Your Mac's photographic memory for local-first timeline memory, OCR search, and semantic search.
Memento Native continuously captures your screen on macOS, extracts text with OCR, and lets you search by keyword or meaning. Data stays on your machine.
Privacy-first by design: local storage, no cloud dependency, and user-controlled pause behavior.
Native Swift rewrite of apirrone/Memento.
Quick links: FAQ • Settings Guide • Troubleshooting • Security • Contributing • Releases
- What Is Memento Native? / Vad Är Memento Native?
- Who It's For / För Vem?
- Visual Overview
- Latest (v2.0.4)
- Install
- Permissions and Why This Is Needed / Behörigheter och Varför
- Settings and Tradeoffs / Inställningar och Kompromisser
- Trust and Privacy by Design / Tillit och Integritet i Designen
- FAQ
- Contributing and Support
- Release Quality and Update Reliability
- Architecture Snapshot
- Privacy and Security
- License
EN: Memento Native is a macOS screen memory tool built with Swift, ScreenCaptureKit, Vision OCR, SQLite FTS5, and on-device semantic embeddings. You can jump back in time and find what you saw.
SV: Memento Native är ett macOS-verktyg för skärmminne byggt i Swift. Du kan gå tillbaka i tiden och hitta det du sett via OCR- och semantisk sökning.
- Developers who need searchable visual history during debugging
- Founders and operators who jump between browser tabs, docs, and chats
- Researchers and students who need recall without cloud sync
- Privacy-focused users who want local-only timeline memory
- Swift 6 migration and concurrency hardening across Capture and Timeline
- Safer capture scheduling (no overlapping frame jobs)
- Better permission repair lifecycle in Setup Hub
- Dead code cleanup and clearer runtime logging
Release references:
- Changelog entry: v2.0.4 in CHANGELOG
- Release page: v2.0.4 release notes
- Download latest DMG from Releases.
- Move both apps to
/Applications:Memento Capture.appMemento Timeline.app
- Start
Memento Capturefirst.
git clone https://github.com/owgit/memento-native.git
cd memento-native
./build-dmg.sh 2.0.4Screen Recording is required to capture on-screen content.
Automation (Apple Events) is required for browser URL/title indexing (Safari/Chrome/Arc/Edge/Brave/Firefox), so search results can include context.
EN: Without these permissions, capture/search quality degrades.
SV: Utan dessa behörigheter blir inspelning/sökning begränsad.
Details and rationale: docs/FAQ.md
Configuration reference: docs/SETTINGS.md
Highlights:
- Capture interval is configurable (
1s,2s,3s,5s,10s) with clear quality/performance tradeoffs. - Auto-pause includes idle, video/streaming, and private/incognito detection.
- You can manually toggle recording mode (
Recording/Paused) in the menu bar Control Center.
EN: Memento is built to make behavior predictable and user-controlled:
- Data stays local on your Mac by default (
~/.cache/memento) - No cloud backend is required for capture/search
- Private/incognito windows trigger automatic pause (best-effort detection)
- You can pause/resume instantly from the menu bar
- Capture interval and retention are configurable so you control detail vs resource usage
SV: Memento är byggd för förutsägbart beteende och användarkontroll:
- Data stannar lokalt på din Mac som standard (
~/.cache/memento) - Ingen molntjänst krävs för inspelning/sökning
- Privata/inkognito-fönster triggar automatisk paus (best-effort-detektering)
- Du kan pausa/återuppta direkt från menyraden
- Capture-intervall och retention kan justeras så du styr detaljgrad vs resursanvändning
EN trust signals:
- Permission requests are explained in plain language (what/why/impact)
- Privacy-safe defaults are enabled (for example, private/incognito auto-pause)
- User control is immediate (manual pause/resume + retention controls)
- Release quality is transparent (public changelog + reproducible release assets)
SV tillitssignaler:
- Behörighetsförfrågningar förklaras enkelt (vad/varför/påverkan)
- Integritetssäkra standardval är påslagna (t.ex. privat/inkognito auto-paus)
- Användarkontroll är direkt (manuell paus/återuppta + retention-kontroll)
- Releasekvalitet är transparent (publik changelog + reproducerbara release-assets)
Read more:
Short answers (full version in docs/FAQ.md):
- Why does Memento need Screen Recording?
- Why does browser access need Automation permission?
- Why does capture pause sometimes?
- Can I pause/resume manually, and does incognito trigger pause?
- Why can auto-update ask for admin password?
- Where is data stored and how do I delete it?
- Why did I only see "Open release page" instead of "Install now"?
- Contribution guide: CONTRIBUTING.md
- Security policy: SECURITY.md
- Support routing: SUPPORT.md
- Repository settings checklist: docs/REPO_SETTINGS.md
Routing policy:
- Questions, ideas, troubleshooting: GitHub Discussions
- Confirmed bugs and scoped feature work: GitHub Issues
Recommended Discussions categories:
Q&AIdeasTroubleshootingAnnouncements
Release process and policy:
A release must include a DMG asset named:
Memento-Native-<version>.dmg
If the DMG asset is missing, in-app updater falls back to Open release page.
MementoCapture (menu bar app)
-> ScreenCaptureKit + Vision OCR + embeddings
-> SQLite (FTS + metadata)
-> H.264 video segments
MementoTimeline (viewer)
-> timeline browsing + semantic/text search
-> command palette / action hub
- 100% local storage, no cloud requirement
- No telemetry pipeline
- Clipboard capture is optional
- Data location defaults to
~/.cache/memento
More: SECURITY.md
Keywords: macOS OCR search, semantic search, timeline memory, screen recorder, local-first privacy, ScreenCaptureKit, Swift.