OS Son of Simon — natural language assistant for Mail, Calendar, Reminders, Notes, Safari via AppleScript

What it does: Connects an LLM to your native Apple apps through AppleScript. Talk to it in plain English and it acts on Mail, Calendar, Reminders, Notes, and Safari directly.

- "Send John the meeting notes from yesterday" → Mail.app
- "What's on my calendar tomorrow?" → Calendar.app
- "Remind me to call the dentist Friday" → Reminders.app

How it's different from OpenClaw: OpenClaw is powerful but general-purpose — it connects to everything through browser flows and a gateway. If you're on macOS with Office 365 or iCloud accounts already set up in Mail/Calendar, that means re-authenticating and exposing a new surface area.

Son of Simon skips all of that:

- No re-auth. It talks to the apps macOS already authenticated via Keychain.
- No gateway. Nothing exposed to the internet. No open ports.
- No credential storage. Your passwords stay in Keychain where they belong.
- macOS-native by design, not by afterthought. AppleScript is the entire integration layer.
- Support for AgentSkill skills from ClawHub and other sources

It's narrower than OpenClaw on purpose. If your stuff lives in Apple apps, you don't need a general-purpose agent framework — you need something that talks to the apps you already use.

Telegram integration for remote access. Learns your preferences over time (stored locally, deletable). Requires macOS 14+ and Apple Silicon.

Early stage — looking for testers. Run doctor after onboarding to check your setup.

https://github.com/spamsch/son-of-simon

Happy to take blunt feedback.

https://redd.it/1qxm68e
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At Ottex we believe voice will become the primary method of interacting with the computer. Our goal is to make it free and accessible to everyone. February update!



I've been working on Ottex for a while now and wanted to share what we shipped this month.

# What's new?

# Per-app AI models and custom instructions

Ottex now lets you assign different AI models to different apps and websites. I use a fast local model for Claude Code where I need instant dictation, and Gemini 3 Flash for Gmail where I want the AI to format a proper email from my stream of consciousness. You set it once per app and forget about it - the right setup kicks in depending on where you're typing.

Сustom instructions and models per application.

A custom mode for Obsidian that outputs clean markdown when I dictate:

https://i.redd.it/ae66q0ia2xhg1.gif

# Meeting trannoscription with speaker detection

Diarized trannoscription with speaker labels - export as a text file or copy in one click.

Drop an audio or video file, get a full trannoscript with speaker labels - who said what, when. All of this works completely free on a local model on your Mac, or through any provider by plugging in your API keys.

# Local models

https://preview.redd.it/usaybgf7mwhg1.png?width=2234&format=png&auto=webp&s=3bb71a4426e9341fcc623b0cd57efdbda2ebc81e

Last time I posted here many people said they're happy with Parakeet or a local Whisper setup and don't need another app. Fair enough. Done. Now with Ottex you can use local models... for Free. No subnoscriptions, no one time payments.

# Ottex on Easy Mode

For people who don't want to deal with API keys or model setup, we added an Ottex Cloud provider - login and everything works out of the box. Free credits included, no credit card required to try.

If you're comfortable with BYOK or local models, nothing changes - same app, same features, no limits, no cost. My bill as a heavy user is about $2/month with Parakeet V3 and Gemini 3 Flash via OpenRouter.


\---

I think voice input should be free for personal use. I plan to make money on team features down the road. Local models and BYOK will cost nothing, always.

If you know a voice-to-text app that gives you better value for what you pay - genuinely curious, tell me in the comments.

Download: https://ottex.ai

https://redd.it/1qxpn6k
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Jot - Instant Brain Dump
https://redd.it/1qxsvdl
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Quilt - Automate Captures of Anything

I work with a bunch of books, slides and other forms of content that I can't easily save. With AI models these days, being able to ask questions to my content or even just share it with friends had been something I was looking for but there weren't any great solutions which is why I built Quilt.

HOW IT WORKS:

Quilt automatically can take screenshots in a set area on your screen, and automatically switch page by clicking a key or simulating a mouse click and then take another screenshot etc.. until complete and then stitch them together and make the PDF searchable. It has support for custom file names, scroll captures (for vertical content such as website blogs) and more!

Quilt Main UI

You can get started for free and there's some Pro features available for lifetime purchase and no subnoscriptions and costs $32.99 for 1 seat, and lifetime updates. It's fully optimized for macOS Tahoe as well!

Check it out: https://quiltformac.com

https://redd.it/1qxw93g
@macappsbackup

Macos Rainmeter version OS (to be)

Hi Yall,

I have been working on a MacOS version for anyone interested, it is not quite ready yet but i want to share what I have so far. It will have compatibility with most .rmskin files (meaning most standard rainmeter skins should work on it). It will also come with a suite of liquid glass themed ones. I don't have anything to share yet (its still very very finicky) but I will update soon. Suggestions, please!!

https://redd.it/1qxx7z3
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Stik — free, open-source instant note capture for macOS. One shortcut, post-it appears, type, close.

I've been working on Stik, a lightweight note-capture app for macOS. The idea is simple: hit a keyboard shortcut, type your thought, close it. Under 3 seconds, back to what you were doing.


Key features:
\- Global shortcuts summon a floating post-it from anywhere
\- Notes saved as plain `.md` files in `\~/Documents/Stik/`
\- Organize with folders, pin notes to desktop as stickies
\- On-device AI for semantic search and smart folder suggestions
\- No account, no cloud, no telemetry — everything stays on your Mac


It's free and open source: https://github.com/0xMassi/stik\_app


Install with Homebrew: `brew install --cask 0xMassi/stik/stik`


Or grab the DMG from GitHub Releases.


Requires macOS 10.15+. Would love to hear what you think!

https://redd.it/1qxv0cr
@macappsbackup

Raindrop.io Gets a Significant New Feature

https://preview.redd.it/g3ezaqkrvzhg1.jpg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=41fd09693bdcb570a930bf26282353cae2392e2c

I've used the bookmark service [**Raindrop.io**](http://Raindrop.io) for the last three years, and it's a subnoscription I don't hesitate to renew. It has a deep feature set, and today it added something genuinely interesting for Pro users: a beta version of a private LLM assistant called [Stella](https://help.raindrop.io/stella).

Stella is designed for people with large, messy bookmark libraries. Instead of manually cleaning and reorganizing, you can just ask for help in plain language. Examples the system already understands:

* Organize my unsorted bookmarks into collections
* Suggest a better structure for my library
* Find articles about Formula 1 and tag them by team
* Find everything about Japan and move it to Travel
* Clean up my tags--merge duplicates like "recipe" and "recipes"
* Find broken links
* Show duplicate bookmarks

The key detail I appreciate: Stella only suggests changes. You review and approve everything before anything is actually modified.

# What you get for free

The free tier of Raindrop.io is surprisingly generous and will be more than enough for a lot of users:

* Import bookmarks from other services and browsers
* Unlimited bookmarks
* Unlimited collections
* Unlimited highlights
* Unlimited devices
* More than 2,600 integrations via IFTTT
* Apps for macOS, iOS, Android, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge

For a no-cost service, that's a serious toolkit.

# Why I actually use it

One of my favorite parts of Raindrop is how well it fits into a real Mac workflow. The Raycast integration is excellent: I can type **"rd," hit Enter**, and instantly search my entire collection of 2,800+ bookmarks.

Raindrop supports both folders and tags, and I use both heavily. The iOS share sheet is just as smooth as the browser extension, and both let me add notes to anything I save. I can highlight passages directly in the app, and there's a free Obsidian plugin that keeps everything in sync with my notes.

A feature that sold me on Pro early on is the **permanent library**. Raindrop saves a copy of every bookmarked page on its servers, so if a site disappears, I still have the content. That alone is worth a couple bucks a month.

It also handles PDFs well. Pro users can upload documents and access them from any device, but even free users get 100 MB of PDF uploads per month.

I've tied Raindrop into the rest of my information flow, too. Using IFTTT, anything I star in Inoreader automatically lands in Raindrop. I do the same with YouTube--every video I like gets saved as a bookmark. It quietly becomes a personal knowledge hub without much effort.

# The Pro plan

If you want more than the free tier, the Pro plan runs **$2.99 a month or $28 a year**, which feels reasonable for what you get.

Pro includes:

* Everything in the free plan
* AI suggestions for folders and tags
* Full-text search across saved pages
* Permanent library copies of pages
* Reminders to review saved items
* Annotations
* Duplicate and broken link finder
* Daily backups
* Upload up to 10 GB of files per month
* Priority email support
* Access across all platforms

Raindrop.io has quietly become one of those "set it up once and rely on it forever" tools in my stack. If you've got years of bookmarks scattered across browsers and services, it's one of the few apps that can actually help you make sense of them instead of just giving you another pile to manage.

https://redd.it/1qy3dxn
@macappsbackup

OS Web browser tailored for job searching

This febuary it will be 2 years old so not exactly new, today I want to showcase First 2 Apply.

When I started it the job market was still okish, but I had this idea that applying in the first 24-48h increases your chances of getting interviews. In today’s job market this is becoming even more relevant.

Besides that, I also wanted to make the process easier. Looking at it, I had 5-10 open tabs in Chrome with different job boards that I was constantly refreshing so the initial version was just a dumb cron job that loads my saved links in an electron window, extracts the job listings and dumps them in a supabase table. On the next run it would diff the list and if anything new popped up it would send me a desktop notification. This already helped a lot with the manual process of constantly refreshing my open tabs.

The next step was to cut through the noise. I was searching for nodejs jobs, but LinkedIn kept showing me 50% of the jobs that required Java or Python which I knew I didn’t want. So I plugged in an OpenAI model and gave it a prompt to exclude jobs from my feed that had certain keywords in the job denoscription. It only works properly like 80% of the time, but it’s still a huge time saver.

I’m not exactly looking to make money with it, that’s why I made it open source: https://github.com/beastx-ro/first2apply

I enjoy working on it as a hobby when I get bored with my 9-5. And personally I find it useful and hope it will also help others.

I’m also willing to give it away for free if you cannot afford the hosted version. I still have some free AI credits (thanks Microsoft) so not loosing money on it myself. Just DM me the email account you’ve used to sign up and will put you on a free plan (but use the 7 day trial first to see if it actually works for you).

https://redd.it/1qy8bjz
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Strimix: A Modern Player

https://redd.it/1qylcqo
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ControllerKeys - Map Xbox & PS5 Controllers to Keyboard/Mouse for Productivity on macOS - $9.99
https://redd.it/1qywf01
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QuakeNotch 2.2 is here, Quake Terminal Emulator for Mac

https://redd.it/1qyp7ip
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Omi — macOS app that auto-investigates bug reports using AI before a developer opens the terminal (demo video)

https://redd.it/1qyyx5k
@macappsbackup

Scribe free alternative?

Any free alternative to ScribeHow desktop app?

https://redd.it/1qz2ipj
@macappsbackup

Looking for App to Set Per-App Microphone Input Source

Guys, anyone knows if there's there an app that can help set and enforce a per-app microphone input source?

E.g. Safari always using Macbook's internal mic, Zoom always using AirPods, Teams always using default system input source, etc. Ideally free and open source would be great, but if not — paid options would be good to know.

For basic context, my use case: I often use an external wireless microphone for calls, it has a usb-c transmitter that needs to be plugged in and a mic that's on me. Often after calls I put the mic back in the case — to charge it, while keeping usb-c reciever plugged in. That results in a situation where default input system mic source stays the same (=wireless mic), BUT — now there's no actual mic that can take audio input (because the mic was put back into case). So e.g. if I then need to use voice dictation of ChatGPT in Safari — there's no audio input. And what I have to do is to always not forget to unplug the usb reciever after every call, and then not to forget to plug it back before next call, etc. Which is a ton of hassle. So I'm looking for an app that could help manage this, by setting per-app microphone audio source.

https://redd.it/1qz3w5d
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Alcove v1.6 - Calendar Update [Dynamic Island]

https://redd.it/1qz67i0
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Orater : Voice-to-text that actually works everywhere (no signup, offline support, free tier)

Hey! I wanted to share Orater, a voice-to-text app I've been working on that fixes a lot of the frustrations with built-in dictation.

Download: https://orater.ai/

What makes it different:

Works in literally any app (Slack, VSCode, Gmail, Discord, WhatsApp, Cursor, etc.)
Runs OpenAI's Whisper models locally – including large v3 for maximum accuracy
Fully offline mode for privacy
No signup, no account, no credit card required
Auto-cleans filler words and adjusts tone/style

Free tier includes:

Offline dictation (unlimited)
4,000 enhanced words/month
21-day Pro trial with unlimited usage

Orater comes with all supported Whisper models and is built for people who want fast, accurate dictation without sending their voice to the cloud.

Download: https://orater.ai/

https://preview.redd.it/5ff3mh9kg9ig1.png?width=2918&format=png&auto=webp&s=e965727bc9b02a57789fb3d3af0c612e7f385ffe

Would love to hear feedback from the community if anyone tries it out!


https://redd.it/1qz77ze
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