# Appears

> Open-source Mac menu bar app at appea.rs, made by Colin Armstrong, that notices what you're working on and shows related files you already have, such as old screenshots, photos and PDFs, using an on-device model; nothing leaves the computer.

Appears lives in your menu bar and follows along while you work. When you already have something that helps, like an old screenshot, a photo of a quote or a PDF from two years ago, it shows up. No searching, no typing.

It reads the window in front of you through the macOS Accessibility API, only when something changes, keeps that text in memory and throws it away. It indexes files in the home folder and Apple Notes with Google's EmbeddingGemma 2, running on the Mac, plus full-text search, and ranks for what you haven't opened in a long time, not only for what's similar. It shows at most three things, each with a one-line reason; you can open one, Quick Look it, or drag it into what you're writing.

No notifications, no sounds, no pop-ups. When Appears finds something worth a look, the little ring in your menu bar gets a dot. Glance at it when you're ready, or press a shortcut to ask any time.

How it keeps everything on the Mac:

- Everything happens on your Mac: Appears does all its work on your Mac. No account, no cloud, nothing uploaded.
- It forgets what it sees: It reads what you're working on, uses it, and lets it go. The only thing it remembers is which suggestions you found useful.
- It skips private things: Password managers, password fields and private browser windows are off limits. Pause it from the menu bar whenever you like.
- Anyone can check: It's open source under the MIT license, so these promises aren't just promises.

In detail: reading files, running the model and holding the index happen in a separate engine process inside the App Sandbox with no network entitlement. The menu bar app, which reads the screen through the Accessibility API and so can't be sandboxed, contains no networking code, and a build check fails if it ever imports a networking API. The only log is which suggestions were opened or dismissed, without the text of what was on screen.

Requirements:

- A Mac with Apple silicon
- macOS 26 or later

It's free and open source under the MIT license (https://opensource.org/license/mit). Download: https://appea.rs/Appears.dmg

Appears is made by Colin Armstrong (https://armstr.ng), the founder and CEO of Paragraph.

This page has a Markdown version at https://appea.rs/index.md, and https://appea.rs/ returns Markdown when a request's Accept header prefers text/markdown.

## Docs

- [Appears](https://appea.rs/index.md): what Appears does, how it decides what to show, and how it keeps everything on your Mac

## Optional

- [Colin Armstrong](https://armstr.ng): who made Appears