Eight Mac utilities, and every one of them is good enough to sell on its own.

Capture, clipboard, windows, dictation, AI text, file conversion, brightness, app hotkeys. Not one app with eight checkboxes — eight tools that each replace something you’re already running, under a single menu bar icon.

Download for Mac See the eight tools

Free to tryv1.4.2macOS Tahoe or laterApple silicon & Intelno account

“Replaced four apps on day one. My menu bar has never been this quiet.”Dana Whitfield · Design lead, Kerning Co.

“The dictation alone is worth the price. That it also snaps my windows is absurd.”Marcus Oyelaran · Staff engineer, Northbound

Fri 14:09100%

Instello⌥ Space

Capture region⇧⌘2

Clipboard history⌥V

Dictatefnfn

Snap window⌃⌥←

Fix selected text⌘⌥E

8 tools

Each one worth its own app

$15 once

Not a subscription

7 days

Full trial, no card

30 days

No-questions refund

The problem

Your menu bar is a junk drawer.

Every good Mac gets there eventually: eight tiny apps, eight preference windows, eight licence emails, eight things to re-buy with the next machine. Nobody chose that. It accumulated.

What you’re running now

Screenshot appClipboard managerWindow snapperApp switcherBrightness helperDictation appFile converterAI writing tool

Eight updaters. Eight settings windows. Roughly $180 and two subscriptions.

What you could run instead

InstelloEight tools, one download

One updater. One settings window. $15, paid once.

Capture

Screenshots you don’t have to redo.

Pick a region, nudge the edges a pixel at a time, annotate it before it ever touches your desktop, then drag it straight into Slack. Nothing lands in Downloads unless you ask.

Region, window, or scrolling capture
Arrow keys nudge the selection by one pixel
Capture history, so a closed window isn't a lost shot
Text recognition on anything you can see

instello · capture

CropAnnotateRedactStepsExtract text

824 × 412

Dictation

Talk. It types. Nothing leaves the Mac.

Tap fn twice and speak into whatever field has focus — a Slack box, a commit message, a search bar. The Whisper model ships inside the app, so it works on a plane and sends nothing anywhere.

Fully on-device, offline capable
Punctuation and paragraphs inferred, not dictated
Learns your jargon, names, and repo names
Works in any text field in any app

instello · dictate — on-device

Ship the migration behind a flag, then let’s review the rollout plan on Thursday before anyone touches prod

AI text · five verbs

Select it. One key. Still sounds like you.

Instello reads the selection in place — Mail, Slack, Notes, a form on a website — and hands back a rewrite you can accept, regenerate, or bin. Your tone is profiled locally, and you can point the whole thing at your own endpoint.

replyfixextractupdateenhance

instello · reply

Selection

hey can u send the q3 numbers when u get a sec, also did we ever hear back from the vendor

Reply · professional

Happy to — I’ll get the Q3 numbers over to you this afternoon. On the vendor: no response yet, so I’ll chase them today and let you know either way.

How you reach them

Eight tools that agree with each other.

The tools are the reason to buy it. This is the reason it stays installed: separate apps each invent their own chords and then fight over them, while Instello ships one coherent set, detects clashes with what you already run, and lets you rebind all of it.

⇧⌘2Capture a region and open it in the annotator

⌥VClipboard history, searchable, pinned items first

⌃⌥←Snap left half — thirds and quarters on repeat presses

⌥SpaceBring an app to front, press again to send it back

fnfnDictate into whatever field has focus

⌘⌥ERewrite the selection without leaving the app

⌃F1Dim the external monitor with the real brightness keys

Drop on the iconConvert a file to whatever you actually needed

All eight

Each one is a real tool, not a checkbox.

Every one of these goes up against an app people happily pay for on its own — and is built to win. Switch off the ones you don’t want; the rest carry on as if they were never there.

Capture

Region, window, scrolling. Annotate, redact, and extract text before it hits the disk.

⇧⌘2

Clipboard

Searchable history for text, images, links and files. Pin what you reuse, exclude your password manager.

⌥V

Windows

Halves, thirds, quarters, and throws across displays — all from the keyboard.

⌃⌥←

App hotkeys

Bind any app to one chord. Press to summon, press again to dismiss. No dock hunting.

⌥Space

Brightness

Your real brightness and volume keys, working on external monitors over DDC — including the stubborn ones.

⌃F1

Dictation

Whisper-grade transcription, entirely on-device. Hold a key, talk, keep working.

fnfn

Convert

HEIC, WebP, MOV, WAV, DOCX, SVG — drop it on the icon, get the format you needed. Batch, offline.

drop

AI text

Reply, fix, extract, update, enhance — five verbs on any selected text, in any app.

⌘⌥E

Why one app

A suite isn’t a bundle. It’s fewer decisions.

Eight separate utilities means eight update prompts, eight sets of permissions to grant after every macOS upgrade, and eight chances for two of them to claim the same shortcut. One app means one of each — and tools that can talk to each other, so a screenshot goes straight to text extraction without a round trip through Finder.

Settings window, not eight

Permissions prompt after an OS update

Licence to find again on the next Mac

Subscriptions to remember

What people say

Mostly: “which app was that again?”

The compliment we hear most is that people forget which of the eight tools they’re using. That’s the goal.

“I deleted four menu bar apps in an afternoon and didn't miss any of them. The hotkeys just made sense.”
Priya Raghunathan · Product designer, Fold

“The dictation is the thing that surprised me. It's on-device, it's fast, and it gets our internal jargon right more often than the hosted one I was paying for.”
Tom Brennan · iOS engineer, Halyard

“Bought it for the screenshots. Stayed for the clipboard. Now I can't set up a new Mac without it.”
Sofia Marchetti · Technical writer, Vessel Docs

“It found three hotkey conflicts with apps I already had and offered to step aside. First utility that's ever been polite about it.”
Ivan Kowalczyk · Solutions architect, Pathline

“One purchase, no subscription, and the brightness keys finally work on my monitor. That last one alone was worth it.”
Ruth Adeyemi · Engineering manager, Corvid Labs

“Our whole design team runs it. Shared hotkey presets meant nobody had to learn a new muscle memory.”
Callum Reid · Founder, Two Pines Studio

Pricing

Pay once. Use it forever.

Seven days to try all eight tools, then thirty to change your mind. A licence includes a year of updates, and when the year is up nothing stops working — you keep the version you paid for, and renewing is optional and cheaper.

Free

Three of the eight, complete and unlimited. A real app, not a demo.

Capture, Clipboard and Windows in full
Nothing withheld, nothing watermarked
24 hours of clipboard history
No account, no telemetry

Download free

Pro

Team

Custom quote

Five seats or more, with the things IT will ask you about. Tell us the headcount and we will quote it.

Everything in Pro, on every machine
MDM deployment and managed config
Shared hotkey and snippet presets
Your own AI endpoint, org-wide
Invoicing and priority support

Students and open-source maintainers pay half. Email us from your .edu address or link your project — no forms.

Questions

The short answers.

Does the AI run on my Mac?

Dictation always does — the Whisper model ships inside the app and works offline. AI text defaults to a hosted model so it works out of the box; point it at a local or self-hosted endpoint in settings and nothing leaves the machine.

Will it fight the apps I already use?

On first launch Instello scans for conflicting shortcuts from the usual suspects and offers to either take the chord or leave it alone, tool by tool. You can rebind everything, and you can run Instello alongside your existing apps while you decide.

Are all eight actually good, or is it three tools and five checkboxes?

Each one is built to stand on its own against the single-purpose app it replaces — the dictation is a real on-device Whisper model, the converter handles batches offline, the brightness control speaks DDC to stubborn monitors. Switch off the ones you don't want and the rest carry on as if they were never there.

Which monitors does brightness control work with?

Anything that speaks DDC/CI over USB-C, DisplayPort or HDMI. The free trial includes a compatibility check, so you'll know whether your display works before you pay for it.

What happens when my year of updates ends?

Nothing breaks. You keep the last version you were entitled to, indefinitely. Renewing for another year is optional and costs less than the original licence.

Can I use it on more than one Mac?

A Pro licence covers two Macs at a time, and you can move a seat between machines whenever you like — a new laptop doesn't cost you a new licence.

Is there a refund?

30 days, no questions asked. The 7-day trial means it shouldn't come to that, but if it does, just tell us.

What about macOS upgrades?

Instello needs macOS Tahoe or later, and is tested against each macOS beta through the summer so a compatible build ships before the public release. Permission prompts after an OS upgrade happen once, for the app, not eight times.

Eight fewer things in your menu bar.

Keep the three free tools as long as you like. Try the five that cost money for seven days, without handing over a card.

Download for Mac

7-day free trial, then a 30 days money-back guarantee. v1.4.2 · macOS Tahoe or later · no account required