RetroMac

Turn your Mac into a time machine

397 followers

Turn your Mac into a time machine

397 followers

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RetroMac turns your modern Mac into a live retro machine: CRT, classic Macintosh, VHS, Game Boy and more. Apply 30+ shader presets to your whole screen or a single window, swap your Dock for classic Mac and Windows looks, and capture themed screenshots. Free with optional extra presets.

This is the 2nd launch from RetroMac. View more

RetroMac

Launching today

Turn your Mac into a time machine.

RetroMac wraps your everyday macOS in the look and feel of classic computers: authentic CRT shaders over your whole screen, themed docks and desktops (Mac OS 9, Windows XP/98, BeOS, Amiga…), retro widgets and games, and a virtual webcam that pipes the CRT look into Zoom, Meet or Teams. Open source, free to use with an optional one-time upgrade for extra presets and webcam support.

Free

Launch tags:Funny•Productivity•User Experience

Launch Team

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Promoted

simplebanking

Maker

📌

🆕 What’s new since our first launch? This is RetroMac’s second Product Hunt launch, and the app has grown a lot! 👉 Dock Mode & a quick launcher. RetroMac can live in your Dock; click its icon for a slim launcher to switch themes and flip the shader or virtual camera on/off. There’s also a floating launcher button you can drag anywhere on screen. 😳 Shaders on every display. Multi-monitor setups now get the CRT treatment on all screens, not just the main one. 👉 New “Retro Crisis” shaders (GDV-NTSC composite & RGB) and softer, more authentic CRT phosphor masks . No more “fly-screen” sharpness; it looks like a real tube now. 👋 Authentic Windows taskbar: Windows 98 and XP show one elongated taskbar button per open window; click to minimize/restore, just like the real thing.

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1d ago

@maik_klotz This caught my attention because nostalgia-based products usually attract people fast… but keeping them engaged long term is where things get interesting. Curious, do you see this becoming more of a one-time experience product, or something users keep coming back to regularly?

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4h ago

simplebanking

Maker

@infinitydigits Its getting more and more serious instead of a toy. Thats why Im working on settings like dock only mode, so you can modify your mac as little as you like instead of changing the whole look & feel

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2h ago

@maik_klotz That actually changes the positioning quite a bit. Once a product moves from novelty into something users can integrate gradually without disrupting existing habits, the challenge stops being product design and starts becoming market education. Because now people need to understand why they should adopt it beyond the nostalgia factor. That shift usually changes how growth has to be approached entirely.

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38m ago

the dock for classic mac OS 9 is the unlocked badge of every developer who's quietly been wanting this since they were 14. shut up and take my money.

real question though: does the CRT shader work with external monitors? half my screen real estate is at 27" and i don't trust most shader presets to scale clean across resolutions.

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9h ago

simplebanking

Maker

@thenameisarian yes! I use it with my external Monitor as well

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7h ago

@maik_klotz that's the green light i needed. installing tonight. if it survives my dual monitor setup i'm posting the cosplay screenshot.

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3h ago

Congrats on the launch! 🚀

The attention to detail is impressive, especially recreating the Windows 98/XP taskbar behavior instead of just changing the visuals.

I'm curious: since the shaders run across the whole desktop, how much GPU overhead do they add during everyday work or video calls? It would be interesting to know how they perform on older Intel Macs versus Apple Silicon.

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4h ago

simplebanking

Maker

@prashant_patil14 There is a performance mode so your Mac doesn't need that many resources. And a bunch of "lite" presets, which are pretty fast too.

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2h ago

Dirac

Hey, I saw this relaunch and immediately saw something good was coming (and I was right)!

Anyways, whens the windows version coming...

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12h ago

simplebanking

Maker

@peterz_shu Thank you! I hope a win version ios coming within the next 2 months ◡̈

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2h ago

@maik_klotz This is the kind of app people open “just to try once” and then accidentally spend an hour changing their whole setup. The virtual webcam part is a fun touch too — showing up to a call with a CRT look is weirdly tempting.

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1h ago