LockTime

LockTime for macOS

Find what you saw.

Your Mac shows you thousands of things a day and remembers none of them. LockTime keeps a searchable memory of your screen — and keeps every bit of it on your Mac.

On the Mac App Store macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon and Intel
LockTime's workspace: a search field with Desk, Moments, Timeline and Ask beside it, a calendar of days with activity, a large screenshot of a notes window, the day laid out on a strip of moments below it, and the Vault button at the top right.
LockTime's own sample library. The screens in it are fictional.

A memory of your screen,
the way memory actually works.

You rarely remember where something was. You remember a word from it.

Capture

Every half minute

A screenshot of the display you are working on, skipped when nothing has changed. One second to ten minutes, whichever suits you.

Read

Every word on it

Apple's Vision framework reads the text off each screen, along with the window's title.

Find

Type what you remember

A number, a phrase, half a sentence. LockTime brings back the moment it was on your screen.

Timeline

Your day, gathered into
the work it came from.

Not a list of screenshots. The stretches you actually worked in — when each began, how long it ran, what it was about, and how long you were away in between.

What a stretch was about is read from text already on your disk. No model runs, nothing waits, nothing is sent anywhere.

LockTime's Timeline: a day broken into sessions, each with its application, title, keywords and thumbnails, and the gaps between them marked as time away.

Ask

Ask in plain words.

“What was that invoice number?” LockTime finds the screenshots that answer, shows you every one, and — where your Mac can write — puts a short answer over them that cites the moments it used.

The answer is written on your Mac. Apple's on-device model on macOS 26, or any model you run locally with Ollama. The moments are the answer; the paragraph is a convenience, and LockTime says so plainly when it cannot write one.

LockTime's Ask: a question typed in plain words, a short written answer citing a numbered moment, and the screenshots it found underneath, the cited one marked.

Search by meaning

Find the page you remember,
not the words you typed.

Exact search is instant and literal. Turn on meaning and LockTime reads each screen with a local embedding model, so “how do I keep my data private” reaches the page that said “make the privacy controls easy to find.”

It is offered when the exact search comes back empty, so it never gets in the way of knowing the word. And search finds Turkish typed without Turkish letters — toplanti finds toplantı.

Privacy

A record of your screen is the most personal thing
on your computer. So it never leaves it.

There is no account to make, no server to sync with and nothing to opt out of. Not a policy — an absence of the code that would do it.

0
network requests, unless you let Ask search the web
0
accounts, analytics events, crash reporters
100%
of screenshots encrypted where they are stored

Encrypted on disk

Every screenshot is sealed with AES-GCM under a key generated on your Mac and kept in your keychain. A copied folder is unreadable without it.

Recording is off until you say so

LockTime records nothing on first launch. You turn it on, and macOS asks you for screen-recording permission itself.

Password fields are never captured

When any app turns on Secure Input — what macOS does while a password field has focus — the capture is skipped and the menu-bar icon becomes a lock.

Exclude any app

Password managers are excluded out of the box. Add anything else, and a capture is skipped whenever it has a window on screen.

Keep only what you want

A day, a month, a year or forever. Expired screenshots and their text are removed for good, and Delete all history means all of it.

The network only when you ask

No scheduled call home. LockTime makes no network request unless you turn on web search for Ask — which sends search words to Brave and fetches the pages it finds, never your screenshots.

LockTime's privacy settings: the list of excluded applications, with password managers already in it.

Tech specs

Requirements
macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Apple silicon and Intel, one universal build.
Capture
ScreenCaptureKit, every 1 second to 10 minutes. One display — the one you are working on.
Text recognition
Apple Vision, on device. Window titles saved alongside.
Search
SQLite FTS5, word-prefix and phrase. Optional meaning search with a local embedding model.
Written answers
Apple Intelligence on macOS 26, or any Ollama model over loopback. Both optional, both local.
Storage
Encrypted JPEG and an index, in Application Support. Retention from one day to forever.
Distribution
The Mac App Store: sandboxed and reviewed by Apple. Updates come through the App Store.
Price
US$12.99, once, on the Mac App Store. No subscription.
Network
None, other than Ask's web search if you turn it on.

Performance

You should not be able
to tell it is running.

~1%
of one core while recording
0.3 s
to capture, read and store one screen
1 ms
to list a day out of 20,000 screenshots

Native Swift and SwiftUI, universal for Apple silicon and Intel, following your Mac's light or dark setting and your accent colour. It opens at login if you want it to, and records the display you are actually working on.

Start remembering.

US$12.99, once, on the Mac App Store. Recording is off until you turn it on, and everything it records stays with you.

On the Mac App Store macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon and Intel

Changelog

Week of 12 October 2026

  • 0.1.18LockTime now speaks Japanese, Korean and Portuguese (Brazil), in every window, menu and setting.
  • Copy image, Copy text, the MCP command and the Vault's copy show a checkmark for a moment, so you can see it worked.
  • Copying a screenshot no longer holds the window still while the picture is prepared.

Week of 5 October 2026

  • 0.1.17Replay plays back the listed screenshots like a video (⌥⌘P), and Export Video… saves them as a movie.
  • Sum up the day, at the top of a day's Timeline, writes what the day held and what to pick up tomorrow, on your Mac.
  • Forget the Last… 5, 30 or 60 minutes, in the menu bar and the History menu, deletes what was just saved.
  • Ask is more dependable in other languages: it keeps the answer that cites what it found, and no longer stops at its first word.

Week of 28 September 2026

  • 0.1.16Desk's Day, Week and Month switch the way the views in the header do, with the day arrows and Today beside them.
  • On the Timeline, a screenshot's time stays readable under the pointer in light appearance.
  • The icon on the first-run and locked screens sits on a soft light of its own colours.
  • 0.1.15A little more light: the screenshot you are looking at gives off a soft glow of its own colours, the chosen view, day and buttons look lit rather than painted, and the sidebar carries a faint warmth from the icon.
  • Screenshots appear sooner as you move through them, because each one is now decoded before it is shown.
  • Ask no longer misses what your history holds when it mistakes the subject of a question for an application's name.
  • 0.1.14The Vault has its own button at the top right of the window, with a count of what was found on screen and is waiting for you.
  • The first time you open the Vault, it says what it keeps safe and what it cannot. After that it opens with one touch of Touch ID, which also covers revealing and copying for a minute.
  • The Vault closes itself when its window closes, after five idle minutes, when your Mac sleeps and when LockTime locks, and its window is kept out of screenshots and screen sharing.
  • VoiceOver reads the Vault's hidden values as hidden and names the find each of its buttons acts on.
  • 0.1.13Passwords, card numbers, IBANs, API keys and tokens on your screen are covered in the screenshots LockTime saves and kept out of search. It is on by default, in Settings ▸ Privacy.
  • The Vault keeps the ones you choose: turn on Offer them for the vault and each one found waits for you to keep or dismiss. Kept secrets open with Touch ID, copy so clipboard managers skip them and the clipboard empties after a minute, and save to 1Password or the keychain.
  • Lock LockTime with Touch ID, in Settings ▸ Privacy, locks your history, the Vault and Settings when your Mac sleeps or locks, after 15 minutes away, and when LockTime opens. Recording carries on.
  • Search from any app with ⌥⇧Space, and open a search from Shortcuts, Raycast or Alfred with a locktime://search?q= link.
  • The words you search for are marked on the screenshot itself, and text on an enlarged screenshot can be selected and copied where it is.
  • Excluded websites are never saved, and Keep at most, in Settings ▸ History, removes the oldest screenshots once the library passes a size you choose.
  • Record every display, in Settings ▸ Recording, saves your other displays as well as the one you are working on.
  • The applications in the sidebar can be sorted by name, most screenshots or last seen, and filtered once there are many.
  • Ask always looks through your history before answering a new question, and Settings ▸ Intelligence says which job needs Ollama.

Week of 14 September 2026

  • 0.1.12More room for your screenshots: the heading above Moments and the timeline, and the Today and All history rows in the sidebar, are gone.
  • Today is a button in the calendar's header, and clicking the chosen day again shows all history.
  • The day strip steps to the previous or next day, and the History menu has Previous Day (⌘[), Next Day (⌘]) and All History (⌘⇧A).
  • A search's count of matches sits at the top of its results.
  • 0.1.11A third smaller to download, and about 11 MB lighter once installed.
  • On macOS 14 and 15, the window's close, minimise and zoom buttons are back where macOS puts them, so a click on their lower edge no longer moves the window instead.
  • With the window left open behind other apps, LockTime no longer reads the day's screenshots again after each one it saves, and it lets go of thumbnails when the window closes.
  • For assistants connected over MCP: a day's overview writes its times on a 24-hour clock, so an afternoon no longer reads like the small hours on a Mac set to 12-hour time.
  • The MCP server and the updater's helpers no longer carry LockTime's permission to send Apple Events to other apps.
  • 0.1.10The window's close, minimise and zoom buttons and LockTime's name now sit on the header's middle line, level with the views, the search and everything else in it.
  • 0.1.9For assistants connected over MCP: dates and times follow your Mac's clock. A day's overview could carry the previous day's date, search results gave their times in UTC, and a time such as 11:07 read 11:7.
  • 0.1.8On macOS 26, clicks in the header work again: the four views, the search field and the buttons beside it. Since 0.1.6 the header ignored the pointer, so LockTime stayed on whichever view it showed.
  • Desk no longer says a week or a month was spent "over 0 days" when its screenshots were too far apart to count as time on screen.
  • Left open past midnight, the calendar now marks the new day as today.
  • 0.1.7Desk, a fourth view, shows where a day, a week or a month went: time on screen, the applications and websites, the hours of your day and the week's rhythm, all worked out on your Mac. Settings ▸ General can stop it updating by itself.
  • Ask is an assistant now: it looks through your history, reads the screenshots it finds, sums up a day and answers in the language you asked in.
  • Ask can also search the web and read the pages that search returns, once you turn on Let Ask search the web in Settings ▸ Intelligence and add a Brave Search key of your own. Off, Ask never leaves your Mac.
  • On the timeline, Summarize sums up a stretch of work and suggests what to do next.
  • LockTime's logo and name moved beside the window's buttons, and the header now starts with the four views.
  • A day with thousands of screenshots stays smooth to resize and to step through, and typing in the search field or in Ask no longer redraws the whole window at every letter.
  • While LockTime records, the breathing dot in the sidebar no longer keeps your Mac busy for as long as the window is open.
  • While you search, the calendar shades only the days that hold a match; a day with none no longer shows its screenshots as matches.

Week of 7 September 2026

  • 0.1.6LockTime speaks Turkish, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Chinese, following your Mac's language. Moments, Timeline and Ask keep their names.
  • A new header: LockTime's logo and name, the search, the three views and recording share one row.
  • Settings ▸ General can start recording as soon as LockTime opens. It stays off unless you turn it on.
  • A recording that paused because your Mac slept, the screen locked or you switched users starts again when you are back. Settings ▸ General can turn that off.
  • If you quit LockTime while it records, it asks first. Closing only the window keeps it recording from the menu bar, as before.
  • Opened at login, LockTime waits in the menu bar instead of putting its window in front of you. A timed pause now lasts through a restart or an update; quitting LockTime calls it off.
  • A screenshot can no longer slip in just after you pause, the screen locks or you exclude an app, and switching apps quickly captures the app you land on rather than the one you left.
  • Choosing Forever for your history no longer leaves the slider one step from deleting everything older than three days. A source opened from Ask no longer shows an empty screen, and Jump to now keeps the newest screenshot on the day strip.
  • Search by meaning no longer duplicates or damages its index when reading is retried or cancelled, and a check that finds nothing new no longer redraws every open window.
  • For assistants connected over MCP: no crash on an enormous limit, days read correctly on non-Gregorian calendars, and a busy day is no longer cut off at 20,000 screenshots.
  • 0.1.5LockTime has an address that matches its name: **locktime.org**. That is where the app now looks for updates, and where the download lives.
  • The old address keeps working. Every copy already installed asks recall.nxyz.art for updates, so that address goes on serving them — this release is what moves you across.
  • 0.1.4LockTime can check your screen as often as every second. Checking is not saving: a screen that has not changed is not saved again, so looking often costs very little.
  • A screenshot is taken the moment you switch apps, so a glance at another window is not lost between checks.
  • LockTime learns where a caret, a clock or a spinner keeps moving and stops saving screenshots for those alone. Everything else is still saved, down to a one-character correction.
  • An unchanged screen saved for the record is no longer read a second time; it keeps the text it already had.
  • Light and dark have a control in the header now, beside Settings. Following your Mac is still what it does by default.
  • Jump to now puts the newest moment at the right-hand edge of the day strip, rather than in the middle with nothing after it.
  • A day holding more screenshots than the list can show now says so instead of quietly starting later.
  • A new application icon.
  • 0.1.3The app is now called LockTime. Your history, settings and screen-recording permission carry over untouched.
  • If you had connected the app to an assistant over MCP, add it again with the command in Settings ▸ Intelligence: it now points at a differently named app and server, so the old entry no longer resolves.
  • Ask can write its answers with a model from Ollama as well as with Apple Intelligence. Both run on your Mac.
  • Search by meaning: with it on, LockTime reads each screenshot with an embedding model and can find the page you remember even when it never used the word you are typing. Offered when the exact search finds nothing.
  • The day strip zooms — pinch, or the buttons — so a busy afternoon is reachable, with a button to jump to now.
  • Settings has been rebuilt around a list of sections instead of three tabs.
  • 0.1.2A Timeline tab: your day gathered into the stretches of work it came from, with when each one started, how long it ran, and what it was about.
  • An Ask tab: put a question in plain words and get back the screenshots that answer it, with a short written answer where your Mac can write one.
  • LockTime now saves the title of the window in front, and the address of the page when you are in a browser, so you can find a document or a page by its name.
  • LockTime can answer questions from AI assistants on your Mac, read-only. Turn it on in Settings ▸ Privacy.
  • The window follows your Mac's light or dark setting instead of always being dark, and uses your own accent colour.
  • Each screenshot is processed about twice as fast.
  • 0.1.1Update notes now appear in the updater, so you can see what you are installing.
  • A changelog on the website.
  • 0.1.0First public build: records your screen, reads the text, and makes it searchable on your Mac.
  • Screenshots are encrypted where they are stored, with a key kept in your keychain.
  • Search finds Turkish text typed without Turkish letters — "toplanti" finds "toplantı".
  • Updates are checked only when you ask, never on a schedule.
  • Opens at login if you want it to, and follows the display you are working on.