[[screenpipe-alternative]]
A Screenpipe alternative that doesn't record all day
Screenpipe is the best-known answer to "how do I give an AI a memory of my computer": it records your screen continuously, runs text recognition over the frames, transcribes your microphone and system audio, and keeps all of it on your machine for you and your AI agents to search. If that is what you want, it is a serious tool and this page will not talk you out of it.
Minne is the other answer. It never records the screen. It reads the text of the window you are working in through the macOS Accessibility APIs — the interface VoiceOver uses — and distils it into a wiki of plain markdown notes in a folder on your disk. It is free, MIT-licensed, and it does one thing a recorder does not: tap right-Option in any text field and it writes the reply or the summary from what it remembers.
A recorder keeps everything you saw and lets you search it later. A memory keeps what you did, as notes you can read. They are different tools, and the choice is about how much of your day you want on disk.
What Screenpipe does well
From Screenpipe's own site and pricing page, checked at the date in the footer:
- Total capture. Screen frames with OCR, microphone and system audio transcribed, plus accessibility context — three channels, all day. If it was on your screen or said in your meeting, it is searchable afterwards.
- Local by default. Data stays on the device with cloud upload off, and there are controls to exclude sensitive apps, windows and URLs before storage, with redaction of fields like passwords and card numbers.
- Built for agents. The capture is exposed to AI agents and pipelines, which is the product's centre of gravity — it is a data layer for AI as much as an app for people.
- Three platforms. macOS, Windows and Linux. Minne is Mac only.
- A free tier. Free with limited searchable history; Basic is $21 a month or $250 a year for the full history; Business is $42 per seat a month. The code is source-available rather than open source.
What changes when nothing is recorded
Minne asks for one permission — Accessibility — and never for Screen Recording, so the purple recording indicator never appears because of it. What it reads is text, as text, from the focused window only: the field you are in, the visible text around it, the title, the URL. Then it distils.
That single choice cascades:
- Small. A day of text captures is kilobytes, not a video archive. There is no retention setting to agonise over because there is nothing large to retain.
- Readable. The memory is markdown — one page per person, project and
topic in
~/Minne/wiki/, raw captures under~/Minne/sources/. Open it in Obsidian, grep it, edit it, delete a page you don't like. - Handled before it is stored. Password fields are skipped before a character is read; card numbers, IBANs and personal ID numbers are masked before anything touches disk. A frame, by contrast, contains whatever was on screen. What leaves your Mac lists the rest.
- Your model, or none of theirs. Bring an Anthropic or OpenAI key, sign in with a subscription, or point Minne at Ollama on localhost — and then nothing leaves the machine at all.
And the reason to remember anything: Minne writes from it. Tap right-Option in Mail, Slack or a blank doc and the email reply or status update arrives already knowing the thread and the history. Search — ⌥Space, ask what did we agree with Ingrid? — is there too, with citations to the captures it read.
Side by side
| Minne | Screenpipe | |
|---|---|---|
| What is captured | Text of the focused window, via Accessibility | Screen frames + OCR, mic and system audio, accessibility context |
| Audio and meetings | No | Yes, transcribed |
| Screen Recording permission | Never requested | Required for frame capture |
| Stored as | Plain markdown files | Screenpipe's local database |
| Writes into your apps | Yes — tap right-Option in any text field | Not the product's focus |
| Model | Your choice: API key, subscription, or Ollama locally | Per its site, with monthly AI credits per tier |
| Platforms | macOS 14+ | macOS, Windows, Linux |
| Price | Free | Free tier; Basic $21/mo or $250/yr |
| License | MIT, code public | Source-available |
Choose Screenpipe if…
- Meetings are the thing you want remembered. Minne does not touch audio.
- You need to see what a window looked like, or you work in tools that are essentially pictures — design canvases, video, dashboards.
- You are building agents over a rich stream of everything, not a person looking for a reply.
- You need Windows or Linux.
Choose Minne if…
- The words are enough — threads, decisions, people, what was agreed — and you would rather not keep a recording of everything you saw.
- You want the memory as files you can open and take with you.
- You want to pick the model, including a fully local one, and pay nobody for the app.
- You want it to write for you, not only to be searchable.
Minne is early and says so. The same honesty applies in the other direction: the case for reading text instead of pixels is made in full at your Mac's AI memory doesn't need a screen recorder, and the closest tools that share Minne's approach are compared at Minne and OpenHistory and Minne and Goldfish. If you arrived here because Rewind shut down, that page is the one you want.
Product facts on this page were checked against each product's own published material on 2026-09-11. Something outdated? Say so and it will be fixed.
Free, open source, and yours to read. macOS 14 and later.