Introducing Substage: A natural language command bar for Finder
18th March 2025
I made a Mac productivity app! 🎉
Substage puts a command bar underneath your Finder windows and lets you use natural language to convert media, manage files, perform calculations, and more!
Although Substage translates natural language into Terminal commands, I’m hoping it finds a broader audience beyond developers. The number one use case I’ve found for it is converting media—quickly resizing images, re-encoding videos etc. But it can also handle file management, metadata inspection, and general tasks like web requests and calculations.
How It Works
1️⃣ Converts your natural language request into a Terminal command.
2️⃣ If it’s potentially risky, it asks for confirmation first.
3️⃣ Runs the command and summarises the output for you.
I'd love to hear what you think! You can grab it right here, and take it for a spin:
What About Hour by Hour?
In case you’re wondering, my iOS time-planning app Hour by Hour is also still in development! You’re welcome to join the TestFlight if you’d like to try it out:
