About MacBid
Every other Mac app directory ranks by something it asks you to trust — downloads, stars, an editor’s taste, an algorithm nobody publishes. MacBid does not rank by anything of its own. It publishes what is checkably true about a Mac app and lets you order the list however you like.
There is nothing to buy here. No sponsored slots, no affiliate links, no revenue share, and no way to pay for a position — which was not always the case, and the reason it changed is the last section of this page.
What we check, and where it comes from
Every fact on a listing is read from a source, and every listing shows the date it was read. Nothing is scored, estimated or assessed.
- What it is built with — native, Electron, Catalyst or Java — plus its architectures, sandbox and notarisation status, who signed it, the permissions it declares and how big the download is. Read out of the application bundle itself: its Info.plist, its code signature and its Mach-O headers. Each listing links to the exact artifact that was opened.
- What it costs — free, a one-off purchase, or a subscription. Read from the app’s own pricing page or its App Store entry, and every listing links to the page that says so.
- When it last shipped — from the app’s own Sparkle update feed, its GitHub releases, or the App Store.
- How many people install it — Homebrew’s published 30-day counts. This is the board’s default ordering, and it is somebody else’s number, which is the point.
What we will not do
These are the rules that make the rest of it worth reading, and the ones most likely to be tempting to break:
- A fact we do not have is blank, never a guess. An app whose bundle we have not opened has no runtime listed. That is not evidence it is native — and it is why the shares on what we found all state how many apps they were computed over.
- No scores and no “best” anything. The moment this site ranks apps by its own judgement, it becomes the thing it replaced.
- “Native” is not a compliment. It means an AppKit or SwiftUI binary rather than a web view. Plenty of Electron apps are excellent.
- Nobody has to own an app to list it, and listing your own buys you nothing. The description comes from the app’s page and the facts come from its bundle, so there is nothing on a listing for a submitter to influence.
Where it stands
- 8 Mac apps listed
- 0 have had their bundle opened
- 2 have an established price model
- 0 have a known release date
The gaps are real and stated on purpose. Facts are collected on a schedule and the apps added most recently are the ones with the least filled in.
Who runs this
Dmytro Virych
@dmytrovirychMacBid is built and run by Dmytro Virych, an independent developer. It is not a company front or an affiliate scrape — one person decides what the rules are, and those rules are the ones written on this site.
If something here is wrong, or your app is listed and you want it changed or removed, write to hey@macbid.app and you will get a reply from that person, within three business days. Or find me on @dmytrovirych.
This used to be a pay-to-rank board
For a while, position here was bought: the board sorted by what each app’s owner had paid, and taking #1 cost five dollars more than the leader. The argument for it was that at least the number was public — every other directory hides the thing it sorts by.
The flaw was not the honesty. It was that the number served the wrong person. Somebody arriving to ask which window manager to use got “whoever paid most”, which is exactly the answer they know to discount — so there was no reason to visit, and therefore no reason for anyone to pay. Both sides were waiting for the other.
So placement stopped being for sale and the site started publishing something a reader actually wants. The old board has not been deleted — you can still see it ordered by what was paid, which is now one ordering among several and the only one nobody uses.
Money may come back, and if it does it will be a clearly labelled slot sold by the week, priced against traffic that actually exists — never the ordering, and never anything that touches a fact on a listing. The moment placement is for sale again, the facts have to be visibly not for sale.