Rewind AI alternatives for Mac in 2026: what replaced it
Rewind stopped capturing on 19 December 2025. Here is what each Mac replacement records, where it keeps the data, and which one fits how you work.
Rewind was the app that remembered everything you saw on your Mac. On 5 December 2025 Meta announced it had acquired Limitless, the company Rewind had become, and on 19 December the Mac app stopped capturing screen and audio. If you relied on it, you now have a folder of old recordings and no memory of anything since.
Four apps have moved into that space. They differ more than their landing pages suggest, so start with what each one records.
What Rewind did, and what broke
Rewind recorded your screen as compressed video and your microphone as audio, kept it on the Mac, and let you scroll back or ask questions about it. The capture is what died. Outside the EU and UK you can still open the app and read old data after accepting Meta’s terms; in the EU and UK the export window closed on 19 December 2025.
So the question is not “what looks like Rewind”. It is “what do I want recorded, and where does it live”.
The four Mac replacements
| Sharpy | Screenpipe | Goldfish | HeyClicky | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it records | Text of the front window, via macOS Accessibility, several times a minute. No video, no keystrokes. | Screen frames with OCR, plus microphone and system audio, transcribed. | Not stated on its site beyond “a little memory that lives on your Mac”. | Nothing in the background. A screenshot when you press the hotkey; screenshots are not stored, short text summaries are. |
| Where it lives | One SQLite file on your Mac. No cloud copy. | Local SQLite, local REST API, local by default. | Not stated on the homepage. | Account data; delete the account, delete the data. |
| What you do with it | Ask with a citation to the exact moment; rewrite any text field in your tone with a tap of Option; hand off a task by holding Option and speaking. | Search, “pipes” for meeting notes and CRM updates, an MCP server for AI models. | Press Option in any text field to reply in your tone with context. | Ask out loud, get on-screen guidance, or let an agent run the task. |
| Platforms | macOS 14+. Windows on the waitlist. | macOS, Windows, Linux. Source-available. | macOS and Windows. | macOS 14.2+. Windows “coming”. |
| Price | Early access by invite; the allowance is explained before you activate. | Not shown on the homepage. | Not shown on the homepage. | Free 25 talk + 25 agent messages a month; Pro $20, Max $100. |
The table reflects each site on 14 September 2026. Read the privacy page of the one you pick; these products change monthly.
How to choose
You want the closest thing to Rewind’s “scroll back through my day”. Screenpipe. It keeps frames and audio, so you get pictures and transcripts, at the cost of disk and the fact that a picture of your screen exists somewhere on the Mac.
You want the memory without the recording. Sharpy. It keeps the words, not the pixels. Ask “what did we agree with Alex on Tuesday” and the answer comes with a chip you click to open that moment. Card numbers, IBANs and tokens are masked before anything is written; banks, password fields, login pages and incognito windows are never captured.
You mostly want to reply faster. Goldfish and Sharpy both live on the Option key. Goldfish sells one move: press Option, get a reply that sounds like you. Sharpy does the same tap and adds the history behind it, so the reply knows what the thread decided last week.
You want an agent that looks at your screen only when asked. HeyClicky. It never watches in the background, which is the point for some people and the limitation for others: there is nothing to search later.
What Sharpy does that Rewind did not
Rewind answered questions about your past. Sharpy also acts on it.
- Hold Option, say “tell Dana the call moves to Thursday and put it in the calendar”, let go. The task runs in the background on your Mac, across supported apps, without touching your cursor. It pauses before anything that deletes, pays, posts publicly or sends in bulk.
- Claude Code, Cursor and other tools can read the same memory over MCP, so your coding agent knows what you did yesterday without you pasting it. See Give Claude Code a memory of your screen.
- Chronicle, wiki pages for people and projects, open promises, and a time ledger by app and project, all built from the captured text.
The limits, stated plainly: Sharpy needs an account, all model calls go through the Sharpy gateway, and providers may keep prompts for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring. Your history stays on the Mac; the context for a question does travel to a model.
Moving your Rewind data
Sharpy does not import a Rewind export today. Keep the export anyway; the text in it is worth having. Sharpy does import browser history, files, an Apple Notes export and your calendar, so the new memory does not start from zero.
If you were a Rewind user, join the waitlist and say so in the reply to the welcome email. Invites go out weekly.
Questions
Is Rewind AI still working?
No. Meta acquired Limitless, the company behind Rewind, and the Rewind Mac app stopped screen and audio capture on 19 December 2025. Existing users keep limited access to old data outside the EU and UK; EU and UK users had until that date to export.
Which Rewind alternative keeps everything on my Mac?
Sharpy stores captured text in one SQLite file on your Mac and keeps no cloud copy; AI features send only the relevant context to cloud models per request. Screenpipe stores screen frames and audio locally and is source-available. Check the current privacy page of any tool before you rely on it.
Do I need screen recording for screen memory?
No. Sharpy reads the text of the front window through macOS Accessibility, several times a minute, and never records video. Screenpipe records screen frames and runs OCR. Both approaches give you searchable history; text capture uses far less disk and never stores a picture of your screen.
Does Sharpy work on Windows?
Not yet. Sharpy runs on macOS 14 or later, by invite. Windows has a waitlist at getsharpy.com/waitlist.