New Mac App Records All Your Activity, Lets You Search It Afterwards

A new Mac app aims to eliminate this issue. Rewind, an app from an artificial intelligence (AI) startup with the same name, is said to record everything “you’ve seen, said, or heard” so you can look back on it later. The app uses optical character recognition (OCR) to capture text input while simultaneously using automated speech recognition to transcribe verbal communications, whether from the user or from people on the other end of a web call. Both of these technologies allow Rewind to work throughout the Mac ecosystem without requiring the user to integrate it with individual apps like Slack or Gmail.

If you’re wondering how the heck a recording that long can possibly sidestep crashing or weighing down one’s machine, Rewind has that covered. A blog post published Tuesday says the app uses “mind-boggling compression” to compress raw recording data up to 3,750 times without any significant drop in quality. Users also appear to navigate their data via static screenshots; rather than storing screencap-like videos of users’ desktops, Rewind seems to translate visual and audio data into still images for later reference.

Rewind co-founder Dan Siroker says the app was inspired by the amazement he felt after augmenting his hearing loss with hearing aids. “Ever since that moment, I’ve been on a hunt for ways technology can augment human capabilities and give us superpowers…What if we could use technology to augment our memory the same way a hearing aid can augment our hearing?” he writes.

Given Siroker’s story and the above demo, it’s clear Rewind’s intention is to serve individuals. But amid a remote work revolution that has bosses scrambling for control, some worry Rewind could be co-opted by managers who want to monitor their employees’ every move. Others wonder if the app could end up selling user information to data brokers or handing it off to law enforcement.

Siroker appears to have attempted to get ahead of these concerns in his blog post, saying all Rewind data is stored locally to avoid any cloud-based privacy concerns. The company’s privacy page reiterates that user data is never sent off the user’s Mac—only nondescript product and crash analytics are ever sent to Rewind itself. Users also have the option to stop and restart recordings at any time (as might be required in states with certain mutual consent laws) and to locally encrypt their data using FileVault.

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