This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.
Glaze is a new Mac app for making your own software. It’s for vibe coding, meaning you just describe any kind of tool, game, or app you want to create. Glaze builds it. It’s like having a friend who codes and is happy to add whatever small feature you ask for.
How Glaze is different: Unlike other vibe coding tools, like Lovable, Bolt, Gemini Canvas, Google’s AI Studio, or Claude Artifacts, Glaze creates software that runs locally on your computer, not on the web. That means:
- Your apps work offline.
- Your data stays on your machine.
- Apps you make benefit from your computer’s file system, keyboard shortcuts, menu bar integration, and background processes. They’re more like real software than the browser apps other vibe coding tools generate.
Platform and Pricing: It’s Mac-only for now. It’s free to use with limits, or $20/month for additional credits. Join the waitlist at glaze.app to get an invite.
The Team: Glaze comes from the startup that makes Raycast, my favorite launcher app.
The First Apps I Made with Glaze
I began by making tiny apps. Four steps: plan, create, refine, and publish.
- Box Breath: One-minute meditation breaks. Built in 12 minutes.
- A links app for storing URLs I use often, so I can copy them to my clipboard quickly. Built in 10 minutes.
- QuotePop, which can turn any text or quote into an image file. I use the images for presentations and social sharing. I can customize the image dimensions, style, and gradient background. Built in an hour.
Free Public Glaze Apps I Like
- macHealth Identify battery, memory, or other issues impacting your laptop. Quickly find out why your Mac is slow.
- Pinfont Preview text across all your fonts to pick one you like.
- Focus Soundboard Play sounds together to help you focus.
- Silly Sounds Press keys to make playful noises. Useful for nothing in particular.
- Word Connections An offline version of the NY Times game.
- PDF and Image Merger Combine multiple PDFs and images.
How to Get Started
- Join the waitlist at glaze.app. When you’re invited, download & install Glaze.
- Explore the Glaze “store,” a collection of free apps people have built.
- Download and try a few to see what’s possible.
- Open Glaze’s planning mode. Explain in detail what kind of app or game you want.
- As Glaze prepares your app, it may ask about your feature or design preferences. Answer those questions.
- Once you’re happy with Glaze’s plan, which it will summarize for you, tell it to build. Then test the app and ask for improvements.
- Keep your app private or publish it to a group or the public store.
Pro Tips
- Customize Glaze’s Instructions. Summarize your preferences in Glaze’s settings. That way your apps will have your preferred design elements or features.
- Include options for your apps. Instruct Glaze to give anyone using your app choices. In my QuotePop app, for example, you can pick your image dimensions, background color, and font.
- Plan first. The clearer you are about what you want before Glaze starts building, the fewer credits you’ll burn on rework. Put Glaze in planning mode to start. Or, if you already pay for another AI tool like Claude or ChatGPT, plan there and give Glaze a summary. That saves your Glaze credits for building.
- Iterate to improve. Once Glaze builds the first version of your app, give it a list of fixes to improve the app’s design or make it easier to use.
Limitations
- Mac only for now. No specific timeline for Windows and Linux.
- Credits for complex apps may be costly. More intricate iterations use more credits. If you’re using Glaze for free, you may run out of credits and have to pay for more. If you’re making multiple complex apps, expect to pay $20/month for a subscription, at least while you’re building and refining.
- Local only, not mobile. If you use multiple computers, you’ll have to install and use Glaze separately on each. You won’t be able to use your apps on your phone or tablet, as you can with web apps.
Alternatives
- Lovable lets you create sites and apps with no code. Start with a text prompt, attach a screenshot of something you like, or build on the template gallery.
- Bolt also lets you make a web app or landing page with AI prompts. You can use your brand guidelines to match company designs.
- Claude Artifacts works well for quick interactives like flashcards, quizzes, calculators, minigames, and simple visualizations. Unlike Glaze, Claude Artifacts and the other alternatives noted here don’t create local software that lives on your computer.
- Gemini Canvas is easy to use for building apps, games, dashboards, or interactive infographics inside Gemini. Feed in a document to have Canvas design an app around it. Make a quiz game from your vocabulary list, or a dashboard from your metrics file.
- Google has several other good free options. Each has useful templates to help get you started. AI Studio is its most powerful, though the interface can be intimidating for beginners. Stitch lets you vibe code mobile app designs. And you can guide Opal to design Web apps by linking together various skills and steps.
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.