In the fall of 2019, I came to a decision. It was time to leave modern macOS behind.

A decade prior, switching to OS X had been a revelatory experience, as though the software was working in perfect sync with my mind. That feeling had long since disappeared. Each update seemed to chip away at something I liked about the platform. I needed to switch to a different operating system.

I surveyed the computing landscape. Windows was still fine, and Linux was still Linux. A normal person would have just picked one—but I was apparently not a normal person. I cared far too much about having the perfect computer, and I just couldn't get that wonderful memory out of my head...

Want to follow in my footsteps? It does take some work, but the results can be wonderful. If you're ready, here's how to do it.

Chatto is a fast, fully-featured chat app for teams and communities who want to own their conversations.

MacDirStat scans any folder and turns your filesystem into an interactive sunburst chart — every ring is a depth level, every arc is a file or folder, sized by disk usage. Hover to inspect. Click to drill in. Right-click to delete.

A minimalistic, self-hosted diary and journaling web app.

Piruetas gives each day its own page with a clean writing experience, multi-user support, and full control over your data.

Manic EMU is a game emulator for iPhone and iPad. It allows users to play console games with smooth performance. It supports external controllers, cheat codes, and multiple import options.

The app turns your Apple device into a portable gaming console.

Vorssaint is the one menu bar app that does the work of a whole shelf of paid Mac tools. Per app volume, a full system monitor, window controls, clipboard history, a window switcher, a file shelf, an app uninstaller, link cleaning, keep awake and a handful more, all living behind a single icon up in your menu bar. Install it once and stop paying for and juggling a pile of single purpose apps. It is local-first and stays out of your way: core features run on your Mac, with network used only for update checks, speed tests and Homebrew actions you start. Free, open source, no account, no subscription and no Vorssaint telemetry.

A different theme color for every app.

NetFluss ist die minimale, ressourcenschonende Open-Source-Menüleisten-App für macOS. Überwachen Sie Upload- und Download-Raten in Echtzeit, analysieren Sie Bandbreitenfresser und steuern Sie Ihr DNS-Routing direkt aus der Menüleiste.

Browse what you have installed. Search the full catalog. Install, uninstall, upgrade with live output. Snapshot your setup to a Brewfile and restore it on a new Mac. Shipped as a cross-platform Tauri app and a fully native Swift / SwiftUI app.

System font stack CSS organized by typeface classification for every modern OS

The fastest fonts available. No downloading, no layout shifts, no flashes — just instant renders.

The Hazel alternative for macOS. Watch folders, match files with clear rules, and move, rename, tag, or label them automatically on your Mac.

The screenshot tool
Apple forgot to make.

Annotate, blur, beautify, record, scroll capture, OCR, upload.
Premium features, no price tag. Free and open source forever.

Miru is a set of modular, extensible Web platform tools and components for still image and multi-track video editing and state-of-the-art, real-time AR. Using WebGL, WebAssembly, and open source, mobile-optimized machine learning models, Miru will give people on the social web the tools to edit images and apply interactive effects to recorded video without compromising on privacy and transparency. Miru aims to provide intuitive and user-friendly UIs which developers can easily integrate into their Web apps regardless of the front-end frameworks they use.

MarkItDown is a lightweight Python utility for converting various files to Markdown for use with LLMs and related text analysis pipelines. To this end, it is most comparable to textract, but with a focus on preserving important document structure and content as Markdown (including: headings, lists, tables, links, etc.) While the output is often reasonably presentable and human-friendly, it is meant to be consumed by text analysis tools -- and may not be the best option for high-fidelity document conversions for human consumption.

Thaw is a powerful menu bar management tool for macOS 26. While its primary function is hiding and showing menu bar items, it aims to cover a wide variety of additional features to make it one of the most versatile menu bar tools available.

A fast, elegant comic & PDF reader for your iPad – for your own collection, completely offline.

Professionelle E-Mail-Archivierung für jeden Bedarf

Sichern, durchsuchen und verwalten Sie Ihre E-Mails mit Mail Archiver - der Open-Source-Lösung für Privat und Unternehmen

Nicotine+ is a graphical client for the Soulseek peer-to-peer network.

Share files, chat, and find people with similar interests. Nicotine+ is user-friendly, fast, free, and open source. It provides features and refinements that focus on usability, while remaining fully compatible with other Soulseek clients.

Nicotine+ is written in Python, and uses GTK for its graphical user interface.

rsync, reimagined.

Parallel delta-sync engine built in Rust. BLAKE3 hashing, zero-copy I/O, content-defined chunking. Drop-in rsync replacement.