What it does
RetroMac is a menu-bar app with two ideas that work on their own or together:
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A CRT on your screen. ScreenCaptureKit and Metal draw a click-through overlay and run
shaders through it: curvature, scanlines, phosphor bloom, NTSC dot crawl, VHS tracking,
Trinitron and PVM looks, the Game Boy's green. Over the whole screen, one display, one
window, or the desktop only, with your application windows left sharp.
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A desktop from another decade. A .retromactheme bundle brings its dock or taskbar,
Start menu, wallpapers, icons, cursors, window chrome, boot screen and screensaver, and the
toys of its era: Program Manager, the Control Strip, the Deskbar, Dashboard, Defrag, a Zip
drive that clicks itself to death.
A few impressions
| | |
|---|
| Windows 95 | Windows 98 | Windows XP |
| System 6 | Mac OS 9 | Mac OS X |
| Snow Leopard | BeOS | NeXTSTEP |
| CRT Royale | VHS | Game Boy |
More, and the videos, at myretromac.app.
Features
- Shaders — thirty-odd presets (CRT Royale, GDV Mini Ultra, Lottes, zfast, Trinitron, PVM,
LCD, VHS, VCR, NTSC composite, film) with intensity, vignette and bloom; per-app rules; your
own Metal presets (docs/CUSTOM-SHADERS.md).
- Live Wallpaper Plus — the shader over wallpaper, desktop icons, dock and Start menu in one
pass while your windows stay untouched. Nostalgia and work at the same time.
- Themes — Windows 3.1, 95, 98 (with the Plus! schemes), Me, XP, 7; System 6 (true 1-bit), System 7.1 (authentic: 256 colours, the 1994 Control Strip, the Application menu and the Apple menu),
Mac OS 9 (and an authentic cut with the Control Strip of system modules and the Application
menu instead of a dock), Mac OS X Cheetah, Mountain Lion, Snow Leopard; Windows Vista with its
Sidebar; Solaris 8 with CDE's Front Panel and QNX 6.2.1 with Photon's shelf; BeOS, OS/2 Warp 4,
SGI IRIX, AmigaOS Workbench 4.1, NeXTSTEP, Futurama, and two of the maintainer's own.
- Rescue Desktop — ⌃⌥⌘R turns every theme and effect off and brings back windows you
cannot reach, whatever state the desktop is in.
- Window switchers of the era — ⌃⌥Tab does what the theme's era did, and nothing it did not.
- Historic icons for modern apps — icon packages per theme, checked on import, shown
everywhere the theme shows apps.
- Retro Dock and taskbar — floats over or replaces the system Dock; Start menus in the 9x and
Luna shapes, Quick Launch, tray with clock, speaker and messenger; per-window task buttons.
- Cursors — the theme's own pointer set, captured and restored exactly when the theme goes off.
- Retro Crashes — the failures of the period, none of them real: the 9x blue screen, Illegal
Operation, the NT Stop error with memory dump, the bomb, the kernel panic, the Zip drive's
click of death, boot failures after the simulated restart (NTLDR is missing, ScanDisk, CHKDSK,
the Sad Mac, the update that will not finish), and small moments that pass on their own. No
app is quit, no document closed, no restart issued. Esc always ends it.
- Boot screens and screensavers — each theme boots the way its machine did; Pipes, FlowerBox,
Flying Toasters, Flurry and the Windows 2000 Starfield Simulation, also installable as real macOS savers.
- Retro TV — YouTube, IPTV streams and bookmarks inside a television with the CRT on.
- Games — Doom, Heretic, Quake, Quake II and Duke Nukem 3D through their free engines with
the shareware episodes downloaded for you; Warcraft I and II on the bundled Stratagus engine
with your own game data; an emulator installer and ROM library.
- Virtual camera — the shader on your webcam for Zoom, Meet, Teams and OBS.
- Favourite — one click sets theme and shader and hides the modern Mac; one click brings
it all back. Health Check, wallpaper and Dock restore are built in.
How to use the 3.0 parts: docs/GUIDE-3.0.md. The full history is in the
Changelog.
Install
- macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, Apple Silicon or Intel (the release is a universal binary).
- Download the signed, notarized DMG from the Releases page
or from myretromac.app, and drag RetroMac into
/Applications.
- On first launch, grant Screen Recording (for the shader). Accessibility gives the
taskbar a button per window instead of one per app; the virtual camera needs Camera.
All three are optional, and Settings ▸ General shows what is missing.
RetroMac is free to use. An optional Pro unlock
supports development and lifts the limits on premium themes and effects. No account, no
tracking, no subscription. Updates arrive through Sparkle
from the GitHub Releases feed.
Build from source
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/klotzbrocken/RetroMac.git
cd RetroMac
./build.sh debug # local dev build, signed with a standard Apple Development identity
open "/Applications/RetroMac Dev.app"
- Requires the Xcode command-line toolchain (Swift 6, macOS 14 SDK).
./build.sh debug uses reduced entitlements (no system-extension install) so it launches
without a provisioning profile; the virtual camera is release-only../build.sh release and ./package.sh produce the signed, notarized DMG and need the
maintainer's Developer ID certificate. Contributors use the debug build.- The Warcraft engine lives in the
vendor/peonpad submodule and is built on demand.
Make your own theme
A theme is a folder with a theme.json and some pictures. docs/THEMES.md
describes every key, the desktop icon types, and how to test one. Settings ▸ Themes ▸ Advanced
imports it.
Sandboxing, security, and whose artwork this is
RetroMac runs unsandboxed, which controlling the Dock, menu bar and system UI requires; it
ships with the Hardened Runtime, Developer-ID signed and notarized. SECURITY.md
has the security policy. LEGAL.md lists what in the app was written for it, what
is other people's free software, and what is the original artwork of the companies whose
desktops it recreates, and how to reach the maintainer about any of it.
License
RetroMac is released under the GNU GPL v3.0. The paid Pro unlock is an optional
way to support the project; the source remains free software.
Support and links
