Version-controlled macOS system settings
Houston is a native macOS app for managing hidden preferences through visual profiles you can save as files and commit to your dotfiles.
Today I shipped Houston, a native macOS app for managing 120+ hidden settings through searchable, visual profiles.
The problem
A lot of the macOS settings I care about aren’t in System Settings. Dock auto-hide delay, screenshot save location and format, Finder path bar, press-and-hold accent characters — they’re buried in defaults write commands, scripts, and online documentation such as macos-defaults.com.
What Houston does
Houston gives you toggles for those settings in one SwiftUI app. You can save your Mac’s configuration as a profile, commit it to your dotfiles repo, and apply it to a new Mac in one click.
Features
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120+ macOS settings: preferences Apple buried — Dock, Finder, Desktop, Safari, Accessibility, Trackpad, Keyboard, screenshots, and more — exposed as toggles instead of defaults write commands.
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Save your setup as a profile: capture every tweak in a single file. Apply it to a new Mac, a coworker’s Mac, or your own after a clean install — and get the exact same configuration back in one click.
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Reproducible across machines: profiles are plain files. Commit them next to your dotfiles, share them with your team, and treat your Mac config like code.
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No Terminal, no System Settings spelunking: every toggle is searchable and grouped. What used to take an afternoon of Googling now takes a minute.
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Per-display wallpaper management: set different wallpapers for each connected display.
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Menu bar quick-access: toggle your favorite tweaks without opening the app.
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Lightweight native SwiftUI: no background daemons or agents.
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macOS Tahoe and later: built for the latest system APIs.
Pricing
One-time $4.99. No subscription. You can apply 5 tweaks for free before being required to enter a license key.
Try Houston Today
Requires macOS 26 Tahoe and Apple Silicon.
🚀 If you commit a Houston profile to your dotfiles, send it my way — I’d love to see how people configure their Macs!
Dr. Shawn Schwartz is a Senior Product Data Scientist at Slack. He completed his PhD in Psychology at Stanford, studying how attention shapes memory, and has been writing software for 15+ years. He writes about scientific computing and bringing research instincts into product work. Subscribe to Sustained Attention.
Written by
Shawn Schwartz, PhD
Senior Product Data Scientist at Slack. PhD in Psychology from Stanford. Passionate about building tools that make a difference.
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