What happened to Rewind?

For a while, Rewind felt like magic. You installed it, gave it permission to see your screen, and from then on you could type a word and find the moment you saw it — an email, a slide, a line of code — days or weeks later. It all stayed on your Mac, compressed into a surprisingly small space.

Then, in December 2025, it stopped. If you landed here because your Rewind menu bar icon went quiet, or because you are looking for something to replace it, this is the full story, from public sources.

The timeline

Date	What happened
November 1, 2022	Rewind launches on Mac in limited beta, backed by Andreessen Horowitz. It keeps a compressed, searchable history of your screen and audio, on your Mac.
2023	Rewind becomes a paid app. In March 2023 its plans are Free, Basic ($10 a month) and Pro ($30 a month).
December 2023	The plans become Free and Pro, at $19 a month billed yearly or $29 month to month.
April 17, 2024	The company renames itself Limitless and announces a $99 AI pendant that records conversations. The Rewind app stays available, but the company’s focus moves to the pendant.
December 5, 2025	Limitless announces it has been acquired by Meta. Pendant sales to new customers stop. Service ends the same day in Brazil, China, the EU, Israel, South Korea, Turkey and the UK; users there have until December 19 to download their data.
December 19, 2025	A final update turns off all screen and audio capture in the Rewind Mac app.

What Rewind did well

It is worth remembering why so many people loved it, because those are the things worth looking for in a successor.

• It stayed on your Mac. Rewind’s own FAQ said that screen and audio recordings were stored locally and never left your Mac. Only the text needed for its AI features was sent to its language-model partners, and only when you used them.
• It was fast. A global shortcut, a search box, and the exact moment came back with the word highlighted.
• It was light on disk. Rewind compressed what it kept heavily; AppleInsider reported a demo of 10.5 GB of recordings shrinking to 2.8 MB.
• It was a native Mac app, with the polish people expect from one.

What the shutdown taught us

Rewind didn’t lose anyone’s data to a hack. It simply went away, the way many venture-funded products do when the company changes direction. For people who relied on it every day, that raised three questions that apply to any app you trust with your memory:

1. Can the app keep working if the company changes plans? An app that needs its maker’s servers to run can be switched off remotely. An app that runs on your Mac, with a licence that is checked on your Mac, keeps running.
2. Can you take your data with you? An open, documented export means your history isn’t tied to one app. Ask for it before you need it.
3. What exactly does the app keep, and where? Audio, keystrokes and cloud processing all raise the stakes. The less an app keeps, and the closer it keeps it, the less there is to lose.

We’ve turned those questions into a screen memory privacy checklist you can use on any app, including ours.

If you still have Rewind installed

• Don’t delete anything in a hurry. Limitless documents an export of transcripts, chats and audio for its own service. Its public pages don’t say whether the Rewind Mac app’s screen history can be exported or browsed after December 19, 2025, so check what you still have before you uninstall.
• Check what still runs. Look at System Settings › Privacy & Security › Screen & System Audio Recording and remove apps you no longer use.
• Read the current FAQ. Limitless’ own announcement page is the authoritative source for what happens to accounts and data.

What we’re building, and why

We started DejaVu because we missed Rewind, and because we wanted to fix the part that hurt: the dependence. DejaVu is a private screen memory for Mac. It keeps a light, compressed memory of what was on your screen, reads its text on your Mac, and lets you find any moment by typing a word or scrolling a timeline.

It has no account, no cloud and no audio, and it never logs what you type. Your memory is encrypted on your Mac and opens with Touch ID. Your memories never leave your Mac — and there is no server of ours your memory depends on. If you want to compare the options honestly first, start with our guide to Rewind alternatives.