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ZenHive

Mac · iMessage · on-device

You’re not behind on 1,400 messages. You’re behind on four.

ZenHive reads your iMessage history on your Mac and works out who is genuinely waiting on a reply — and who you asked something and never heard back from. Nothing is uploaded. Nothing is summarised in a data centre.

macOS 26.2 or later · Apple silicon · Browsing your messages is free forever · 14 days of Follow Up, no card

ZenHive — Follow Up
Waiting on you4
  • Priya Raman4hConfirm Thursday, 6pmusually 8m
  • Marcus Webb2dSend the revised deckusually 3h
  • Mum1dSay whether you're comingusually 40m
  • Flat 4B3dPick a night for the boilerusually 1d
You’re waiting on1
  • Dana Cho6dYou asked about the lease datesusually 2h

Read on this Mac. Refreshed 2 minutes ago.

Three sections

One of them is free because it has to be.

An app that reads your messages should let you check that it reads them well before it asks you for anything.

Free forever

Messages

Every conversation you have ever had, opened instantly and searched in full. Tapbacks and inline replies read the way Messages shows them.

Free deliberately. It is the part that earns Full Disk Access, and nobody should have to pay to find out whether an app can read their own history properly.

Pro

Follow Up

Who is waiting on you, and who you are waiting on. Ranked by how late a reply is for that particular person, then read by an on-device model that decides whether anything is really owed.

The reason the app exists. Everything else is either the thing that earns the permission or the thing that makes you smile.

Pro

Leaderboard

Who you talk to most, over any window you choose. Messages sent, messages received, and how the balance sits between you.

The one section that is for pleasure rather than duty. It is also the fastest way to notice somebody has quietly dropped off the list.

The engine

Late is a fact about you, not about the clock.

Every other reminder in your life fires after a fixed interval. But four hours from the friend you answer in seconds is a conspicuous silence, and four hours from the person you answer on Sundays is not a delay at all.

ZenHive measures how fast you normally answer each person — over the last six months, per conversation — and scores lateness against that. A debt older than thirty days drops off the list entirely: at that point it is not something you forgot, it is something that has passed.

Same silence, two answers

elapsed = 4h for both

Priya

You usually answer in 8 minutes

8 minutes
Overdue · urgency 4.00You answer her in minutes. Four hours is a silence.

Dad

You usually answer in 2 days

2 days
Not yet · urgency 0.12You have never answered him inside a day. Four hours is nothing.
1m1h1d7d

urgency = log₂(1 + elapsed ÷ how fast you usually answer them), capped at 4 so that lateness alone can never carry a conversation to the top of the list.

The judgement

Then a model reads it and asks whether a reply is really owed.

Keyword rules can only ever match wordings somebody thought of in advance. These two sentences are one word apart and mean opposite things, and no list of phrases closes that gap:

“Let me know if you need anything.”

Wants nothing

“Let me know when you're free.”

Owes an answer

So ZenHive reads the last few messages of the conversation with Apple’s on-device model, and asks what the person wants, whether you still owe them something, and what the next move is in a few words. The answers stay on the machine, because so does the model.

Where your messages go

Nowhere. That is the feature.

ZenHive asks for Full Disk Access, which is the broadest permission macOS has. You are right to want to know what happens next. Read the policy.

Stays on this Mac

everything

  • Your Messages history

    Read where it already sits, never copied off the Mac

  • ZenHive

    Scores lateness against your own reply habits, per person

  • Apple’s on-device model

    Reads the conversation and decides whether a reply is owed. On your Mac, offline

sign-in
+ billing

Leaves this Mac

three things

  • Your email address

    From Google sign-in — the identity your subscription hangs off

  • Subscription status

    On trial, active, or lapsed, and when the period ends

  • A code for each Mac

    So one account shared around an office is visible as one

No message, name, phone number, attachment, or follow-up ever appears in that list — and the server has nowhere to put one if it did.

Apple offers no narrower permission for your Messages history. There is no “just Messages” permission to ask for, which is why an app like this one has to ask for all of it — and why it should be able to tell you, precisely, what it does with what it gets.

And then

You can answer from here.

A list of people you have kept waiting is not much use if clearing it means switching apps four times. ZenHive sends the reply through Messages itself, on the same Mac, with the same account you already use.

Reading is free and always will be. Sending is the one paid thing inside the free section, and it says so rather than quietly not being there.

Thursday works. 6pm at yours?
Perfect. Bring the good bread.

Tapbacks and inline replies are read too — a thumbs-up on a question usually is the reply, and ZenHive scores it as one instead of nagging you about it.

Try it

Browse your messages free. Pay when Follow Up earns it.

$20 a month, or $200 a year — that is $16.67 a month, two months free. The 14-day trial starts when you sign in and asks for no card.