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macOS developers

Monetize a Mac app without a subscription nobody asked for

One universal dylib, a C header, and a Swift bridge. Your users opt in to relaying a capped share of unused bandwidth for public web data collection, and you get paid per user per month without adding a paywall to a Mac app.

No subscription to defend
Mac users are vocal about subscription fatigue, and a one-off utility that suddenly asks for $3 a month gets reviewed accordingly. This adds revenue with nothing for anyone to cancel.
One universal binary
`libcr_sdk.dylib` covers both Apple Silicon and Intel in a single file. Add the header to a bridging header, link and embed the dylib in your app bundle, and call it from Swift.
The package verifies itself
The download ships with `verify.sh`, which checks architectures, the `@rpath` install name, header and library symbol parity, checksums, quarantine state, and then builds the included sample. Run it before you believe anything about the package, including anything we say about it.
The limits are not yours to raise
A bandwidth ceiling, daily and monthly data caps, a CPU and memory budget, and a port and network denylist, all enforced inside the compiled Rust core with no API to loosen them.
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We verify every publisher before payout. A trustworthy network is worth more to us than a big one.

Free to integrate. up to $0.50 per user per month — earned daily, paid monthly.

Proof

  • Up to $0.50 per user per month
  • Universal: Apple Silicon and Intel
  • Swift via a C bridging header
  • Caps compiled into the core
  • First 100 devices, no sales call

What you actually get in the download

cr-sdk-macos.zip is a complete package rather than loose files: the universal dylib, include/cr_sdk.h, a README, verify.sh, checksums.txt, a VERSION file, and a sample/ directory. The sample is a single C file covering the whole lifecycle — build it, run it, and a live device appears on your dashboard before you have touched your own project.

That sample-first order is deliberate. Integrating an SDK into a real app and then debugging why no device appeared is a bad afternoon; proving the library works in isolation first turns it into a five-minute check.

On signing: we do not ship the dylib with an Apple Developer signature. You sign and notarise your own app bundle, embedding the dylib as part of it, which is the correct arrangement — a library signed by someone else does not help your notarisation and would give you a second identity to reason about. The checksums in the package are how you verify what you received.

What it pays

Up to $0.50 per user per month, at per-country rates, with the full rate card in your dashboard from signup.

It accrues daily. A user counts for a day once their device has been sharing for 60 minutes in that day, each qualifying day is worth the monthly rate divided by the days in that month, and the month is the sum of those days. A day under the bar earns nothing.

Devices on hosting, datacenter or VPN IPs are not counted.

The full arithmetic is here, and what each model pays is the honest comparison against ads, subscriptions and in-app purchases.

What runs on the machine

A background task that yields to the app it lives in. When a data cap is reached or the machine is under sustained load, the device opts out of sharing entirely and checks back later rather than continuing at a reduced rate.

The traffic goes to public web data collection: price and availability monitoring, flight and hotel search, SEO and ad verification, market research, and AI training data. A permanent blocklist covers .gov and .edu, banks and financial institutions, card processors, login endpoints, sensitive APIs, any reported-abuse domain, and the user's own local network.

How it works is the full description, and our ethics page covers what we will not do.

Questions

How do I monetize a Mac app without a subscription?

The options are a one-off purchase, a subscription, in-app purchases, or bandwidth sharing. Bandwidth sharing pays up to $0.50 per user per month for users who opt in to relaying a capped share of unused connection capacity, and it requires no change to the application itself — no paywall, no tier, and nothing for a user to cancel. For a free or one-off-purchase Mac app it adds recurring revenue where there was none.

Does the macOS SDK support Apple Silicon and Intel?

Yes, in one file. `libcr_sdk.dylib` is a universal binary covering arm64 and x86_64, so there is no separate download or build per architecture. The included `verify.sh` checks that both architectures are present in the package you received, along with the install name, symbol parity against the header, and the published checksums.

Is the SDK code-signed by Apple?

No, and that is deliberate rather than an omission. You sign and notarise your own application bundle with the dylib embedded inside it, which is what Apple's toolchain expects. A library signed under a different identity does not contribute to your notarisation and would only add a second signing identity to reason about. The package ships checksums so you can verify the bytes you received are the bytes that were published.

How do I call it from Swift?

The library exposes a C ABI through `cr_sdk.h`. Add that header to your bridging header, link and embed the dylib in your app bundle, and the functions are available from Swift directly. The package includes a sample written in C that covers the whole lifecycle, and building that first is the fastest way to confirm the library works before you wire it into your own project.

What stops it using too much bandwidth or CPU?

A bandwidth ceiling, separate daily and monthly data caps, a CPU and memory budget, and a denylist of ports and networks — all compiled into the Rust core with no API to raise them, and enforced again by the relay from its own side. When a limit is reached the device opts out of sharing entirely rather than throttling and remaining active.

Your first 100 devices go live today.

No sales call, no approval to start earning.

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