rem: Record and Search Everything You See on Your Mac

Introduction

rem is an open-source macOS application with a core mission: to automatically record everything you see on your Mac and make it searchable. Think of it as a digital external hard drive for your brain — preserving every piece of information that ever appeared on your screen, fundamentally transforming how you interact with your computer.

Core Philosophy: The project author firmly believes that the idea of "recording everything you see" has the potential to revolutionize how we use computers. At the same time, due to paramount concerns for privacy and security, such an application must be open-source and transparent, ensuring that all data processing occurs 100% locally with zero risk of data leakage.

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🎯 Key Features

1. Automated Smart Recording

• Timed Screen Capture: Automatically captures your screen every 2 seconds by default.
• Efficient OCR (Optical Character Recognition): Uses system-level or built-in high-performance OCR engines to extract all text from captured screenshots.
• Resource Optimization: Designed with space and power efficiency in mind, minimizing system resource usage while maintaining functionality.

2. Time Travel & Global Search

• Full-Screen Timeline: Navigate through your screen history using an intuitive full-screen timeline scrubber, similar to a video player, allowing you to quickly revisit any moment in the past.
• Powerful Content-Based Search: All text extracted via OCR is indexed. You can instantly search for any content you’ve ever seen — whether it was from a webpage, document, chat message, or error message — by keyword or phrase.

3. Ultimate Privacy & Security

• 100% Local Processing: All screenshots, extracted texts, and index data are stored only on your Mac — never uploaded to any server.
• Zero Telemetry/Zero Tracking: The app contains no tracking, analytics, or data collection code. This means the developers have no insight into your usage — but also rely heavily on community feedback to improve the app.
• Fully Open-Source Code: You can audit the code anytime to verify its security and privacy promises, ensuring complete transparency.

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✨ Benefits & Value

Benefit	Description
Never Lose Information Again	No more worrying about closing an important webpage, deleting a temporary chat, or forgetting an error code. rem preserves a visual record of everything.
Boosted Productivity	Forgot where you saw a piece of information? Search by keyword to instantly locate the exact screen context, saving significant time on re-searching.
Powerful Personal Knowledge Base	Automatically builds a searchable personal database from your "screen experiences" — an excellent tool for research, learning, and work.
Privacy in Your Own Hands	Unlike cloud-based notes or monitoring software, all your data remains completely private with no third-party involvement. Open-source code is the foundation of trust.
Exploring Future Interaction Models	The project explores cutting-edge human-computer interaction concepts — namely, “external memory” — attracting tech enthusiasts and contributors interested in this vision.

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🔧 Current Status & Development

• Status: Very early stage (very alpha) — bugs are expected, but feedback is highly encouraged.
• Platform: Primarily tested on Apple Silicon (M-series chips) Macs, with Intel builds also available.
• Future Plans: The project is planning xrem — a cross-platform version. Developers are invited to join and contribute.
• Community-Driven: The project’s survival and growth depend heavily on community contributions. The author actively invites users to submit issues, pull requests, participate in discussions, or improve the code.

🚨 Seeking Contributions

The project urgently needs help from the community, including:

• Bug Reporting: Since there’s no telemetry, developers can’t see issues without your reports.
• Feature Suggestions: Share your ideas via GitHub Issues.
• Code Contributions: Built with Swift — welcome developers of all levels to join and improve it.
• Documentation & Testing: Help improve documentation and perform more thorough testing.

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📥 How to Get & Use

2. Download the App: Get the .dmg installer from the GitHub Releases page.
3. First Run: You may need to grant Screen Recording and Accessibility permissions to allow the app to capture screen content and perform OCR.
4. Start Recording: Once launched, the app runs silently in the background, building your searchable “memory” over time.

Important Note: As an alpha version, it's recommended to test it initially in a non-critical environment. Also, note that continuous screenshotting will consume storage space — monitor disk usage accordingly.

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Conclusion

rem is more than just a tool — it’s an intriguing experiment in the future of computing and personal data sovereignty. Built on open-source principles and grounded in privacy, it aims to solve the modern dilemma of information overload and poor recall. If you’re fascinated by the idea of “remembering everything” and want to contribute to a promising open-source project, rem welcomes you.