Ghostchars for Mac
A menu-bar app that cleans the text you are working with, wherever you are working — one keystroke, no window to switch to, nothing leaving your Mac.
- Lives in the menu bar
- No telemetry, no account
Not out yet
The Mac app is not finished, and this page will not name a date it cannot keep. There is no beta to join, no waiting list and no address to leave: this page is where the download will be, and the checksum will be on it the same day.
In the meantime the cleaner on this site does the same work in your browser, with nothing to install.
What it needs
- macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.
- Apple silicon and Intel — one universal build, not two downloads.
- The Accessibility permission, asked for in context and only for the hotkey. Refuse it and the app still works: the hotkey then cleans what is on your clipboard instead of the selection, and it tells you so rather than nagging.
What you download
A disk image, signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarised by Apple, so macOS opens it without a detour through System Settings. Drag Ghostchars into Applications, launch it once, and it appears in the menu bar. There is no installer, no background daemon and no login item you did not ask for.
It is not in the Mac App Store and cannot be: the sandbox that store requires forbids the Accessibility API the hotkey is built on. A direct download is the honest way to ship this, so it is the only way we ship it.
Updates
The app checks for updates through Sparkle, the standard macOS updater, and installs one when you say so. System profiling is switched off: the check asks for a file and sends nothing about your Mac. You can turn checking off in Settings, and the previous release stays linked from this page either way.
What the app sends
Two things, ever: one licence activation, which happens because you pressed a button, and Sparkle’s update check. No analytics, no crash reporting, no account. The text you clean is never one of them.
Next
What it costs
Free 20 times a week through the hotkey and clean-as-you-copy, which stays off until you turn it on; $24 once for unlimited use on up to 3 devices. The full split is on the pricing page.
The browser extension
Free, unlimited in its popup and right-click menu, and it collects nothing. It is not in the Chrome Web Store yet, and its own page says so rather than pretending otherwise.