Sonar

MacTap is a macOS menu-bar app that turns one, two, or three knocks on a compatible MacBook chassis or the desk beneath it into keyboard shortcuts and other mapped actions. It supports left- and right-edge layouts, configurable sensitivity and actions, presets such as Daily, Coding, Capture, Media, and Focus, and per-application overrides. Tap classification runs on-device, with gesture mappings stored locally and nothing uploaded. It requires macOS 14.6 or later and a MacBook whose motion sensor is exposed as an SPU HID device, including M2-and-later models and M1 Pro, Max, or Ultra systems; some M1 models, including the original M1 Air, are unsupported. The app requires Accessibility permission for actions to send shortcuts, is distributed as a signed and notarized macOS app, and is licensed under the MIT license.

Kinesis is an experimental native macOS controller for the Meta neural band. It interprets wrist and finger gestures to switch between desktops, open Mission Control, control music, and adjust volume or brightness; users can choose gesture-to-action mappings and configure the app from its menu-bar interface. The app is distributed as a macOS DMG and requires macOS 14 or later, a neural band, Bluetooth, and accessibility permissions. It supports Apple silicon and Intel Macs and is built with Xcode and Swift 6.

Vorssaint is a free, open-source Swift/SwiftUI macOS menu bar toolkit that combines utilities including per-application volume and audio controls, output and microphone switching, system monitoring, network statistics, app and window switching, window snapping, Dock previews, clipboard history, text snippets, file staging, screen capture, display and energy controls, media tools, cleaning, and app removal. It is modular: users can install or remove complete features, with removed features stopping loading while retaining their settings for later reinstallation. The toolkit also provides configurable shortcuts, panels, a command bar, and optional bundles for common setups. Vorssaint runs locally without an account, analytics, tracking, subscription, or required network service; its volume mixer requires no audio driver or setup, and selected features request only the relevant macOS permissions, including accessibility, screen recording, audio recording, microphone, camera, calendars, notifications, and disk access.

Qwen Scribe is a private, local transcription and system-wide dictation application for Apple Silicon Macs. It runs Qwen3-ASR through mlx-qwen3-asr on the Mac's Metal GPU, keeping audio and transcripts on the computer without an account, API key, or cloud service. Users can drag audio or video into a local web interface, transcribe with automatic or forced language selection, vocabulary hints, word timestamps, and SRT export, and search or export local transcript history. A menu-bar helper provides push-to-talk dictation in text fields, displaying listening and transcription states in a non-focus-stealing HUD before pasting the result at the cursor. The project requires macOS 14 or newer, Apple Silicon, Python 3.12 or newer, and ffmpeg for non-WAV audio and video. It offers Qwen3-ASR 1.7B and 0.6B model options; model weights are downloaded separately and require roughly 3.4 GB or 1.2 GB of unified memory respectively, in addition to application overhead. It is distributed as a downloadable beta Mac app or can be built from source; the repository describes the project as version 0.2.1-beta.1.

BetterVoice is an experimental, open-source macOS menu-bar app for local voice dictation with screen context. It transcribes speech locally and captures the full display whenever the user circles an area with the pointer, marking each capture with a blue pointer trail and pulse while preserving multiple references in order. The app inserts the transcript into the selected text field when macOS permits it and pastes captured images when both speech and screen context are available. It supports quick notes and long explanations, configurable microphones, dictation languages, circle-detection thresholds, and keyboard shortcuts. English uses a local Parakeet model by default, while other languages use a separately downloaded multilingual model; an optional English-only grammar-cleanup feature runs locally through quantized ONNX weights.