the Neural Engine, and powermetrics needs sudo. macmon shows CPU / GPU / ANE power, frequencies, temperatures, RAM and fans in the terminal, without sudo. It's for those who live in the terminal.

Comparison

• asitop: a similar idea, but it runs powermetrics, so it needs sudo, and it has no process list.
• btop / htop: great process monitors, but no Apple Silicon power, frequencies or ANE.

New since the last post

• Process list with CPU, GPU, memory, power and CPU time; sort, filter with several terms and per-term totals
• Open files and sockets of a process (i), reveal in Finder, copy path, kill (k)
• Total system power with fan speed
• M5 and M6 support (all three CPU tiers), power readings on macOS 27 without sudo
• JSON and Prometheus server mode, Rust library
• Its own CPU use cut about in half: ~2.9% of a core with the process list on

Pricing

Free and open source (MIT).

Install:

brew install macmon

GitHub: https://github.com/vladkens/macmon

Feedback welcome, especially from M5 / M6 owners.

You finally have an hour to work on that project. You open your task list, see “launch the app” or “record an EP,” and still have to figure out where to start.

I’m the solo developer behind Projectholic for Mac, iPad, and iPhone. I’m building it around a loop that matters to me: plan → do → evaluate → adjust.

The goal is to help you move a project forward and learn from how the work actually goes.

Plan something you can act on.

Define what finished looks like, break the project into milestones and tasks, then make room for the work. Gantt, Calendar, and Board views help you connect today’s task to the outcome you want.

Give the next task your attention.

Start the built-in focus timer from a task. Choose a stopwatch, custom countdown, or Pomodoro session, and record your time against the work.

Make the next plan more realistic.

Review graphs showing planned time, recorded focus time, and completion progress. See which projects received your attention and where your estimates need adjusting.

If you’re comparing it with Things or OmniFocus, the reason to try Projectholic is this connected workflow: milestones and a Gantt timeline for planning, a timer and time tracking for doing the work, and project-level graphs for reviewing the results. It’s especially useful if you want those steps together in one app.

There’s also optional MCP support on Mac, so compatible AI assistants can help create and update your plans. It’s a Pro feature currently in beta.

Pricing: Free download with paid upgrades. US pricing includes $49.99 lifetime Pro and $34.99 annual access. Regional prices vary.

Projectholic on the Mac App Store

I care a lot about making this loop useful beyond the first week. Where does it usually break for you: deciding what to do, getting started, or reviewing what happened?

Yesterday, a dev posted his free software (with a video attached) here on this subreddit (and the Github repo link).

The app let's you use you iPhone as an extension to your Mac as a e.g. media controler, steam deck, trackpad and even create your own.

Didn't save it yesterday, don't remember the name either and now it's nowhere to be found. 😞

Anyone remember the name? Seemed genuinely cool and impressive.

Update & answer:
In case anyone is looking for it as well it is CmdPalm. u/iotabyte solved the puzzle. Thanks!

Problem

I teach high school computer science, and for about 15 years I've been recommending Paint.NET to my Windows students. Last February I finally got fed up with the fact that the Mac still doesn't have a proper equivalent.

So I built one. DrawSimple is a native Mac paint-and-draw app, very much in the MacPaint/MacDraw tradition. Tools down the left, layers, brushes, editable vector shapes, photo adjustments. Written in Swift and AppKit, not a web wrapper.

But something unexpected happened along the way.

In April, I was working on the heart shape tool (hearts are surprisingly complicated!) and getting thoroughly sick of drawing dozens of hearts every time I changed something. So I asked Claude Code to add a little localhost server and MCP bridge, basically so it could operate the app for me while I tested.

The first test session ended with Claude painting me a picture. I still have the chat log. My response was "I LOVE your painting!"

That little "testing shortcut" has since been rebuilt, optimized, audited and trimmed more than almost anything else in the app. And I've come around to thinking it's the best feature. Since launching in August, it's certainly been the one people have been most excited about.

The attached image is a mockup for a card for a card game I'm working on, drawn by Claude Opus in about 10 minutes. Once Claude finished designing it, I jumped in, created the "fanout" and edited it until I was happy. That's the DrawSimple experience.

Competition

vs. Paintbrush (free): Paintbrush is probably still the closest thing to the old MacPaint, and I have a soft spot for it. But it's pretty basic. DrawSimple has layers, vector shapes, adjustments, effects, and a lot more. Neither is trying to be Photoshop.

vs. Pixelmator Pro ($49.99): Pixelmator is a much more capable professional image editor. I'm not going to pretend my $5 app competes with it on every feature. If you need a serious photo editor, Pixelmator is excellent. DrawSimple is aimed more at the Paint.NET crowd: people who want a proper set of tools without the complexity or price of a professional graphics package.

vs. AI image generators: This is where things get interesting. Image generators can make some incredible pictures, but you generally get a finished image. If you want to move a button, resize a shape, change a gradient or edit some text, you're largely back to square one.

DrawSimple takes a different approach. The AI operates the actual drawing tools. Strokes, shapes, gradients, text, selections, layers and effects. The same tools I use with my mouse.

There isn't a separate AI canvas or some special AI-generated document format. Everything happens in the regular editor, and every action goes into the same History panel as your own work. You can even ⌘Z through an AI's drawing session, pick up your mouse and carry on yourself.

And importantly, DrawSimple doesn't generate anything itself. There's no built-in model. You bring your own assistant. Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Gemini, anything that speaks MCP. I've personally had Claude, Codex and Gemini painting through it, as well as some local models.

The MCP server is entirely local, disabled until you turn it on, and restricted to 127.0.0.1. DrawSimple never sends anything out. Obviously, if you're using a cloud-based assistant, anything it reads from the canvas may be sent to that model's provider. I want to be clear about that distinction.

Pricing

$5 once. No subscription, no account.

That includes the complete core paint editor, the MCP server and all 12 MCP tools. Your assistant can paint, draw shapes, add text, use gradients, work with selections, apply basic effects and export PNGs.

There's an optional $10 Pro unlock for advanced features, including AI manipulation of editable vector objects, large multilayer compositions, unlimited batch operations and JPEG/SVG/PDF export.

To clarify one potentially confusing point: you can draw and edit vector shapes yourself in the $5 version. It's specifically having the AI manipulate those editable vector objects that requires Pro.

No subscription, no AI credits to buy, and no model included. Use whatever MCP-compatible assistant you already have.

macOS 15.6 or later. Apple silicon and Intel.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6759507748?mt=12

I'm the developer, and I'll be around all day if anyone has questions. I'm particularly interested in hearing what people would actually want an AI to do inside a conventional drawing app.

I’m a contributor to MacTools, a free, open-source toolkit for macOS.

Problem: You might use separate apps to arrange windows, find text you copied earlier, or keep your Mac awake. MacTools brings these tools together.

Choose from 64 official plugins in the Marketplace. Install what you need and build your own panels with controls and live widgets.

Recorded with official MacTools 2.0.1, the video shows how to:

• Build a panel with CPU and memory widgets, Keep Awake, and Dark Mode.
• Arrange Safari and TextEdit side by side with Action Grid.
• Find text you copied earlier with Clipboard History and paste it into TextEdit.

Plugins include: Clipboard History, Action Grid, system monitoring, Keep Awake, Dark Mode, Sidecar, Trackpad Gestures, display controls, audio controls, screenshots, and more.

Comparison: Vorssaint is another free, open-source Mac toolkit with similar tools and custom panels. MacTools focuses on plugins you can install separately and Action Grid for quick actions.

Pricing: $0 for the app and official plugins. No subscription, account, or ads. Requires macOS 14 or later. Some plugins need a newer macOS version or compatible hardware.

Website and download · GitHub · Privacy policy

Which tools would you put in your own panel?

I'm Blake, the developer of Caddy Docs.

Problem

Hard to read files side-by-side without cluttering your desktop.

Comparison

Yoink and Dropover are shelves for moving files between apps, and SideNotes keeps notes on the screen edge. Caddy keeps the whole project at the edge of your screen: each project gets a tab that opens into its files, readers for PDFs, Word documents and slides, and a notebook. The latest version adds Ask, which answers questions about a project's files using Apple Intelligence.

Pricing

Free on the Mac App Store, including three Caddies. Caddy Pro is $3.99/month or $29.99/year with a 7-day free trial, and adds Ask, desktop pets, Characters, and unlimited Caddies.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6802867430

One-month Caddy Pro codes are available in r/caddydocs.

https://reddit.com/link/1x86x6u/video/ltb6p86m90wh1/player

Problem

Hi, I’m Christoph. Writing software isn’t my main job. Nova started because I wanted a small assistant on my Mac that I could talk to or type to.

Moving a meeting, setting a reminder, finding a note, drafting an email: none of that is difficult. But each one meant opening another app, and sometimes I’d lose the thread of what I was doing.

I wanted help with those tasks while still seeing exactly what would change.

If I ask Nova to move a meeting, it shows the existing event and the proposed new time on a confirmation card. Nothing happens until I confirm. A draft stays a draft; writing an email doesn’t mean sending it. Questions and searches don’t require that extra confirmation.

Nova also covers the everyday things around work: controlling Philips Hue lights, playing Apple Music, Spotify or internet radio, setting timers, finding files, and searching notes or Paperless documents. It can create meeting notes you can ask about later, and connect to tools such as Notion, Asana, Todoist and Obsidian. The available actions depend on the integration and what you’ve connected.

It became useful enough to me that I decided to let other people try it. I honestly don’t know yet which parts are useful only to me.

Comparison

The alternatives I’d compare Nova with are Siri and Raycast.

Siri is already included with macOS and is an obvious starting point for voice requests. Raycast offers a fast launcher and a large extension library.

Nova’s focus is handling everyday tasks through voice or text while showing proposed changes before executing them. The confirmation card is central to the workflow I wanted. Nova also lets you choose a cloud model provider or run a local model through Ollama.

To avoid confusion about the name: this is a separate app, with no connection to Panic’s Nova code editor.

Pricing

Nova is in public beta, with continuing 0.x releases, and requires an Apple Silicon Mac, M1 or newer.

There is a seven-day trial with no payment details required. After the trial, the beta prices are:

• $3.99 per month
• $29 per year
• $49 for a lifetime licence

All three plans include the same features.

After version 1.0, prices for new customers will be $5/month, $49/year, or $79 lifetime. Beta subscribers keep their beta price while their subscription remains active. A lifetime licence continues beyond 1.0.

Model usage is separate from the Nova licence. You bring your own access to a cloud model provider, with any usage charges billed by that provider, or run a local model through Ollama. Privacy Lock turns off cloud connections while keeping local use available.

Website · Full pricing

About me and feedback

I’m Christoph Schumann. Here is my LinkedIn, and my contact details and links to the legal pages are in the Impressum.

The video shows a few ordinary examples.

If you try Nova in your actual work, I’d appreciate honest feedback. Especially on the confirmation card: does seeing the proposed change feel worth the extra step, or does it get in your way?