Polytopic Systems

Product lab · a studio of Tech on Tires, LLC

Apps, games and tools, each with a face of its own.

Polytopic Systems makes software of any kind. The lab itself stays grey; every product brings its own color. Three are lit.

Meet Live TranscriptMeet TattleMeet Polytopic NotchGet in touch
A tesseract, the four-dimensional cube, turning slowly. Three of its faces are lit, one each in the colors of Live Transcript, Tattle and Polytopic Notch.
{4,3,3} A tesseract, turning through the fourth dimension. The lit faces are Live Transcript, Tattle and Polytopic Notch.

Products

Three faces lit so far.

macOS menu bar app

Live Transcript

Live captions for everything your Mac plays. A native menu bar app that transcribes calls, videos and anything else with sound, entirely on your Mac.

Has sound. Streams from Mux, our video host, once you press play.
  • Captions drop from the notch, then settle in a floating panel you can move and pin.
  • Hears whatever your Mac plays, and your microphone if you want it to.
  • Apple Speech or Whisper, with a wizard that compares them on your own voice.
  • A searchable history. Export to Markdown, plain text, subtitles or Apple Notes.
  • Summaries and questions with AI, using on-device models or your own.
  • Live translation.
Visit the Live Transcript site macOS 26 or later · Apple silicon

Install Live Transcript with Homebrew: brew install --cask polytopic-systems/tap/live-transcript

macOS menu bar app

Tattle

A menu bar app that shows which apps on your Mac connect where, and lets you allow or block them. Out of the box it only watches: nothing is blocked until you make a rule or choose a stricter mode.

Has sound. Streams from Mux, our video host, once you press play.
  • Every connection is listed under the app that made it, with a plain sentence on why it was allowed or blocked.
  • Three modes: Allow and watch blocks nothing, Ask asks at the notch, Lockdown lets through only what you allowed.
  • Rules by app, domain, address, port, protocol or direction. Each one reads as a sentence.
  • History, a map of where connections went, and alerts, all kept on your Mac. It sees connections, never their content.
  • Encrypted DNS to a resolver you choose, with blocklists you subscribe to. Off until you turn it on.
  • An assistant that explains connections, off until you pick a provider. It shows exactly what it will send first.
Visit the Tattle site macOS 26 or later · Apple silicon

Install Tattle with Homebrew: brew install --cask polytopic-systems/tap/tattle

Swift package · for Mac developers

Polytopic Notch

A Swift package that gives your Mac app a pill at the notch. You say what to show; it places it, sizes it, animates it, opens it on hover, asks your questions, and shares the notch with other apps that use it.

The open pill below the notch, showing a live list of recent events with their times, and a menu button.The pill asking “Keep the demo’s notices on?” with Turn Off and Keep On buttons.
The package’s example app at the notch: a live list with a menu button, then a question with answer buttons.
  • It places, sizes and animates the pill for you. On a Mac without a notch it hangs below the menu bar.
  • It steps aside for other notch apps and menu bar managers. No Accessibility or Screen Recording permission.
  • Live lists that hold still under the pointer, and menus that keep the pill open while they show.
  • It asks your app’s questions with buttons, and falls back to a small window when the pill can’t show them.
  • A dock where several apps share the notch, whoever made them, sandboxed and App Store apps included.
  • Open source under the GPL v3, with a commercial license for closed-source and App Store apps.
Visit the Polytopic Notch site macOS 26 · Swift 6

Add Polytopic Notch to a Swift package, in Package.swift: .package(url: "https://github.com/polytopic-systems/polytopic-notch.git", from: "1.1.0"),

More faces are taking shape. Nothing to announce yet.

  • {3,4,3}UnlitAn empty product slot, drawn as a 24-cell.

Studio

A studio of Tech on Tires, LLC.

A polytope is a shape made of flat faces, in any number of dimensions. The lab works the same way: one frame, many faces, each turned toward the people it’s for.

Polytopic Systems is where Tech on Tires, LLC makes its own products: apps, games and tools of any kind. Each gets its own name, its own site and its own colors. This page is the frame that holds them.