The Limitless AI alternative that stays on your device
Limitless (formerly Rewind) was bought by Meta, its desktop app was switched off, and the company moved on to a wearable pendant. Trace is the private, on-device alternative — no wearable, no cloud, no subscription.
Trace is in beta — not available to download yet. Join the list and we'll email you when builds are ready.
What happened to Limitless and Rewind
For a while, Rewind was a quietly beloved tool. It kept a searchable record of everything you'd seen and done on your Mac, so you could pull up a half-remembered article, a price you spotted last week, or what was actually said in a meeting — just by searching your own past. It was genuinely useful, and it ran on your machine.
Then the company changed direction. It rebranded as Limitless and leaned hard into an AI pendant — a wearable that listens to your conversations and syncs them to the cloud. The desktop heritage faded into the background, and in 2025 the company was acquired by Meta. The original Rewind desktop app was shut down on December 19, 2025.
So if you came here searching for a "Limitless AI alternative" — or a "Limitless alternative for Mac" — you're likely in one of two camps. Either you loved the old local app and it's gone, or you like the idea of a searchable personal memory but you don't want to wear a microphone around your neck and pipe your life into someone else's servers. Both are completely reasonable. This page is about what to use instead.
What most alternatives get wrong
When a popular tool disappears, a wave of replacements rushes in. Most of them miss the point in one of a few predictable ways.
They make you wear hardware. The Limitless direction itself — a pendant you clip on and keep charged — is a big ask. It records the people around you, it's another gadget to lose, and it pushes audio to the cloud to be transcribed. A lot of people want their memory without becoming a walking recorder.
They live in the cloud. Plenty of "second brain" and memory apps quietly upload your activity to their servers so they can run AI on it. That's convenient until you remember the contents: every page, every message, every document you touched, sitting on someone else's infrastructure, subject to their breaches, policy changes and acquisitions. After watching one beloved app get absorbed by Meta, trusting the next one with the cloud copy of your life is a hard sell.
They're heavy, or they're a subscription, or both. Some open-source options record your screen and audio non-stop, which is powerful but resource-hungry and fiddly to set up. Others rent you access by the month. For a tool you want to keep for years, a permanent bill and a hot laptop aren't great defaults.
The gap is specific: people want a searchable personal memory that's local, software-only, light, and bought once. That's exactly what Trace is built to be.
What Trace is
Trace is a local-first personal memory app for Windows, macOS and Linux. It captures less, keeps everything on your machine, and lets you search your whole day — with no pendant and no cloud.
Light capture
Trace notes lightweight signals: your browser history, the active app or window, and clipboard text. No pendant, no microphone in the room, no 24/7 screen recording. Screenshots with OCR are planned as an optional, off-by-default extra — not something running today.
Local indexing
Everything is indexed and encrypted on your own machine. The exclusion filter runs before anything is written, so private apps, domains and incognito windows never get recorded in the first place.
Search & timeline
Search any word you remember, or scroll a timeline to answer "what was I doing on Tuesday?". Instant, fully offline, and yours alone. It works the same on Windows, macOS and Linux.
Who it's for
Trace isn't trying to be everything to everyone. It's for a specific kind of person:
- Former Rewind users who lost a local app they relied on and want a private replacement, not a cloud service.
- People drawn to Limitless's idea but not its pendant — they want a searchable memory of their digital life without wearing a microphone or recording the people around them.
- Mac, Windows and Linux users alike — Rewind was Mac-only and Limitless leaned into hardware; Trace is plain cross-platform software.
- Privacy-minded researchers, writers, developers and knowledge workers who touch hundreds of sources a week and want to find anything again — with everything staying on their own disk.
- People tired of subscriptions who'd rather pay once for a tool they keep for years.
If you want a wearable that captures in-person conversations, Trace isn't that — and that's deliberate. Trace is about your digital activity, on your device, under your control.
Privacy you can verify
"Private" is easy to say. The whole reason people are looking past Limitless is that an app they trusted ended up inside a giant ad company. So Trace is built so you don't have to take our word for it.
There are no servers and no accounts. Trace is designed to run with your firewall closed — if it can't phone home, it loses nothing, because there's nowhere for your data to go. Your memory is stored and encrypted locally, and the exclusion filter keeps the apps and sites you block from ever being captured.
On top of that, the capture-and-storage engine is open-core: the part that decides what gets collected and written to disk is open source and auditable. Anyone can read it, confirm exactly what's recorded, and verify there's no telemetry or sync hiding in the background. The polished desktop app on top is the paid part — but the trust-critical core is in the open.
Trace vs Limitless / Rewind vs Screenpipe
A fair, side-by-side look at three takes on personal memory.
| Trace | Limitless / Rewind | Screenpipe | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Status | Beta — join the waitlist | Rewind app shut down (Dec 2025) | Available now |
| Needs a wearable | No — software only | Pushes a pendant | No |
| What it captures | Light signals (history, active window, clipboard) | Screen recording + pendant audio | Continuous screen + audio recording |
| Truly local / offline | Yes — works firewall-closed | Cloud-bound (now Meta-owned) | Local, with cloud upsell |
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux | Was Mac-only / wearable | Cross-platform |
| Pricing | One-time $39 (early-bird, was $59) | Subscription / hardware | Free core; cloud tier subscription |
Comparison reflects publicly reported facts as of mid-2026 and is provided in good faith. Product names belong to their respective owners.
Researching the field more broadly? See how Trace stacks up as a Rewind alternative for Windows, a Microsoft Recall alternative, or a Screenpipe alternative.
Get the beta first
Trace isn't downloadable yet. Join the waitlist to get the beta, lock in the $39 lifetime price, and be first to try the local, no-pendant alternative to Limitless.
How to switch
Because Trace is still in beta, switching today means getting in line — not downloading an installer. Here's exactly what happens:
- Add your email to the waitlist. That's the only step needed right now.
- We email you when the beta build is ready for your platform — no spam in between, just that one message.
- Waitlist members keep the $39 early-bird lifetime price when Trace launches.
- There's no pendant to order, no account to create, and nothing syncing to the cloud while you wait.
- Curious how capture and search actually work? Read how Trace works on the home page.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a local alternative to Limitless?
Yes. Trace by Fervon is a local-first personal memory app for Windows, macOS and Linux. It captures lightweight activity history on your own machine so you can search everything you saw, read or did — fully on-device, with no cloud and no subscription. Trace is currently in waitlist/beta, so you can join the list to be notified when builds are ready.
Does Trace need a wearable or pendant?
No. Trace is software only — there's no pendant, no wearable and no extra hardware to buy or charge. It captures your digital activity (browser history, the active window and clipboard text) directly on the computer you already use.
What happened to Limitless AI?
Limitless — the company formerly known as Rewind — was acquired by Meta. Its Rewind desktop app was shut down on December 19, 2025, and the company had already shifted its focus toward a wearable pendant. People who wanted a private, local record of their day on the desktop were left without a drop-in replacement.
Is Trace free?
Trace is a one-time purchase, not a subscription. Joining the waitlist locks in the $39 early-bird lifetime price (regular $59). There's no recurring fee for the desktop app, and an optional local-AI tier later is never required.
Does Trace work on Mac?
Yes. Trace is cross-platform by design — Windows, macOS and Linux — so people searching for a Limitless alternative on Mac are covered. Because it's in beta, join the waitlist and we'll email you when builds are ready for your platform.