Rewind is a Mac app that records all your Mac activities and makes them easy to locate later.
It’s easy to forget important information when you switch between tabs in your browser, meetings and tasks on your Mac. It’s possible that you referenced a document containing an important quote in a blog post or heard a comment from a meeting, but forgot to save. Rewind can help you locate all these things in a new way on macOS.
Rewind is a simple tool that works.
Rewind records all your Mac activities. Rewind records everything you do on your Mac. It can also record what you say and hear. It converts audio files to text and allows you to search them. Rewind will find any references to phrases like “Remind Me To Send You A Link For …”” that you may have said or heard while using your Mac. When you search for “Invoice”, it will show all open windows that you used the term in, such as Finder, Email, or even Zoom calls.
It also claims to integrate chatGPT and use GPT-4 in order to find things faster on your Mac. Ask Rewind can be used to activate the chatbot and you can ask it for a summary of what you did today or if you have spoken to a specific person.
Rewind is a great tool for rewinding your recordings.
Rewind is free to download and try. It’s currently only compatible with Apple silicon Macs M1 and M2. You can search for things up to fifty times on the free tier. After that, you’ll need to sign up for an annual or monthly subscription, which costs between $10 to $36.
You should configure the settings of the app once it is installed. In Rewind’s Settings, select all the apps that you do not want to be recorded. You may want to exclude apps that contain sensitive data, such as messaging or password managers. Rewind automatically recognizes and records the following languages.
- English
- French
- Italian
- German
- Spanish
- Portuguese
Rewind Screen Settings allows you to enable other languages and add them to the app.
- Chinese (Traditional & Simplified).
- Korean
- Japanese
- Ukrainian
Rewind supports 57 languages for audio transcription. Rewind also supports audio transcription in 57 different languages, listed below.
What’s The Catch?
Privacy concerns are obvious when an app records everything you do. Rewind is convenient, but it comes at a price: you have to trust a company that’s only interested in making money with your recordings. Rewind’s developers claim that recordings never leave the device. You can verify this by using a firewall application such as littleSnitch.
Rewind must send data to the Internet to enable you to use ChatGPT. You can block the app’s connections using firewall software if that is a concern.
Rewind is expensive for many people. The price range is $120-$432 a year, which is a large investment. Only those who use Rewind daily can justify the cost. Some people may wonder why a totally mobile app needs a subscription.
Rewind’s storage and resource consumption is another major concern. Developers claim that Rewind’s compression technology is very good and will only use 14GB per month on your Mac. Rewind can be set to delete recordings earlier to make sure you don’t run out of storage.