DEV Community: Otabek

How I Made My First $500 Selling Mac Apps in 23 Days

Otabek — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 08:34:25 +0000

On October 16 the sales bot in my Telegram posted a line I'd been waiting for: all time, 69 orders, $530.85. After Lemon Squeezy's cut, about $470 of that is mine. One refund in the whole run.

The first commit was September 23. So: 23 days from an empty repo to the first $500, with two apps, no audience, and no ads.

This isn't a "quit your job" post. It's a record of what actually happened, with the numbers, because every post I read before starting was either a victory lap or a theory.

The two apps

Halo turns the MacBook notch into something like the iPhone's Dynamic Island: music with lyrics, volume, a file shelf you can drop things into and grab later from any app, and an island on external monitors too. It's the one that made the money: 66 sales, $500.97.

Halo went from first commit to Product Hunt in nine days. It launched October 2 at $4.99 with a three-day trial and finished #31 for the day with 70 upvotes, which is nowhere near the top and still enough to start selling. With version 2.0 on October 11 I dropped the trial, made it paid-only and doubled the price to $9.99. Sales didn't stop.

Shedi is a disk cleaner for developers. It finds Xcode DerivedData, old simulators, Docker images, every node_modules on the machine and ten package manager caches, says what each item is and whether it's safe, and moves everything to the Trash first. $19.99, one-time, or $27.99 for two Macs.

Shedi took two days. The spec was written on October 13, the app shipped two days later, and it has 3 sales for $29.88 as I write this. The biggest was someone in Minnesota who bought the two-Mac license with the launch code.

Two days is not a typo, and it isn't because I'm fast. By the second app I had Claude writing the Swift while I wrote the rules for what's safe to delete, and I reused Halo's licensing, the site template and the sales bot. The second app is always cheaper than the first. The first one costs you the infrastructure; the second one only costs you the idea.

Where the buyers came from

I run Umami on both sites and tag every link I post with ?ref=. The bot pulls the numbers into Telegram with each sale. Some of what it showed:

Threads beat X by seven to one. On one day in October, halo-mac.com had 169 visitors. 100 came from Threads, 14 from X. Same post, same screenshots, same account age. Threads shows small accounts to people. X shows them to nobody.

Hacker News sent fewer people and better ones. An Ask HN post about building Shedi brought 8 visitors. Two of the three Shedi sales happened that day. I can't prove the HN visitors were the buyers, because the one who paid the most showed up as "direct", but the timing is hard to ignore.

The interactive demo closed a sale. The Shedi site has a demo you can click through without downloading anything. The two-Mac buyer's session, in order: opened the demo, clicked Buy, came back, ran the demo scan, ran the clean, clicked Buy again, paid. The demo exists because I didn't want to make a video. It turned out to be the thing that answers "but what does it actually delete?"

Launch directories work for AI, not for people. The TrustMRR and Vuink listings sent almost no visitors. But when I asked ChatGPT for the best Mac cleaner for developers, it put Shedi first and cited the Vuink listing as its source. Google's AI Mode, on the other hand, doesn't know Shedi exists. Its sources for that query are GitHub READMEs and r/macapps posts, and I have neither yet. That's next.

Half the traffic is "direct". 43 of 68 visitors on Shedi's best day had no referrer. That's people clicking from Slack, Discord, email and in-app browsers. Tagging links fixes some of it. Nothing fixes all of it.

What I'd skip next time

Launch sites that email you. After the Product Hunt listing, support@ got a cold pitch a day: paid listings, "launch films", SEO packages with "link exchanges". None of them sent a buyer. The free listings did.

Tweets as the main channel. Mohit Vaswani, who makes Homy, posted that a six-day-old Medium article with 2K views outsold his tweets with 200K impressions. My numbers are smaller and say the same thing. Long-form where people search beats short-form where they scroll.

Waiting for the first app to be finished. Halo got better after people paid for it, not before. Every feature in the last three versions came from a support email. One buyer wrote that the music glow kept animating after the island closed. That was a real bug, fixed the same day, and his line about the app is now the quote on the homepage.

A free trial. Halo's first week had one; version 2.0 removed it and raised the price, and the sales rate held. A 14-day refund policy does the same job with less code, and in 69 orders one person has used it.

What I'm doing with the $470

Mostly nothing. It covers the domains, the email, and the developer membership. The point of the first $500 isn't the money. It's finding out that strangers in Minnesota, Germany and Sweden will pay for something you made, which is the one question you can't answer by thinking about it.

The next $500 is a content loop: one guide a week on shedi.app, cross-posted to Dev.to and Medium, every link tagged, the bot reporting what moved. I'll write up what that did in a month.

If you've shipped a Mac app and have numbers, put them in the comments. The honest ones are rare.

CleanMyMac alternative for developers: Shedi vs CleanMyMac

Otabek — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 19:38:10 +0000

Short answer. CleanMyMac is a broad Mac maintenance suite: cleanup, malware protection, performance tools, an app updater and cloud storage cleanup, sold as a subscription or a one-time purchase. Shedi does one thing: it frees disk space, goes deep on developer junk (Xcode, Docker, node_modules, package caches), explains every item and moves files to the Trash first, for a one-time $19.99. If you want an all-in-one maintenance app, pick CleanMyMac; if you're a developer who wants to know exactly what's being removed, pick Shedi.

I make Shedi, so read this with that in mind. I've tried to only state what MacPaw says about CleanMyMac on its own site, support pages and App Store listing, and to say where I couldn't check something.

What does each app do?

CleanMyMac (by MacPaw) describes itself around several areas: Smart Care, which runs "five routines" in one scan; space cleanup; malware protection; performance optimization; app management, including uninstalling apps and updating them; clutter and duplicate removal; and cloud storage cleanup. MacPaw's site says it's notarized by Apple and requires macOS 11 or later. It's also available on the Mac App Store and through Setapp.

Shedi is a disk space cleaner and app uninstaller, and nothing else. It scans in about 10 seconds and groups what it finds: Xcode DerivedData, simulator runtimes and device support; Docker images and build cache; every project's node_modules; npm, pnpm, Yarn, Homebrew, CocoaPods, SwiftPM, Cargo, Gradle, pip and Go caches; app caches and logs; and large old files in Downloads, Desktop and Documents. It requires macOS 15 or later.

Shedi deliberately leaves out malware scanning, updating other apps, "speed up your Mac" tools and a duplicate finder. If you want those, Shedi isn't the app for you.

Shedi: the honest Mac cleaner Every item says what it is, whether it's safe and whether it comes back. Only Safe items are pre-selected, and everything goes to the Trash first. $19.99, once. Get Shedi

How do prices compare?

Prices as of October 2026, in US dollars.

CleanMyMac. MacPaw's support pages say it's sold three ways: a one-time purchase, an annual or monthly subscription, or through a Setapp subscription. According to MacPaw, the one-time purchase includes updates and fixes for the current major version, with future major versions at a special upgrade price, while subscriptions include future major versions. The MacPaw Store has plans for one, two or five Macs.

MacPaw's own store page didn't load for me, so these are the prices on CleanMyMac's US Mac App Store listing as of 14 October 2026:

CleanMyMac on the Mac App Store	Price
Yearly	$39.99
Monthly	$9.99
Plus, yearly	$65.99
Plus, monthly	$15.99
One-time purchase (listed as "CleanMyMac X One-Time Purchase")	$89.99

The listing also includes 7-day trial options. MacPaw Store prices and plans may differ; check macpaw.com for current pricing.

Shedi. One-time purchase, no subscription:

Shedi	Price
1 Mac	$19.99
2 Macs	$27.99
3 Macs	$34.99

Refunds within 14 days, no questions. See pricing.

So the honest summary is not "subscription versus one-time": both can be bought once. The difference is that Shedi costs less because it does much less.

Which is better for developer junk?

This is the reason Shedi exists. On my own MacBook, space kept running out for the same reasons: simulators, DerivedData, Docker and node_modules. Shedi looks for each of these specifically and tells you what each item is:

	Shedi
Xcode DerivedData, Archives, DeviceSupport	Yes, Archives listed one by one for you to pick
Unavailable simulators and old runtimes	Yes, via `xcrun simctl`
Docker images, containers, build cache	Yes, via Docker's own commands; volumes shown separately as your files
`node_modules` in every project	Yes, with each project's last-modified date
Package manager caches	npm, pnpm, Yarn, Homebrew, CocoaPods, SwiftPM, Cargo, Gradle, pip, Go

MacPaw's CleanMyMac product page doesn't mention Xcode, Docker or node_modules, and I haven't tested what its cleanup finds on a developer Mac, so I won't guess. If developer junk is your main problem, the fair test is to scan the same Mac with both and compare.

For a manual route, the guides cover Xcode, Docker, node_modules and every other developer cache.

How do they handle safety?

Shedi's rules, in its own words:

Every item says what it is, whether it's safe to remove (Safe, Check first, or Your files) and whether it comes back.
Only items marked Safe are pre-selected.
Files go to the Trash first, so you can put anything back. Commands that can't use the Trash (like docker builder prune or xcrun simctl delete unavailable) are named on a confirmation sheet before they run.
Nothing outside your home folder is touched, except through Docker's and Xcode's own tools and the app bundle you drag into the uninstaller.

This section only describes Shedi; for how CleanMyMac decides what to remove, see MacPaw's own documentation.

What about privacy?

Shedi has no account. Network traffic is the license check, update checks, and anonymous usage counts you can turn off. Nothing about your files leaves your Mac.

For CleanMyMac, MacPaw publishes its own CleanMyMac privacy policy; read it rather than relying on a competitor's summary.

Is either app notarized?

MacPaw's site says CleanMyMac is notarized by Apple. Shedi is not notarized yet: Apple Developer enrollment comes in November 2026, and a notarized build follows as a free update. Until then the first launch needs one "Open Anyway" (how).

Who should pick which?

Pick CleanMyMac if:

You want one app for cleanup, malware protection, app updates and performance.
Your Mac runs macOS 11 to 14; Shedi needs macOS 15 or later.
You'd like a family plan for up to five Macs, or you already pay for Setapp.
You want cloud storage cleanup or duplicate finding.
You prefer an app with a long track record.

Pick Shedi if:

You write code, and Xcode, Docker or node_modules are what fill your disk.
You want to see what every item is, and whether it comes back, before anything is removed.
You want files to go to the Trash first.
You only want disk cleanup, and you'd rather pay $19.99 once for that.
You want no account, and control over anything sent about your usage.

Or neither: if you only need to clear Xcode, Apple's own Components pane and DevCleaner are free. See DevCleaner alternatives for a fair look at the free and open-source options.

Sources

MacPaw: CleanMyMac product page (features, system requirements, notarization)
MacPaw Support: CleanMyMac purchase options
MacPaw Support: Plans for multiple computers
MacPaw: CleanMyMac privacy policy
Mac App Store: CleanMyMac (in-app purchase prices, checked 14 October 2026)

Originally published at shedi.app. I make Shedi, a Mac cleaner for developers: one-time purchase, no account, 14-day refund.

5 Mac Apps I Use Every Day

Otabek — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 19:38:09 +0000

I'm a developer. My Mac is open from the moment I wake up until I close the lid at night, and over the years a short list of apps has stayed open the whole time. Not the ones I installed once and forgot. The ones I'd reinstall first on a new machine.

Here are the five. Two are free, three are one-time purchases, and none of them is a subscription. Nothing annoys me more than a "cheap apps" list where everything turns out to be $20 a month.

1. Raycast

Raycast replaced Spotlight for me on day one. Same hotkey, same idea, far more behind it.

Launch apps, open files, do quick math, convert units. Clipboard history, so everything you copied today is one keystroke away. Window management without a separate app. And hundreds of extensions: translate text, search GitHub, pick an emoji, control Spotify.

The free version has everything I listed. Raycast Pro adds AI features and cloud sync, and I've never needed it.

Price: free, Pro is paid. raycast.com

2. Halo

Halo turns the MacBook notch into something like the iPhone's Dynamic Island. Play music and the notch shows the cover, the title and the lyrics. Change the volume and it shows the level. Plug in an external monitor and you get an island there too, so the feature isn't tied to the notch at all.

The part I use most is the shelf: drag a file into the island, carry on with whatever you're doing, and grab it later from any app. It's a drop zone that follows you.

It's made by one indie developer, and it's the first thing I notice is missing when I sit at someone else's Mac.

Price: $9.99 one-time, no subscription, macOS 15 or later. halo-mac.com

3. CleanShot X

The screenshot tool macOS should have shipped with.

Take a screenshot and it lands in a small overlay in the corner where you can annotate, blur, crop and copy it before it ever touches your desktop. Record the screen as a video or a GIF. Capture a whole scrolling page in one image.

Every screenshot in my support emails, changelogs and tweets goes through CleanShot. If you take more than two screenshots a day, it pays for itself in a week.

Price: $35 one-time, with a year of updates. cleanshot.com

4. Shedi

Shedi finds what's eating your disk and explains every item. Developer Macs fill up in ways that macOS's own Storage pane never shows: Xcode's DerivedData and old simulators, Docker's disk image, a node_modules folder in every project you cloned two years ago, and caches for npm, pnpm, Homebrew, pip, Cargo and Gradle.

Shedi scans those, tells you in plain words what each item is and whether it's safe to remove, and moves everything to the Trash first. Nothing is deleted outright, so a wrong click is undone with a right click.

I found it after my 512 GB Mac hit "disk full" and the usual cleaner apps couldn't tell me what a 21 GB folder in ~/Library/Developer was. Now I run it on the first of every month.

Price: $19.99 one-time for one Mac, $27.99 for two, no account, 14-day refund. The launch code EARLY10 takes $10 off at checkout. shedi.app

5. Ice

Ice hides the menu bar icons you don't need.

If you run more than a handful of menu bar apps on a MacBook, some of their icons disappear behind the notch and there's no way to reach them. Ice brings them back: it puts the icons you rarely use in a hidden section and shows them when you click or hover. Your menu bar ends up with the four icons you actually look at.

It's open source and free, and it does the one thing Bartender charges for.

Price: free. icemenubar.app

That's the list

Five apps, $64.98 in total if you buy all three paid ones at full price. Every one of them is open right now as I write this.

If you have a sixth that belongs here, tell me in the comments. I'm always looking for the next one.