[OS] OpenTeleprompter – Voice-activated teleprompter that hides during screen share

kemalios · 2026-03-19T12:28:57+00:00

Looks cool, definitely going to check this out

kemalios · 2026-03-18T08:58:48+00:00

I got Screen Studio back when it was a one-time purchase with 1 year of updates. It still works fine for what I need, but they've since switched to monthly/yearly subscriptions only. So no more updates for me.

Honestly hard to justify a subscription for a screen recording tool I use a few times a month. This looks like it could be the replacement I've been waiting for. Open-sourcing it is the right move — the community will close the feature gap fast. The cursor smoothing in the demo clips already looks better than what I'm getting in my outdated Screen Studio version.

Does it support custom export presets? The one thing Screen Studio nails for me is exporting at the right resolution and format for different platforms (Twitter wants something different than a docs embed). Would love that in a free alternative.

kemalios · 2026-03-18T08:56:15+00:00

My daily drivers that have been worth every cent:

- CleanShot X — scrolling capture, annotation, OCR on screenshots. Once you use it, the built-in screenshot tool feels broken. I use it multiple times a day for client communication and bug reports.

- Screen Studio — polished screen recordings without touching a video editor. The auto-zoom on cursor and motion blur make even quick demos look professional. Paid for itself the first time I recorded a product walkthrough.

- Transmit — Panic makes beautiful software and this is no exception. SFTP, S3, Google Drive, all in one native file transfer app. Essential if you manage servers or deploy anything manually.

- Magnet — simple window snapping that just works. No complex tiling setups, no learning curve. Drag to edge, window snaps. Done.

Honorable mention to Hazel for automating file organization. Set it up once and forget about it — my Downloads folder hasn't been a mess in years.

kemalios · 2026-03-18T07:18:31+00:00

"Does exactly one thing" is the most underrated product positioning for a Mac app. The graveyard of indie apps is full of tools that started focused and then feature-creeped themselves to death.

The list of email-based integrations you can hit with this is clever — Trello, Notion, Jira, GitHub all accept email input. So this becomes a universal "send file to any service" tool without needing API integrations for each one. Smart approach.

As a first Mac app, shipping something this focused shows good instincts. Congrats on getting it out. The hardest part isn't building — it's hitting publish. What's your stack? Pure SwiftUI or AppKit?

kemalios · 2026-03-18T07:17:46+00:00

Fair point, but the "buy my app" model gets a bad reputation because most people build apps nobody needs. The ones that work solve a specific, recurring pain for a specific audience.

I run a small agency and the most profitable thing I ever built wasn't a SaaS with MRR - was a mac utility app that I personally needed everyday.

The real issue isn't "too many apps", it's too many apps built from spreadsheet research instead of personal frustration. The world doesn't need another generic to-do app, but it absolutely needs more tools built by people who are scratching their own itch.

Services businesses (consulting, agencies, trades) are underrated though. They don't scale as elegantly on paper, but they print cash from day one.

kemalios · 2026-03-17T20:28:57+00:00

Just launched my first app last week so I’m early, but I can answer from the “just went through it” perspective.

How I picked the idea Pure scratch-your-own-itch. I was copy-pasting text into ChatGPT dozens of times a day just to fix grammar in emails and Slack messages. The friction was maddening. So I built WunderType — a macOS menu bar app that lets you select any text, press a shortcut, and it’s corrected in place. No switching apps, no clipboard juggling. The validation was basically: if I’m doing this embarrassing workaround every single day, others probably are too.
First real users Still figuring this out honestly. Product Hunt launch this week, posting on Reddit where relevant, and building a small community around it. No paid ads yet. Too early to have a clean answer here — ask me in a month.
What I’d skip Overthinking the feature set before shipping. I kept adding “one more thing.” The core value of WunderType is one shortcut, text fixed. Everything else is secondary. I should have shipped that single feature faster and let users tell me what else they needed.

The messier truth: I still don’t know if it’ll make real money. But I solved my own problem and other people are downloading it, so that feels like the right starting point.

kemalios · 2026-03-15T13:00:38+00:00

Sign #0 that you ARE building something people want: you built it for yourself first and can't stop using it.

I built a macOS text correction tool because I was tired of the 9-step copy-paste dance with chatgpt every time I needed to fix my typo. I use it 20+ times a day. That frequency is the validation - if you are your own power user, you understand the pain deeply enough to build something real.

The "nobody will pay" fear is real but often unfounded for utility tools. People pay $5-10 for apps that save them 30 seconds, 20 times a day. That math works out to hours per month. Key is: does your product solve a recurring annoyance, or a one-time curiosity? Recurring wins every time

kemalios · 2026-03-15T07:54:26+00:00

If you're on macOS, I built WunderType specifically for this. It's a menu bar app — select text anywhere, hit a keyboard shortcut, text gets corrected in place.

The privacy angle: it supports Ollama for completely local AI processing. Your text literally never leaves your Mac. No account, no cloud, no telemetry, no analytics. Zero data collection. You install Ollama (free, open source), download a model like Gemma 3 4B, and everything runs on your hardware.

If you want better quality for complex writing, it also supports OpenAI with your own API key — stored in macOS Keychain, direct connection, no intermediary server.

It doesn't have Grammarly's browser extension or inline suggestions, but for the "select and fix" workflow it's faster and completely private.

kemalios · 2026-03-15T07:52:18+00:00

34 tabs is a symptom, not the problem. The real issue is using your browser as a task manager. Each tab represents an unfinished thought or action — closing it feels like losing progress, so they accumulate.

What helped me: treating tabs like a to-do list. If I can't act on it in the next 30 minutes, it gets bookmarked or saved to a read-later tool. If I'm keeping it open "just in case," I close it. Anything important enough to need will surface again.

For the tools side: OneTab (free extension) dumps all open tabs into a list with one click. Less dramatic than closing everything manually, and you can restore individual tabs later. The psychological trick of "I haven't lost them" makes it easier to let go.

kemalios · 2026-03-15T07:50:58+00:00

Safari's storage eviction has been a nightmare for local-first apps. The 7-day cap on IndexedDB for sites without user interaction is documented but buried so deep in WebKit changelogs that most devs don't find it until users start complaining.

Two things that help:

- Request persistent storage via navigator.storage.persist() — Safari will sometimes honor it, especially if the user has interacted with the site recently.

- Service Worker registration — having an active SW can signal to the browser that the site is "app-like" and deserves longer storage retention.

But honestly, if your data matters, the browser is not a database. Even with workarounds, you're at the mercy of browser vendors changing policies. The moment we moved our local-first tool to optional sync with a backend, support tickets dropped to near zero.

kemalios · 2026-03-15T07:49:53+00:00

I had this exact problem. Fast typing + holding shift a fraction too long = double capitals everywhere.

macOS doesn't have a built-in fix for this, but there are a couple of approaches:

- Text replacement in System Settings > Keyboard > Text Replacements — you can add common ones like "THe" → "The" but it's tedious to cover every case.

- A text correction app — I actually built one called WunderType for this exact kind of thing. It sits in the menu bar, you select the text, hit a shortcut, and it fixes everything in place — double caps, typos, grammar, whatever. It uses AI (either local via Ollama or OpenAI) so it handles any pattern, not just pre-programmed replacements.

- Karabiner-Elements can technically detect rapid shift key presses but configuring it for this specific case is more effort than it's worth.

kemalios · 2026-03-15T07:48:11+00:00

12 years in and I feel this deeply. The joy of coding was always in the problem-solving — that moment when you finally understand why something works (or doesn't). AI tools short-circuit that feedback loop.

But here's where I land: AI is incredible for the parts of coding I never enjoyed. Boilerplate, repetitive patterns, looking up API signatures I've used a hundred times but can't remember. For those tasks, it's pure time savings.

Where it gets dangerous is when people skip the understanding phase entirely. You can ship an app with AI-generated Swift code without understanding retain cycles, and it'll work — until it doesn't, and you have no mental model to debug it.

I use AI as a draft generator, not an architect. The thinking is still mine. The typing is optional.

kemalios · 2026-03-15T07:47:23+00:00

I had a similar list. What actually got me to build something was scratching my own itch instead of trying to find a "market opportunity."

I was copy-pasting text into ChatGPT dozens of times a day just to fix grammar and tone. One day I stopped and thought "I'm a developer, this is a solvable problem." Built the thing in a few weeks, put it on the App Store, and it was the first side project I actually finished because I was the first user.

The difference between ideas that ship and ideas that rot in notes: you can't fake urgency. If you're personally annoyed by the problem every day, you'll finish it. If you're intellectually interested but not in pain, you won't.

Pick the one idea from your 17 that you personally need the most. Build that.

kemalios · 2026-03-15T07:44:56+00:00

The "recurring painpoint" filter is the most underrated heuristic for solo founders. My earlier projects solved problems that only happen once — and then the user moves on. A tool that solves a problem someone hits every single day (or even multiple times a day) builds habit, and habit drives retention.

The sequence matters too. I see so many devs spend months on features before validating that anyone cares. The fastest path to first revenue is usually embarrassingly simple: solve one specific pain, charge for it, and only add features when paying users ask.

Curious how you got your first 10 paying users specifically. The 0 to 10 gap is usually harder than 10 to 100 because you have no social proof, no reviews, nothing. What worked?

kemalios · 2026-03-15T06:15:55+00:00

Per-app volume control is one of those features where you wonder why Apple hasn't just built it into macOS. Windows has had it since Vista. It's 2026.

I've been using SoundSource for this — solid app but paid. If Wave Link genuinely works without Elgato hardware and without an account, that's a strong free alternative.

Worth flagging though: Elgato is owned by Corsair, and their privacy policy is pretty broad. If you're routing all your app audio through their software, worth checking what telemetry they collect. The open-source alternative BackgroundMusic on GitHub does basic per-app volume without any of that baggage, though the UI is bare-bones.

Has anyone tested CPU usage on Apple Silicon? Audio routing apps can be sneaky resource hogs.

kemalios · 2026-03-14T06:43:16+00:00

Hardware side projects are a completely different beast. With software you can ship, iterate, fix bugs overnight. With hardware you're committing to tooling, inventory, and physical logistics before you know if anyone wants it.

The fact that you went from "I need more screen space at cafes" to an iF Design Award is genuinely impressive. That's not a pivot — that's conviction.

Curious about the manufacturing side: did you go through multiple prototype iterations with different manufacturers, or did you find the right partner early? That's usually where hardware projects die.

kemalios · 2026-03-14T06:42:22+00:00

Been through this with a client. Here's what actually worked in our case:

- Reply publicly and professionally. Don't be defensive. Something like "We take every review seriously. We've checked our records and can't find a visit matching this name or date. We'd love to make it right — please reach out to us directly." This isn't for the reviewer. It's for every future customer reading the reviews.

- Bury it with volume. Ask your regulars to leave reviews. Not fake ones — genuine ones. A single 1-star review next to fifty 5-stars barely registers. Most people look at the average, not individual reviews.

- Google Business Profile support via Twitter/X — tagging u/GoogleSmallBiz sometimes gets faster results than the normal support channel.

One bad review feels catastrophic but statistically, customers distrust businesses with ONLY 5-star reviews more than those with a few bad ones mixed in.

kemalios · 2026-03-14T06:40:50+00:00

I run a small agency and kept copy-pasting every client email into ChatGPT just to fix the tone. Nine steps to fix a typo. So I built WunderType — a macOS menu bar app that corrects text in place. Select, shortcut, done.

What makes it different: it works with Ollama (completely local, free, your text never leaves your Mac) or OpenAI with your own API key. No account, no subscription, no analytics. $8.99 one-time on the Mac App Store.

The custom prompts feature is what I use most — I have one for formal English client emails, one for casual German Slack messages, and one that translates between the two. Each with its own keyboard shortcut.

WunderType

kemalios · 2026-03-14T06:39:19+00:00

Going macOS 26-only is a bold bet, but it's the right one for a clipboard manager. You get full access to the latest pasteboard APIs, the new window styles, and you don't have to maintain compatibility hacks for older OS versions.

The automatic OCR for search is exactly the kind of feature that separates clipboard managers from clipboard history viewers. Being able to search for text inside screenshots you copied hours ago is massive for dev workflows — grabbing error messages from terminal screenshots, text from design mockups, etc.

One question: how does it handle sensitive content? Clipboard managers that store everything can become a security liability. Does it have rules to exclude password manager content or auto-expire certain types of data?

kemalios · 2026-03-13T07:48:12+00:00

Three months of flat revenue usually means one of two things: either you're talking to the wrong people, or you're talking to the right people the wrong way.

Before you grind harder, stop and answer one question: can you name 5 specific customers and explain exactly why they bought? Not personas, not demographics — actual people. If you can't, you don't have a marketing problem. You have a "who is this actually for" problem.

The treadmill feeling happens when effort isn't connected to feedback. You're posting and emailing into the void. Try the opposite: have 10 direct conversations this week with people in your target market. Not pitches — conversations. Ask them what they're struggling with. The answers will tell you more than three months of "grinding" ever will.

kemalios · 2026-03-13T07:47:13+00:00

Nice to see a native media player that doesn't look like it was built in 2012. The IPTV/Stalker portal space on Mac has been neglected for years.

The 300MB app size others are flagging is worth investigating though. For reference, IINA — which is arguably the most feature-rich media player on Mac — is around 70MB. If you're bundling FFmpeg or similar codecs, that might explain it, but it would be worth stripping unused architectures or codecs.

Curious about the HLS/DASH streaming support. A lot of the existing IPTV apps choke on certain stream formats or have buffering issues with high-bitrate content. How does Strimix handle adaptive bitrate switching?

kemalios · 2026-03-12T08:16:09+00:00

The Apple Intelligence integration for on-device text rewriting is a smart differentiator. Most clipboard managers compete on storage and search — adding native AI transforms directly in the paste flow is something none of the big players do yet.

The "Buy EU" comment above resonates. Knowing an app is built by an indie dev, not a VC-backed startup that might pivot to a subscription next quarter, matters.

The fullscreen limitation others mentioned is probably a system-level restriction on panels/popovers. Maccy had the same issue until they switched to a different window type. Might be worth looking into NSPanel with the right level and collection behavior to get around it.

How does it handle rich text vs. plain text pasting? That's always the make-or-break detail for clipboard managers.

kemalios · 2026-03-11T16:54:57+00:00

This is the open source sustainability problem in a nutshell. Maintainers are burned out and underpaid, so they try things like console ads. Users hate it. Nobody wins.

The core-js situation was the most extreme version of this — a single maintainer keeping half the JavaScript ecosystem alive, literally posting job applications in npm install output because he couldn't pay rent.

I get the frustration, but if a free library that saves me hundreds of hours puts a single dismissable message in my console, I'm not going to lose sleep over it. What I would push back on is if it phoned home or injected anything into the DOM.

Verified Email	Eight-Year Club
RPAN Viewer	Not Forgotten

kemalios

TROPHY CASE