GifWat

A macOS menu bar app for cataloging and quickly accessing GIFs. Spiritual successor to GifWit.

demo.mov

Prerequisites

GifWat is built with Tauri, a lightweight alternative to Electron that uses a Rust backend with a web-based frontend (specifically, React, for this project).

Rust

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
source "$HOME/.cargo/env"

Node.js (v20+)

nvm install 20

Development

npm install
npm run tauri dev

First build compiles Rust dependencies and takes a few minutes. Subsequent builds are fast.

Building a .dmg

npm run tauri build

Output: src-tauri/target/release/bundle/dmg/GifWat_0.1.0_aarch64.dmg

Note: The .dmg is unsigned. Recipients will need to right-click → Open to bypass Gatekeeper, or run xattr -cr /Applications/GifWat.app after installing.

Usage

• Click menu bar icon → Toggle GIF window
• Right-click menu bar icon → Quit
• Cmd+Shift+G → Global shortcut to toggle window
• Search → Filter by URL or tag
• Click GIF → Copy URL to clipboard
• Hover + X → Delete GIF

Data stored at ~/Library/Application Support/gifwat/gifs.json