Your face is the password.
Unlock your Mac's lock screen and secure individual apps with a single look.
Hey Mac bridges the gap between iOS-level convenience and macOS security, bringing native-feeling facial recognition to your desktop.
- 🔓 Zero-Touch Unlock: Wake your Mac, look at the screen, and you're immediately logged in. No keyboard required.
- 🛡️ Application-Level Shielding: Protect sensitive apps (Messages, Notes, Mail). Unauthorized viewers see a blurred interface until your identity is verified via Face, Touch ID, or password.
- 🌫️ Adaptive Privacy Blurs: Choose your obfuscation level. Blur the entire display for maximum privacy, or strictly blur the locked application window to maintain workflow context.
- ⏱️ Intelligent Relock Policies: Granular control per application. Require authentication immediately upon launch, after a set duration (5-15 mins), or gracefully lock after you switch focus away from the app.
- 🏝️ Dynamic Notch Island: A fluid, native-feeling UI drops down from the macOS notch, providing instant visual feedback during biometric scans.
- 🧑🚀 Frictionless Onboarding: Choose Lock Screen, App Lock, or both, then follow the setup steps needed for those features.
⚠️ IMPORTANT: If macOS blocks Hey Mac, go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.
Download the latest .dmg and drag Hey Mac into your Applications folder.
brew install --cask iharshitmaurya/tap/heymacSecurity is not an afterthought; it is the foundation of Hey Mac. This application operates on a strict zero-trust, local-only model.
100% On-Device Processing: All facial recognition is handled locally by the Apple Neural Engine via Core ML. No data ever leaves your machine.
- Zero Photo Storage: Hey Mac does not save images of your face. It generates a mathematical, numeric embedding of your facial structure, stored encrypted on this Mac, with its encryption key protected by macOS Keychain.
- Anti-Spoofing: A built-in liveness check helps reject photos and screens held up to the camera. Hey Mac uses your Mac's regular camera, not a depth sensor like Face ID on iPhone, so keep a strong password.
- Quit Protection: If Hey Mac is securing an app, quitting the app requires biometric authentication. A background launch agent can restart Hey Mac after unexpected termination.