A space for images,
sounds and thoughts.

Drag a file into the window — it becomes a tile.
Everything stays a real file on your Mac.

  • notes.md
  • data.csv
  • mesmerizing.png
  • video.mp4
  • audio.mp3
  • score.musicxml
  • 3d.glb
  • document.pdf
  • logo.svg
  • palette.ase
  • font.otf
  • toolpath.gcode
  • link.webloc
  • maps.webloc
  • youtube.webloc
  • spotify.webloc
  • figma.webloc

One board for everything.

Real recordings from the app.

  • Moodboard
  • Photos
  • Music
  • Notes

What Mesmerizing can do.

Images, video, audio & 3D

Plus PDFs, sheet music, code, palettes and fonts — every file becomes a tile with a real preview.

100% local

Real files in your folder. No cloud, no account, works offline.

Buy once

No subscription. One license for two Macs, forever.

Claude connection

Mark a tile, tell Claude “take the marked image” — no upload.

PDF export

One board or all of them, with ⌘E — as A4 pages or one endless sheet.

Projects, solo or shared

Your work in projects, up to nine boards each. Put one in a shared folder — and two of you work on it.

Everything at a glance.

Canvas & boards

  • Drag files into the window — each becomes a tile, packed tight with no gaps; adding and deleting take effect at once, with no rebuild
  • Drag images straight from your browser onto the board — Chrome, Safari, any site, no install
  • Right-click any tile: a glass menu in system style — Open, Quick Look, Reveal in Finder, Copy, Duplicate, Save a Copy, Get Info with kind, dimensions and file size
  • Three tile sizes per tile via the three glass dots
  • Reorder tiles by drag & drop; order and sizes are remembered
  • Five backgrounds by double-clicking the empty canvas: black, white, dense glass, frosted glass, fully transparent
  • Projects separate your work — at launch the glass “Projects” panel asks what you want to continue with; reorder by dragging, right in the panel
  • A project in a shared cloud folder — iCloud, Dropbox, Drive — becomes a project for two: whoever edits holds the pen, the other side sees “currently being edited by …” — nothing gets overwritten
  • Up to nine boards per project — each its own folder, with its own background, whitespace and scrollbar setting
  • Switch boards with a two-finger swipe, number keys 1–9, or the dots bar
  • Dots bar at the bottom made of the same glass beads — keep it visible, show it on hover, or hide it entirely
  • Whitespace slider from 3 to 400 px, for one board or all of them
  • Click an image or video to see it large over the whole board — on the board’s own background
  • Fit toggle: whole image instead of cropped
  • One glass for every tool: fit, mark, size and delete at the same size, same rim, same ink — they appear only when you point at a tile
  • Tools are adjustable: light or dark ink, three sizes, and optionally only the current size dot
  • Session restore — same scroll position on next launch
  • Interactive eleven-step tutorial

Formats

  • Images: JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, HEIC/HEIF, TIFF, AVIF, RAW and SVG
  • Video: MP4, WebM, MOV, M4V — muted and looping while visible; click ▶ to play with sound and controls
  • Audio: MP3, WAV, M4A, AIFF, OGG, Opus and CAF with a glass orb and waveform; MIDI plays back — only ever one tile sounds at a time
  • 3D: GLB, OBJ, STL, PLY, FBX, 3MF, Rhino .3dm, STEP and IGES — drag to rotate, always chrome under a soft studio softbox
  • PDF: page previews you can page through with arrows or a swipe
  • Text, code and Markdown readable right in the board with syntax colours — and editable in place with auto-save
  • CSV as a table, Jupyter notebooks with cells and outputs, EPUB as readable text
  • Link cards from .webloc and .url with favicon, title and preview image
  • Rich link tiles: maps (Google, Apple, OpenStreetMap) you can zoom, YouTube and Vimeo, Spotify, Apple Music and SoundCloud play inside the tile, Figma, Behance, Dribbble and Pinterest as a big image
  • Colour palettes (.ase, .aco, .gpl) as a row of colours with hex values
  • Font specimens from TTF, OTF and WOFF2 — set in the font itself
  • G-code as a toolpath and DXF as a drawing
  • Sheet music: ABC and MusicXML rendered as real notation
  • Everything else via Finder’s own preview — PSD, AI, Sketch, DOCX, Keynote, Ableton, Cubase, Pro Tools, ZIP and more

Output & integration

  • Mark for Claude: a spark on the tile, orange once it is marked — Claude reaches it directly
  • Export as PDF — this board with ⌘E, all boards with ⇧⌘E
  • PDF either paginated to A4 without ever cutting a tile, or as one endless sheet
  • Share a board: a single .mesmerizingboard file, a double-click imports it
  • Open the storage folder in Finder with ⇧⌘O — these are real files

Product

  • 100% local and offline; internet only once, briefly, for activation
  • One-time purchase, updates within the major version included
  • License covers two Macs and can be released again at any time
  • Silent background updates, installed on quit
  • Universal binary for Apple Silicon and Intel, signed and notarised by Apple

Buy Mesmerizing.

A space for images, sounds and thoughts.

One-timeCHF 20

Buy now View all CHO CHI CHO apps

System requirements.

  • A Mac with macOS 13 (Ventura) or later
  • Universal — Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) and Intel
  • Around 40 MB of disk space
  • Runs fully offline; internet is only needed once, briefly, to activate the license
  • Your files live in a folder you choose — no account, no database, no cloud
  • The license covers two Macs and can be released again inside the app
  • Not for Windows, iPhone or iPad

Frequently asked questions.

Where are my files stored?

In a folder you choose on your Mac, as plain files. You can open it in Finder anytime — Mesmerizing is just the nice view on top.

Does Mesmerizing need internet or a server?

No, Mesmerizing runs fully offline on your Mac. Internet is only needed once, briefly, to activate the license.

Which file formats does Mesmerizing understand?

Images (JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, HEIC, TIFF, AVIF), video (MP4, WebM, MOV), audio (MP3, WAV, M4A and more), 3D models (GLB, OBJ, STL, STEP, IGES), PDF and many design/office files as previews, plus text, code and Markdown.

What does “Mark for Claude” mean?

Mesmerizing plays nicely alongside Claude: mark an image on its tile and refer to it directly in a Claude session — no uploading or dragging in. If you don’t use Claude, you’ll never notice the feature.

Is there a subscription?

No. Mesmerizing is a one-time purchase — pay once, use forever. Updates within the major version included.

Does Mesmerizing work as a moodboard or reference board?

That is exactly what it is built for: arrange images, clips and notes freely on a canvas — except everything lives with you as real files instead of in someone’s cloud. Works just as well for holiday photos, a record collection or the paperwork for a house renovation.

Can two of us work on one project?

Yes. Put a project in a shared cloud folder (iCloud, Dropbox …) and you both work on it. While one edits, the other side sees “currently being edited by …” — so nothing gets overwritten. Honestly though: depending on the cloud, changes take seconds to minutes, and both Macs should run the same version.