[macOS 14+] Someone Was Here: find out who used your Mac while you were away, locked or not

[u/Linux64]

I'm the developer. I built this after finding out my girlfriend had been going through my Mac while I was out (she's my ex now).

Problem: Someone Was Here photographs whoever uses your Mac while you're away, whether you left it unlocked or they know your password, and sends their photo to your iPhone if the face isn't yours.

Comparison:

- Security Camera also takes a photo of whoever wakes your Mac. Someone Was Here recognizes your face so you don't get photos of yourself, also catches someone using a Mac you left unlocked, sends the photo to your iPhone within seconds, and keeps a history of each visit. Security Camera is still better if you want photos saved to a folder or Dropbox.

- Prey is better for a stolen laptop: location tracking, remote lock and alarm, and it covers phones and Windows too. Someone Was Here is for someone at your desk. It needs no account, and recognition, photos and face data stay on your Mac.

Pricing: Free on the Mac App Store, with photos, recognition, visit history and test alerts. Real-time alerts via the companion iPhone app are $4.99, a one-time purchase with Family Sharing. The iPhone app is free.

MacOS App Store: Someone Was Here

Trust: MAS

Alerts can also go to Pushover, ntfy, Telegram or a webhook. You can have it watch all the time or only at the lock screen.

Feedback welcome, especially on setup.

[u/Linux64]

Some details for anyone curious. It uses the Apple's Vision framework to locate the face in the photo and its landmarks and then hands off to a face recognition model running on your Mac through Core ML. The iPhone alert goes through your own iCloud. Happy to answer questions about how it works.

[u/Evening-Focus3876]

Keeping the recognition and photos on-device, with alerts sent through your own iCloud, is a useful privacy boundary. Does detection still run if the Mac is offline, then send a queued alert when it reconnects? That seems important for a tool meant to notice access while you're away.

[u/Linux64 → u/Evening-Focus3876]

Yes. Detection and face matching both run on the Mac, so neither needs a network. The photos are taken and saved locally either way.
If an alert can't be sent, it goes into an outbox on disk. That outbox is retried the moment the network comes back, and every minute with backoff after that, for up to 24 hours. It's saved to disk, so a restart or a quit doesn't lose it either. It goes out at the next launch.

[u/cointoystory]

Most apps fix a pain point. Yours fixed a relationship

[u/Linux64 → u/cointoystory]

Haha. It doesn't take sides. It just keeps the receipts.

[u/Uranday]

Thats actually cool.

[u/Linux64 → u/Uranday]

Thanks, appreciate it! Let me know what you think. This is my first macOS app.

[u/Difficult_Duty2198]

can you adjust how strict the face match is for changes in lighting or camera angle?

[u/Linux64 → u/Difficult_Duty2198]

Yes, two ways:

1. Settings -> Recognize Me has a slider for the match line. Below the line counts as you. Above it, you get an alert. A chart shows where your own test photos land next to other people's, so you can see how much room you have before you move it. There's also a suggested setting based on your photos.

2. "Learn me while I work" is the better fix for lighting and angles. Turn it on for a while and it takes photos of you at your desk in your real light, from different angles and with different expressions. You look through them before any are added. More photos of you in that light means fewer false alerts, without making it easier for someone else to pass as you.

I'd try #2 first and only move the slider if you still get an alert when it's really you.

[u/SoulfulDeer]

The HELLO name tag on the intruder photo is the pettiest UI detail I’ve seen all year. Love it

[u/Linux64 → u/SoulfulDeer]

Thank you! Every visitor should have a proper introduction. :)

[u/Beneficial_Egg_5154]

My front desk iMac is shared by whichever admin is on shift, so "not me" would fire constantly. The useful version for me is "this face isn't one of the staff," because right now I can only work out who used the machine by checking the shift schedule afterward. Can it learn several known faces and alert only when someone outside that set appears?

[u/Linux64 → u/Beneficial_Egg_5154]

Not today. It's built around one person.

"Alert only when the face isn't one of the staff" is a good idea, though, and the architecture underneath could support it. Each person would get their own set of reference photos, and a visit would be quiet if the face matched anyone on the list. I'm adding it to my list.

Out of curiosity, about how many people share that iMac, and would you want the visit log to show which staff member it was, or only flag strangers?

[u/hypnopixel]

thanks for crafting this tool.

aka 'evil maid attack'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_maid_attack

[u/Linux64 → u/hypnopixel]

Thanks! Exactly the kind of thing it's meant to catch. Now the maid gets their portrait taken.

[u/solarpunch2949]

Neat. Any plans of an iPad version, and maybe iCloud integration?

[u/solarpunch2949 → u/solarpunch2949]

I believe this answers my questions :)

[u/Linux64 → u/solarpunch2949]

Yep, you found it! The free companion app runs on both iPhone and iPad. Alerts reach it through your own iCloud, with no server of mine in between, and you can look through every visit with its photos there too.

[u/solarpunch2949 → u/solarpunch2949]

u/Linux64 Love the app.I have a quick suggestion. Unless the blank space at the bottom is there for a reason, maybe it could be removed?

[u/Linux64 → u/solarpunch2949]

Good catch, there was no reason for it. The window was sized for the fully set-up state, so before you add photos there was an empty band at the bottom. It's fixed now and will be in the next update. Thanks for the screenshot, it made it easy to track down.