Free, open-source native macOS screenshot and screen-recording tool with annotation, on-device OCR, and self-hosted sharing.
Screendrop is a native macOS menu-bar app for screenshots and screen recordings, built as a free, open-source Loom alternative. It captures displays, windows, or selected areas with global hotkeys, offers non-destructive annotation (drawing, crop, smart redaction, blur, watermarks), on-device OCR text grab, a notch teleprompter with speech recognition, and a recording editor with zooms, keystroke captions, and transcript-based cuts. Captures can be shared through a self-hosted Cloudflare worker with a video player, searchable transcripts, and comments.
| Pricing | Open Source |
|---|---|
| Category | Productivity |
| Platforms | macos |
| Official website | github.com |
When choosing a productivity tool, look first at how it fits the way you already work. The best tools connect with the apps you use every day — email, calendar, documents and chat — instead of becoming one more place to check. Automation matters most where work repeats: summaries, reminders, scheduling and turning notes into tasks are where AI genuinely saves time. Check whether the free tier covers your real usage, how the tool handles your data and privacy, and whether it works on the platforms you live on — web, desktop and mobile. A slightly less powerful tool that your whole team actually adopts beats a feature-rich one nobody opens.
Screendrop is a native macOS menu-bar app for screenshots and screen recordings, built as a free, open-source Loom alternative. It captures displays, windows, or selected areas with global hotkeys, offers non-destructive annotation (drawing, crop, smart redaction, blur, watermarks), on-device OCR text grab, a notch teleprompter with speech recognition, and a recording editor with zooms, keystroke captions, and transcript-based cuts. Captures can be shared through a self-hosted Cloudflare worker with a video player, searchable transcripts, and comments.
Screendrop offers Capture a display, window, or selected area as a screenshot or screen recording, Global hotkeys, timers, file formats, save behavior, and after-capture workflows, Floating preview stack to copy, compress, save, pin, preview, annotate, edit, upload, or delete, Grab text off the screen with on-device OCR — no screenshot saved, Non-destructive annotation: drawing tools, crop, smart redaction, backgrounds, blur, borders, watermarks, Record camera, microphone, and system audio as separately editable sources, Notch-native teleprompter that follows narration with on-device speech recognition and Self-hosted sharing via a Cloudflare worker with video player, searchable transcripts, and comments.
Screendrop is open source, so the software itself is free to download, use and self-host. Your only costs are the infrastructure you run it on and any paid services you connect to it.
Strengths of Screendrop include Completely free and open source with no subscription; On-device OCR, transcription, and speech recognition keep data private; Self-hosted sharing means you own your captures and links. On the downside, macOS only, and requires macOS 26.4 or newer; Under active development with rough edges and possible breaking changes; Cloud sharing needs your own Cloudflare account to self-host the worker.
by Corvo
A new mailbox that tidies itself as mail arrives — sign-in codes sit on the row with Copy and archive themselves, tracking pixels removed, phishing called out with what gave it away.
Best for: People who want a mailbox that tidies itself and lets agents draft only under a grant they set
Pricing: Freemium
Limitation: Free tier limited to a small mailbox on the corvo.cc domain
by Linkly AI
Browser extension from Linkly AI that saves web pages as agent-friendly Markdown into your local, private knowledge library, so connected AI agents can search, compare and cite your saved material.
Best for: People building a private knowledge library that their AI agents can search and cite
Pricing: Freemium
Limitation: Paid plans needed for frontier AI models, cloud access and higher quotas
by Modelpeers
Follow AI models and agents like you follow people — it watches changelogs, deprecation notices, status pages and pricing pages, and sends one Monday email when something you rely on changes.
Best for: Anyone whose work breaks when a model, agent or price they rely on quietly changes
Pricing: Free
Limitation: Coverage is 163 models and 31 agents — a tool outside that list is not watched
by magpie
One visual library for everything saved across social platforms, with AI tagging — search by what's in a save or by colour, and keep a real copy even when the original post is deleted.
Best for: People who save constantly across social apps and want to actually find things again
Pricing: Freemium
Limitation: Free tier limited to 500 saves
by BaseTab
Browser new-tab dashboard with 30+ widgets and an AI widget builder, plus Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini in a widget.
Best for: People who want their browser's new tab to be a working dashboard, not a blank page
Pricing: Freemium
Limitation: Free plan limited to one workspace
by Godwit
Open-source AI-native desktop email client for IMAP/SMTP — assistant answers questions about your mail, reads attachments, summarises, translates and drafts with your chosen model.
Best for: People who want an AI-native email client that works with any mail account and any model
Pricing: Open Source
Limitation: You supply your own model or use local models — no model included
