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Top 23 Swift apple-silicon Projects
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Tart is a small open-source CLI built by the Cirrus Labs folks that wraps Apple's Virtualization.framework. You give it an OCI-compatible image (basically a tarball with the macOS VM disk), it spins up a VM on Apple Silicon hardware in seconds. The image is reusable, you can layer on top of it, and it's the closest thing to "docker, but for macOS VMs" that exists today.
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apfel
The free AI already on your Mac. CLI tool, OpenAI-compatible server, and interactive chat — all on-device via Apple Intelligence. No API keys, no cloud, no downloads.
i researched that question for apfel https://github.com/Arthur-Ficial/apfel and standardized API is openai api so thats what i went with
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Apple-Silicon-Guide
Apple Silicon Guide. Learn all about the A17 Pro, A16 Bionic, R1, M1-series, M2-series, and M3-series chips. Along with all the Devices, Operating Systems, Tools, Gaming, and Software that Apple Silicon powers.
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Project mention: Typewhisper: Local speech-to-text on-device AI, private, optional cloud | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-05-09
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whatcable
macOS menu bar app that tells you, in plain English, what each USB-C cable plugged into your Mac can actually do
> https://github.com/darrylmorley/whatcable
This was on show hn only yesterday.
Probably can't tell you anything about the other end of the cable though.
> Is this hard to do or just something normal people never care about?
If i believed in conspiracies i'd say the usb consortium or mafia or whatever it's called is pressuring software developers to not display that info. Otherwise they'd have "normal people" with torches and pitchforks at their door.
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Project mention: Building a macOS app to know when my Mac is thermal throttling | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-12-28
I merged https://github.com/angristan/MacThrottle/pull/2 to make it work on macOS 15. macOS 14 probably works, feel free to try it out and open a PR to lower the required version if it's the case
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Project mention: Open source, Mac-native alternative to SuperWhisper and WisprFlow | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-03-04
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Detto
On-device meeting capture, dictation, and vault-native knowledge layer for macOS. Nothing leaves your Mac.
Project mention: Tome: Local meeting transcription that writes straight to your Obsidian vault | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-03-30 -
macparakeet
Fast, local voice app for Mac — system-wide dictation, file & YouTube transcription, and meeting recording. Powered by Parakeet TDT on Apple Silicon. Free and open-source.
Project mention: Show HN: MacParakeet – Local voice dictation and transcription for Mac (GPL-3.0) | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-03-25 -
maclocal-api
'afm' command cli: macOS server and single prompt mode that exposes Apple's Foundation and MLX Models and other APIs running on your Mac through a single aggregated OpenAI-compatible API endpoint. Supports Apple Vision and single command (non-server) inference with piping as well . Now with Web Browser and local AI API aggregator
Project mention: Ollama is now powered by MLX on Apple Silicon in preview | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-03-30There's a very similar afm CLI that can be installed via Homebrew.
https://github.com/scouzi1966/maclocal-api
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I made and opensourced a comprehensive benchmarking app for Apple Silicon to fill the void here on performance testing without having to download huge models first, and the data can be submitted to a public repository with one click, so we can gather info on a large scale. The releases are signed with an apple dev cert for safety. If the repo gets a few more stars it qualifies for homebrew distribution. Feel free to integrate the data feed anywhere.
https://github.com/uncSoft/anubis-oss
https://devpadapp.com/leaderboard.html
https://devpadapp.com/explorer.html
https://imgur.com/a/sBj2xWR
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MakLock
Free, open-source macOS app that locks applications with Touch ID, Apple Watch, and trusted Wi-Fi. The only open-source app locker for macOS.
Project mention: Show HN: I built a free Mac app locker because AppLocker ($18) freezes Macs | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-04-16 -
shadow
Your computer was paying attention the whole time. 14-modality capture. Proactive intelligence. Computer-use training data. Native macOS. All on-device. Open source. (by ghostwright)
Project mention: Show HN: Phantom – Open-source AI agent on its own VM that rewrites its config | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-03-30Some of the other aspects of the project are quite interesting, I particularly liked https://github.com/ghostwright/shadow I think this has potential, but I am skeptical right now.
What is the actual cost of this? Can you share your real burn rate through using this, I sort of wanna try but don't want my API Key to go bananas because the agent decided it needed XYZ for "it" and didn't check with me
I get the appeal for the separate "identity" with email and everything for the agent, but then, if it has little to no supervision, what's the liability extent when it goes rogue? Say it DDoS someone, it exploits something, it does damage, is this like your child/minor and you're the parent/guardian?
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targetBridge
Use your Intel iMac as an external display for Apple Silicon Macs — free, open source, via Thunderbolt Bridge
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MisakiSwift
Swift port of Misaki G2P (grapheme-to-phoneme) library that can be used e.g. to generate phonemization for Kokoro text-to-speech engine
If only English support is required eSpeak could be replaced with MisakiSwift, which is under Apache 2.0 https://github.com/mlalma/MisakiSwift
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openfelix
😼 OpenFelix — Voice-first AI agent for macOS. Runs local LLMs on Apple Silicon via MLX. Supports all OpenClaw skills. Claude, GPT, or fully offline.
Project mention: OpenFelix – Open-source AI assistant for macOS (local MLX and any cloud model) | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-03-06 -
Silence-Cutter
Silenci — AI-powered silence removal & subtitle generator for Final Cut Pro. macOS native app, Qwen3-ASR + MLX, 100% local & free.
Project mention: I built a free macOS app that removes silence from videos and auto-generates subtitles | dev.to | 2026-03-31GitHub: github.com/leeyc09/Silence-Cutter
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Project mention: Show HN: NeuralForge – Fine-Tune LLMs on Your Mac Using Apple Neural Engine | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-03-12
- Some UI features are still stubs (being honest)
Setup: git clone + bash setup.sh (one command)
The hardest part was ANE itself. There's basically zero documentation on using it for training — it's designed for inference only. I had to reverse-engineer the MIL compiler, figure out the 119-kernel compilation limit per process, and build an exec() restart mechanism that transparently re-launches the training process to get fresh kernel budget.
MIT licensed: https://github.com/Khaeldur/NeuralForge
Happy to answer questions about ANE internals.ye
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speechdock
Turn any audio into text and any text into speech — menu bar app with system/app audio capture, live subtitles, OCR, and translation.
Project mention: Show HN: SpeechDock – Transcribe any audio on your Mac, not just your microphone | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-02-19
NOTE:
The open source projects on this list are ordered by number of github stars.
The number of mentions indicates repo mentiontions in the last 12 Months or
since we started tracking (Dec 2020).
Swift apple-silicon discussion
Swift apple-silicon related posts
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Turn an Intel iMac into a 5K Display
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Use your Intel iMac as an external display for Apple Silicon Macs
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TargetBridge: Use an iMac as Display for a Modern Mac
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Typewhisper: Local speech-to-text on-device AI, private, optional cloud
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Show HN: I built a free Mac app locker because AppLocker ($18) freezes Macs
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Ollama is now powered by MLX on Apple Silicon in preview
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Apfel CLI – use your free Apple Intelligence on your Mac your way
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A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
www.saashub.com | 7 Jun 2026
Index
What are some of the best open-source apple-silicon projects in Swift? This list will help you:
| # | Project | Stars |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | MochiDiffusion | 7,893 |
| 2 | tart | 5,764 |
| 3 | apfel | 5,538 |
| 4 | Apple-Silicon-Guide | 1,880 |
| 5 | typewhisper-mac | 1,318 |
| 6 | whatcable | 1,046 |
| 7 | MacThrottle | 645 |
| 8 | pindrop | 533 |
| 9 | Detto | 491 |
| 10 | macparakeet | 305 |
| 11 | maclocal-api | 292 |
| 12 | anubis-oss | 168 |
| 13 | archify | 146 |
| 14 | m1craft | 142 |
| 15 | Project-Mendacius | 113 |
| 16 | MakLock | 66 |
| 17 | shadow | 66 |
| 18 | targetBridge | 58 |
| 19 | MisakiSwift | 27 |
| 20 | openfelix | 27 |
| 21 | Silence-Cutter | 16 |
| 22 | NeuralForge | 8 |
| 23 | speechdock | 5 |
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