Shoo
Hands off
your face.
A tiny menu-bar app that watches through your webcam and catches your hand before it reaches your mouth or nose. On-device, open source, nothing leaves your Mac.
macOS 14+FreeMIT licensedNo account
A nudge, not a nag.
Nail-biting, lip-biting, nose-poking. Most of it happens without you noticing. Shoo just helps you notice, then gets out of the way.
Real hand-to-face detection
Apple's Vision framework finds your face and both hands in every frame. Shoo measures fingertip distance to your mouth and nose, then applies temporal smoothing and hysteresis so a passing gesture doesn't set it off. A chin resting on your hand is tolerated. A finger at your lips is not.
Private by design
No account, no analytics, no network entitlement. Sandboxed with camera access only.
Lives in the menu bar
One click to start or pause. Snooze for 15, 30 or 60 minutes. See today's count at a glance.
Tune it to you
Set how eager it is, how long it waits between reminders and how long the overlay stays. Preview the reminder from Settings any time, no face-touching required.
Reminders your way
The overlay is the default and the snapshot shows you what it saw. Add a sound or a macOS notification, show it on every display, dismiss with a click. The overlay is hidden from screen sharing.
Open source
Swift, SwiftUI and Vision. No third-party code. Read every line before trusting it with your camera.
Up and running in a minute.
No sign-up. Onboarding is four short screens.
Download
Get Shoo free from the Mac App Store. It installs like any other app.
Allow the camera
macOS asks once. Shoo only uses the camera while watching is on, and the green light tells you when.
Start watching
Click the hand in your menu bar. Shoo checks each frame on-device and discards it.
Get caught
Hand reaches face, overlay pops up. Pull back and it fades on its own.
Your webcam. Your Mac. Full stop.
A camera app has to earn trust. Shoo does it by doing less: no recording, no uploading, no cloud, no code it doesn't need.
- Nothing leaves your MacNo network entitlement. It cannot send data anywhere, even by mistake.
- Frames are processed, then discardedFace and hand positions live in memory for one frame.
- No video or audio is ever recordedThe optional snapshot exists only while the overlay is on screen.
- No analytics, tracking or accountsSettings and a daily count are stored locally. That's the full list.
Questions
Short answers here. Longer ones on the support page.
Does Shoo record me?
No. It never writes video, audio or images to disk, and it has no way to upload anything. Each frame is analysed in memory and thrown away.
Why is my camera light on?
Because Shoo is watching. The light is on whenever watching is enabled, and off when you pause or quit. That's how macOS works, and it means you always know.
What does it detect?
Hands near the mouth and nose: nail-biting, lip-biting, nose-touching and similar. It doesn't try to detect hair-pulling or skin-picking elsewhere on the face.
Is this a medical product?
No. Shoo is a reminder tool. It doesn't diagnose or treat anything. If a habit is causing you distress, please talk to a healthcare professional.
Does it slow down my Mac?
Shoo caps the frame rate and downscales each frame before analysis, so it stays light. You can pause it any time from the menu bar.
Where do I get it?
From the Mac App Store, free. Prefer open source all the way down? Build it from the source on GitHub, or grab the unsigned zip from GitHub Releases. Install only one of them.
Give your face a day off.
Free on the Mac App Store, open source on GitHub, and nothing ever leaves your Mac.