Rewind app wants your Mac to record every moment of your life

Rewind claims to offer a way for Mac users to keep track of everything they've seen, said, or heard through their desktop, a history that could then be searched for references in the future.

The Mac has Spotlight for searching for documents and terms, with Siri offering a similar facility, but it is largely limited to text. A startup claims it can go much further, by recording everything that happens on a Mac and allowing users to search it.

Rewind, from Dan Siroker and Brett Bejcek aims to do that by building a search engine "for your life." Recording everything that happens on-screen, users can quickly go back in time to check what was shown or said to them.

The recording facility also does more than images, as it will also take note of things said in a meeting, such as Zoom or a FaceTime call. It will create a transcript of what was said or displayed in the call, which can then be searched.

While typical screen recording can result in a hefty recording size that is difficult to store long-term, the system instead uses compression to crush the recording data down. It is claimed that 10.5GB of recording data could be shrunk to occupy 2.8MB of space.

Rewind takes advantage of the Apple Silicon SoC, with it apparently using "virtually every part," according to the app's website. It also supposedly doesn't tax system resources while recording, minimizing its impact.

The app is also claimed to be highly private as it can store the data of recordings on the Mac itself, rather than on cloud servers. Its creators also claim it won't be selling user data or "do advertising" with it.

For the moment, the app is free with a subscription planned. It is also currently available in a limited beta, with no indication of when it will formally release.

14 Comments

DAalseth 3033 comments · 6 Years

About 2 years ago

1) If somebody is running this it bloody well better tell whomever is on the other end of the Zoom/FaceTime/Teams conversation that they are being recorded.
2) Can you say security risk? I don’t know how they are saving and protecting the file with this goldmine of data but it will have a huge target on its backside. Why put spyware on somebodies computer when all you have to do is find and copy this data file.

Pass. Somebody might find this useful, but I find it creepy beyond all reason.

22july2013 3725 comments · 11 Years

About 2 years ago

In theory, a universal recorder application could be both helpful and secure. But when it comes to our data's privacy, we should start off being skeptics, and make companies earn our trust. We should not "start from a position trust" and require proof to become skeptics.

The fact that they "can" store data locally and not in the cloud doesn't mean that it won't have an option to actually store data on the cloud. In that case, is our data visible to their employees, like most webcam online services can be monitored by their company's employees? Why don't they talk about this? It sounds like they are being secretive about how pour privacy is protected. They should be completely open about their security architecture and key management. Right now, I don't see any details. Without details, they can't earn my trust.
The fact that they will have a subscription services suggests to me that the software will require an internet connection to validate your subscription, which means data is being sent from my computer to their servers on the Internet. That's worrisome. Can they please sell a version that doesn't require Internet communication, so we can easily validate our privacy and security using network sniffer tools? If any software should come with an option to purchase without required internet connectivity, it should be software that has access to all the data on my computer, including financial, health and personal data.
Might they be copying Zoom's and Eufy's business model of hiring programmers who work in hostile dictatorships with a record of serious (and possibly intentional) security bugs? I can't find the answers on their website.
Apple has built several secure products and services like HealthKit API. Is this software going to bypass the security features of these Apple Services, by recording things like your health data in other locations that compromise Apple's security design? It sounds like it will.

At this point in time, my trust for their software is fairly close to zero. But I look forward to seeing evidence that they are worthy of a higher number than that.