Download
Download and install
Free and open source under the MIT license. Two ways in. A disk image, or one command that builds it on your Mac. No account, no telemetry. macOS 15 or later, any mouse, any keyboard.
- macOS 15 or later
- Universal · Apple silicon & Intel
- About 5 MB
- Open Anyway, once
Disk image
- Open the disk image and drag VortexFlow to your Applications folder.
- Open it. macOS will refuse. That is expected. Leave the dialog, then click Open Anyway as below. You do this once.
- Grant the permissions it asks for. Each one is optional and explained. The app runs with any subset.
- Press middle-click, or the shortcut. The spiral appears around the pointer.
Gatekeeper: "the developer cannot be verified"
That sheet is expected. Click Open Anyway once. Then the app stays launchable.
- Open the app. macOS will refuse. Leave that dialog. Do not choose Move to Bin.
- Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to Security, and click Open Anyway next to VortexFlow. Authenticate when asked.
- Open the app again.
VortexFlow is open source. Apple has not notarized the download, so macOS asks you to confirm the first launch. On macOS 15, right-click → Open no longer skips this. See Apple's own documentation. If you would rather not click Open Anyway on a binary you did not compile, build it below.
Build from source
This path never shows that sheet. The repository is a Swift package. Sparkle is the one third-party dependency, used for updates. You need macOS 15 or later and the Xcode command-line tools (xcode-select --install). The build script compiles the package, assembles the .app bundle, signs it on your machine, and with --install replaces the copy in Applications.
# clone, build, install git clone https://github.com/maheshauti96/VortexFlow.git cd VortexFlow Scripts/build-app.sh --install # run the tests swift test
A locally built app is signed with an ad-hoc identity by default, which means macOS ties its privacy permissions to that exact binary and asks again after every rebuild. If you plan to rebuild often, run Scripts/create-signing-certificate.sh once to create a stable local certificate; the build script picks it up automatically. To produce a disk image like the one on this page, run Scripts/make-dmg.sh.
Verify what you downloaded
The SHA-256 of the current disk image is on this page. To check a file against it:
shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/Vortexflow-*.dmg
Or skip the binary and build the same code yourself.
Uninstall
Quit VortexFlow from the menu bar icon and drag it out of Applications. Its settings live in ~/Library/Preferences/io.vortexflow.Vortexflow.plist; delete that too if you want no trace left. Nothing else is written anywhere.