A private Rewind AI alternative that stays on your Mac.

// the short version

What happened to Rewind AI

Rewind launched in late 2022 as a Mac app that recorded your screen and audio locally and made it searchable — "the search engine for your life." For a while it was the reference point for personal screen memory on the Mac.

In 2024 the company rebranded to Limitless and pivoted to a cloud-based wearable, the Limitless Pendant. The Mac app stopped being the focus.

In December 2025, Meta acquired Limitless. The Rewind Mac app shut down on December 19, 2025, Pendant sales stopped, and service was discontinued in the EU and UK, with remaining support winding down through 2026.

If you relied on Rewind, you're now looking for a replacement — and the shutdown itself is a useful lesson in what to look for next.

// choosing a replacement

What to look for in a replacement

A tool that records everything you see and hear is only as good as its answer to one question: who else can see it? Four things worth insisting on.

• ✓
  Stays on your Mac Capture, text extraction, transcription, and search should all run on-device, with the record encrypted at rest. If a company can read your history, an acquisition can too.
• ✓
  Captures everything you'd want back Screen, audio, and activity — not just screenshots. The moments you need to recall are as often something said in a call as something on screen.
• ✓
  Search plus ask-AI Keyword search finds what you can name; asking an AI about your own past finds what you can only half-describe.
• ✓
  You control retention and deletion Keep history forever or auto-delete on a schedule, and delete any stretch of it in one click. Your record, your rules.

// the field

Mnema vs Screenpipe vs ScreenMemory vs OpenRecall

These are the main tools people move to after Rewind. All of them keep your data local — the differences are in scope and platform.

Competitor details reflect public information as of July 2026 — check each project directly before deciding.

// questions

Frequently asked

Is Rewind AI still available?

No. The Rewind Mac app shut down on December 19, 2025, after Meta acquired Limitless (the company Rewind became). Pendant sales stopped, service was discontinued in the EU and UK, and remaining support winds down through 2026.

What is the best Rewind AI alternative for Mac?

If you want what Rewind originally promised — a private, searchable record of everything on your Mac — Mnema is the closest match: it captures screen, audio, and activity on-device, encrypts it at rest, and lets you search it, scrub back to any moment, and ask an AI about it. Screenpipe and OpenRecall are open-source, cross-platform options worth a look too.

Does Mnema send my recordings to the cloud?

No. Capture, text extraction, transcription, and search all run on-device — there's no account, no servers, no telemetry, and no Mnema cloud to send anything to. The one exception is opt-in: you can use your own Deepgram account for higher-accuracy transcripts, and audio leaves your Mac only if you turn that on.

Can I still use my Rewind data?

Rewind stored its recordings locally, so the files may still be on your Mac — but Mnema does not import Rewind archives. Starting with Mnema means starting a fresh record from the day you install it.