Rewisp
Yashmit Bhaverisetti · Productivity
Rewisp is an ambient memory app for Apple Silicon Macs that quietly remembers the text of everything you see on screen. Instead of taking pictures, it runs on-device OCR and keeps only the words, so you can ask later what you read, what changed on a page, or what you promised someone. It runs macOS 15 or newer, needs no account, and never sends your screen history to a server.
About Rewisp
What Is Rewisp
Rewisp is an ambient memory tool for your Mac. It watches the text that appears on your screen, strips out the pixels, and stores the words in a local database. Later you summon a panel with ⌘⇧Space and ask things like "what was due on July 12th?" or "what did I read about burnout last week?"
The point is simple. The information you need was probably on your screen at some point, and then it vanished. Rewisp holds onto it. It goes a step further than a searchable log by reasoning over what it saved, so it can tell you what changed on a page or surface a commitment you mentioned in passing.
It's the kind of tool where the limits matter as much as the features. Rewisp only reads text that's actually rendered on screen, so a promise made out loud on a call stays invisible unless it shows up as a caption or something you type. And because it isn't notarized yet, macOS will block the first launch until you clear it in Privacy settings.
Getting Started
- Download Rewisp.dmg from the project's GitHub releases page and drag the app into your Applications folder before opening it.
- Double-click the app. macOS will block it the first time because it isn't notarized, so go to System Settings, then Privacy & Security, and click Open Anyway.
- When prompted, allow Screen Recording for the helper called "Rewisp Backend". That helper is what captures and reads your screen.
- Press ⌘⇧Space anywhere to open the panel and ask a question about something you saw earlier.
- Open Settings to review the engine chain, set your nightly digest time, and check which apps are filling the database.
Product Information
A quick look at Rewisp's pricing, supported platforms, and performance.
Best for
The users, tasks, and scenarios where this tool fits best.
Users
- Students juggling multiple courses
- Researchers and writers
- Anyone who forgets small commitments
Tasks
- Recovering something you saw
- Spotting page changes
- Filling web forms
- Tracking a number over time
Scenarios
- End-of-day recap
- Multiple identities
- Keeping games and media out
Key features
On-Device Screen Memory
Rewisp takes an in-memory screenshot of your screen, runs OCR through Apple's Vision framework, and keeps only the recognized text. The pixels are released immediately, so screenshots never touch disk. Everything lands in a single SQLite database in your home folder, and the capture is triggered by app switches, new URLs, scroll settles, and a 60-second heartbeat. That local setup is what makes it a genuine on-device AI memory rather than a cloud log.
Meaning-Based Search
You don't have to remember exact words. This Mac screen memory fuses local embeddings with keyword search, so asking for "that article about burnout" can surface a page that used "exhaustion". A trigram signal even catches words that OCR mangled, mapping a garbled "cl1ent" back to "client". Screen history search rarely gets this forgiving.
Promises and Commitments
The app notices commitments as they scroll past, like "I'll send it Friday", and holds them until the morning they're due. It brings them back without you ever typing a reminder. That's the whole trick. It's the feature that shows the difference between storing text and understanding it.
What Changed on This Page
Every version of a page is saved as text, so Rewisp can compare versions and tell you what was added, edited, or removed. A syllabus that shifted its deadline? A price that quietly changed overnight? It flags both.
The Engine Chain
A free Apple on-device model answers your questions first. If its answer comes up thin, Rewisp silently escalates to an engine you already pay for, following a chain of Claude Pro, ChatGPT Plus, free Gemini, then a local Ollama model. It never falls back to a billed API key, and a badge shows which engine replied.
Autofill From Your Vault
Your resume, addresses, and standard answers live in a Vault and act as trusted truth. On a signup page, ⌘⇧Space makes Rewisp read every field and fill it from those saved details. It skips passwords and cards, and it never submits the form for you. Sounds small. It saves a lot of typing.
MCP and Agent Access
You can expose your memory to Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP client as read-only tools. The connection is local stdio with no network listener, and your Vault is excluded, so connected agents can query memory without reaching your personal data.
The Nightly Digest
At 9 PM, Rewisp makes one call and produces a short recap: what happened, what's still open, and what it learned about you. Every new fact waits for your approval before it's kept, so the picture of you only grows when you say so.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Free and open source under the MIT license, with no account or API key required to use it.
- Runs fully on-device for the default answers, so your screen history and personal data stay on your Mac.
- Reasons over saved text, not just searches it, which powers features like promise tracking and page diffs.
- Escalates to a paid engine you already have when the local model can't answer, without charging you extra.
- Strong privacy defaults: an absolute kill list for messaging and banking apps, PII redaction, and encryption at rest.
Cons
- Mac only, and it needs an Apple Silicon chip running macOS 15 or newer, so Intel Macs and older systems are out.
- Not notarized, so macOS blocks the first launch and an update can drop screen permission until you re-enable it.
- It only reads on-screen text, so anything said aloud or shown as an image without text is invisible to it.
- Encryption protects a stolen disk or backup, but it can't shield your data from a process already running as you.
Frequently asked questions
It remembers the text rendered on your screen, not the pixels. Each screenshot is OCR'd in memory and released, and only the recognized words go into a local database. If a word never appeared as on-screen text, Rewisp has no record of it.
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