tic-tac-toe

You're X. Tap a square.

rubiduYour own Jarvis. Your name, your voice, your Mac.

Call it anything. Give it any voice, even your own. Pick how it talks back. It studies with you, plays with you and runs your Mac, and nothing you say ever leaves it: no cloud, no account. Made by one independent developer, for Macs with Apple silicon.

Join the waitlist See the app

youtell me a joke

start a focus session
play next
read this to me
find my resume pdf
put buy milk on my sticky note
remind me to call mom at 7
roast my mac
transcribe this
what's 18% of 2340
open safari and search for flights to lisbon
quiz me on science
turn on dark mode
text dad I'm on my way
stop

Rubidu lives in your menu bar. You talk, it does the thing: opens apps, plays your music, sets timers, takes notes, checks facts on Wikipedia if you let it, and plays tic-tac-toe when you need a break. It runs on your Mac, even offline. Nothing you say leaves it.

Go on, ask it something.

Tap a line. This is what Rubidu says back on a Mac (written down here; on your Mac it talks).

rubidu

Hi! Tap something on the left.

See it work

Rubidu on a MacBook Air: talking, opening apps, answering, all on the Mac.

Plays from YouTube once you press play. Watch on YouTube

Join the waitlist

Four things you'd otherwise pay four apps for

Talk, and it does it

Apps, timers, music, YouTube, your calendar. Talk over a video and it still hears you, or hold ⌘ ⌥ and talk.

The Mac menu bar with Rubidu's face and a bubble: I heard you say, are you excited about your teaser launch today.

Type with your voice, anywhere

Hold ⌘ ⌥ ⇧ in any app and talk. The ums are gone before the words land.

The Message for Rubidu window with the request: remind me to call mom at 7.

Turn recordings into text

Pick a voice memo or a video, or just say "transcribe this". A transcript and subtitles appear next to it, made on your Mac.

Hey everyone, every day we open our Mac and we see Siri sitting right over there...
A 77 second voice memo, transcribed in 1.5 seconds.

Hear anything, in your own voice

Select text anywhere and say "read this to me". Record a minute of yourself once and Rubidu can read in your voice.

Rubidu Settings, Voice and Sound: the voice in use, and a script to read aloud to record your own voice.

And the small stuff

Tic-tac-toe you can tap or talk
Study sessions and zen mode
A daily challenge
Checks facts on Wikipedia, if you let it
Focus sessions with a coach
A sticky note on your desktop
Six personalities, or your own
Quiz breaks
Find any file
Exact maths and units
Dark mode, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, brightness
Stop by saying stop
Quiet replies on screen
Learns your routine, if you let it
Tuned to home and office
Say three things at once
See and forget what it knows

Pick its face.

It lives in your menu bar, it blinks, and it reacts to how you talk to it. Click one.

○‿○

Six personalities. Or make your own.

A witty friend, a sarcastic one, a calm professional, Gen Z, a developer who plays rubber duck, and a caring one. Each has its own face, voice, jokes and comebacks. Switch in Settings, or just say "switch to sarcastic mode".

Rubidu Settings: the Gen Z personality on a pink stage with star eyes and the line: Main character energy only. What are we doing today? Below, the personality cards and Make your own.

Settings you can actually find

The things you change most are one click away: hear me over videos, stop by voice, meme sounds, the desktop sticky note, a morning hello. The rest is one level down.

Rubidu Settings, Quick switches: Hear me over videos, Stop by voice, Meme sounds, Sticky note, Morning hello, Show what I heard, Fun stats.

Why not Siri or ChatGPT?

Both are good at what they do. Rubidu is for something else: a Mac that does what you say and keeps it to itself.

It stays on your Mac

No account, no cloud, no keys. Hearing you, thinking and speaking all happen on the Mac in front of you.

It does things, not just answers

It opens apps, sets timers and reminders, writes notes and changes settings, with the Mac's own controls.

It asks before anything risky

Restarting your Mac waits for your yes, and that yes counts for that one action only.

It forgets unless you ask

It never learns about you on its own. It keeps only what you tell it to remember, never passwords, and you can erase it.

Measured, not promised

network requests by default: 0; The app has no account and no telemetry. Its models come inside the app.
memory while it waits: 0.45GB; About 1.7 GB in the minutes after a question, while the language model is kept ready, and about 2.2 GB at the peak of an answer.
to the first spoken word: 0.25s; The middle of 30 replies in a day of real use. Speech made on the Mac's own chip, not a server.
to transcribe a 77 second memo: 1.5s; With subtitles, on the same laptop (three runs: 1.3 to 1.5 s).
installer download: 1.3GB; Models included, so nothing else is fetched. About 1.8 GB once installed.
automated tests before every build: 4,713; All pass before a build ships (one is skipped outside the installed app).

Measured on 2026-10-20 on one MacBook Air (M2, 16 GB, macOS 27) with the current build.

a note from me

Every day I open my Mac and Siri sits there, slow and a bit lost. Meanwhile AI got scary good, but mostly in a browser tab that sends everything I say somewhere else.

So I built the assistant I wanted: one that lives on my Mac, talks back in my own voice, understands my accent, and keeps every word on the laptop.

None of this would exist without people I'll never meet. All over the world, developers spend their nights making AI smaller, faster and free for anyone to use, and every few months something that needed a server suddenly fits on a laptop. It still fascinates me that I get to build on top of that work. So, a big shout-out to them and to the open source community: thank you.

My way of paying it forward is to make Rubidu as light as I possibly can. Light enough on memory and battery to run all day beside everything else you have open. A good assistant shouldn't need a new laptop.

The basics work now. The next part is the one I care about most: making it fast, friendly and genuinely useful every day. Join the waitlist, and tell me what it should do next.

Ujjwal, final-year CS student, building Rubidu in public

Not done yet

Better you hear it from me than find it out yourself.

Where it has run

On my MacBook Air (M2, 16 GB, macOS 27) and a friend's M4 (16 GB, macOS 26.2). No Intel Macs.
It needs Apple silicon, 16 GB of memory and macOS 26.2 or later.
No Windows version yet. That needs a Windows PC, which in this economy of RAM and SSD prices is a whole project of its own.

Rough edges

Apple has not notarized it (that needs a paid developer account), so the first open goes through Privacy & Security, then Open Anyway.
Short commands in a strong accent are the hardest to hear. It asks "Did you mean…?" when unsure.
Its windows are not fully readable by VoiceOver yet.
It answers general questions with a small model that lives on your Mac. When it doesn't know, or for the latest news, it offers to look it up (Wikipedia, arXiv, or a web search with your own key) instead of guessing.

Questions

What is Rubidu?

Rubidu is a voice assistant for macOS that runs entirely on your Mac. You talk to it, it answers in a voice you choose, and it does things for you: apps, timers and reminders, music and volume, messages, dictation into any app, transcribing recordings and reading text aloud.

Does Rubidu send my voice or data to the cloud?

No. Hearing, thinking and speaking all happen on your Mac. There is no account and no telemetry. The only download is the AI models, once, when you press the button in Setup.

Does it work offline?

Yes. Rubidu carries its models inside the app, so it works with no internet connection from the first start. It goes online only to look something up, when you ask or say yes, and each source has its own switch in Settings, Online.

What does Rubidu send online?

Nothing on its own. When you ask it to look something up, or say yes to its offer, it sends the words of your question to the source it uses: Wikipedia, arXiv for research papers, or a web search service if you add your own key. Settings, Online lists each one, what it sends and where, with a switch for each. With them all off, nothing leaves your Mac.

Can Rubidu speak in my own voice?

Yes. You read a short script aloud, and Rubidu learns your voice on your Mac. The recording is never uploaded, and you can delete it whenever you like.

Which Macs does it run on?

Macs with Apple silicon and 16 GB of memory, on macOS 26.2 or later. It has been tested on a MacBook Air M2 (macOS 27) and an M4 (macOS 26.2), both with 16 GB.

Is there a Windows version?

Not yet. A Windows version is planned after the Mac launch.

When can I try it?

The basics already work, and I'm making it great before I hand it out. Join the waitlist at the top of this page and you'll get one email the moment it's ready. Or follow @heyrubidu on Instagram and YouTube to watch it being built.

Rubidu is for sale: US$7,500

Rubidu is available as a complete software asset: the product, not a company. A one-time sale through Escrow.com. No users or revenue yet: you buy a finished, well-tested product.

The full macOS app and its installer, and the source code with its git history since September 2026
Brand, website, demo videos and social accounts, the release pipeline, documentation and 5,391 tests
Commercial-safe licences only and a software bill of materials. Rebranding is one file

Listing on IndieMaker · Listing on SideProjectors · Watch the demo · Email heyrubidu@gmail.com

Who is building it

I'm Ujjwal, a final-year computer science student. I'm building Rubidu on my own, on a MacBook Air, in public. I post the progress, the wins and the bugs on Instagram and YouTube.