Rewind AI Shut Down: 3 Alternatives That Work (2026)

If Rewind stopped working on your Mac, you are not imagining it. The app that quietly recorded everything you saw is gone, and the company behind it now belongs to Meta. Three replacements are still shipping in 2026 — LUCI, Screenpipe, and TwinMind — and this is the migration guide: what happened, what you actually lose, and how to move to an on-device replacement that will not disappear the next time a startup gets acquired.

Short version (updated October 2026): Rewind AI is shut down. Meta acquired its parent company Limitless on December 5, 2025; the Mac app disabled screen and audio capture on December 19, 2025; rewind.ai no longer serves the product. Nothing new is coming. If you only want the replacement shortlist, jump to the Rewind AI alternatives comparison, or browse all our alternatives guides.

What happened to Rewind AI

Rewind popularized local screen-history search on the Mac. It captured your screen every few seconds, recognized text in every frame, transcribed your meetings, and let you scroll back through everything. The company later rebranded its parent entity to Limitless AI and pivoted toward a wearable Pendant.

In December 2025, Meta acquired Limitless. The reporting timeline:

• December 5, 2025 — Meta announced the acquisition and the shutdown of the Rewind Mac app.
• December 19, 2025 — the Mac app disabled all screen and audio capture. This is the hard cutoff.
• EU and UK — service was discontinued, and users in those regions had until December 19, 2025 to export their data before it was permanently deleted.
• Limitless Pendant — new hardware sales stopped, with roughly one year of remaining support for existing devices.
• Outside the EU and UK — users keep only limited functionality, and only after agreeing to Meta's updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
• The rewind.ai domain now serves a parked-domain placeholder rather than the product.

Meta was after the wearables team and technology for Reality Labs, not the desktop screen recorder. That is the part worth internalizing: the product you relied on was never the reason for the deal.

What Rewind users actually lose

The shutdown is not just an inconvenience. Three things break at once:

1. The capture stops. After December 19, 2025 nothing new is recorded, so your rolling memory of meetings and screen activity simply ends.
2. The archive becomes unreachable. Raw Rewind screen-recording archives were never designed to be exported into another tool. Unless you pulled out transcripts or notes beforehand, that history is effectively locked.
3. The workflow disappears. The "scroll back and search what I saw" habit has no home anymore, and there is no in-app path to a successor product.

The deeper lesson: a "remember everything" product tied to a single, acquirable, cloud-dependent vendor is fragile by design. The fix is not just a new app — it is a tool whose storage lives on hardware you control.

What to look for in an on-device replacement

Not every "AI memory" or notetaker tool is a real Rewind replacement. The features that mattered:

• On-device storage. Your memory should live on your own machine, not in a vendor's cloud that can be sunset in a single press release.
• Both screen capture and meeting capture. Rewind's value was recalling both what was on screen and what was said. A tool that only does one covers half the job.
• Fast search across time. The point was answering "what did we decide two weeks ago?" in seconds, with the source attached.
• Actively shipping in 2026. Migrating to another product that is already winding down just repeats the mistake.
• An exportable format. Whatever you build up next, make sure it is data you can move again later.

The real Rewind alternatives in 2026

Here is an honest comparison of the options people actually reach for. Note that two of the four "alternatives" you will see recommended online are the same dead product.

LUCI — the closest on-device replacement

LUCI remembers your whole day on the computer — the screen history and the meetings Rewind users relied on most, plus the email, documents, and code in between — and keeps it on your device. It adds the thing Rewind never had: that memory is readable by the AI agents you already run, so Claude, Cursor, or Codex can draft the follow-up from what actually happened instead of you searching for it first. It runs on Mac and Windows. See the full LUCI vs Rewind comparison.

Best for: Rewind users who want their whole day remembered on-device — screen and meetings included — and readable by the AI agent they already use.

Screenpipe — the open-source screen firehose

Screenpipe is an open-source, always-on screen recorder with on-screen text search and a one-time license. It stores data locally and is highly scriptable, which developers love. It is closer to Rewind's raw 24/7 screenshot approach, but it leans on you to build understanding on top of it and is audio-only for meetings.

Best for: Developers who want raw, local, 24/7 screen logging they can query and script against themselves.

TwinMind — the bot-free mobile notetaker

TwinMind is a real-time AI notetaker that processes audio on-device and saves only the transcripts locally, so the raw audio is never stored. It joins Google Meet, Zoom, and Teams calls bot-free and runs on iOS, Android, and as a Chrome extension. It does not capture your screen, so it replaces Rewind's meeting side but not its screen-history side. Pricing is a free tier, Pro at $10/month, and custom Enterprise.

Best for: People who live on their phone and want bot-free meeting notes on the go, without screen recording.

Rewind / Limitless — not an option

Some listicles still recommend "Limitless" as a Rewind alternative. It is the same company, now inside Meta, with Pendant sales stopped. See LUCI vs Limitless for the full picture. It is not a migration target.

How to migrate from Rewind

1. Save what is still on your Mac. If Rewind was installed on a Mac you still have, its recordings are in ~/Library/Application Support/com.memoryvault.MemoryVault. Copy that folder somewhere safe before you uninstall anything. There is no official export for the raw screen database; the unofficial rewind-export-all-data tool can pull it into a more usable form (use it at your own judgment). Transcripts or notes you exported before December 19, 2025 can be re-imported into a new tool as searchable memory.
2. Export your Limitless data and stop the billing. If you also had a Limitless account, its Data Exports tab covers transcripts, chats, and audio (Limitless instructions); smaller date ranges export more reliably than everything at once. Cancel any subscription at the source: Stripe customers use the customer-portal link in their email, Apple subscribers go to Settings → Subscriptions → Limitless. Deleting the account does not cancel an Apple subscription.
3. Pick a tool with local storage. The whole point of migrating is to stop depending on a single vendor's cloud. Choose something that keeps data on your machine.
4. Install your replacement and grant capture permissions. Download LUCI and enable capture for meetings and the screen activity you want remembered. You stay in control of what is recorded.
5. Rebuild memory going forward. Fresh capture starts immediately, so your searchable timeline begins refilling from day one.
6. Connect the agent Rewind never had. Point Claude, Cursor, or Codex at your LUCI memory and it can draft the recap or prep you for the next call from the real record, not from search results you paste in.

Frequently asked questions

Is Rewind AI really gone for good?

Yes. Meta acquired the parent company (Limitless AI) in December 2025, and the Rewind Mac app disabled screen and audio capture on December 19, 2025. The rewind.ai domain now serves a parked-domain placeholder.

Can I still download Rewind AI?

No. There is no working installer, and the rewind.ai domain no longer serves the Mac app. An old copy of the app may still install, but it will not record anything: capture was switched off for everyone on December 19, 2025. It is not a broken download you can work around.

Can I still export or access my old Rewind data?

Partly. On a Mac that had Rewind installed, the local recordings are still in ~/Library/Application Support/com.memoryvault.MemoryVault until you delete them, so copy that folder first (see step 1 above). Transcripts and notes you exported before December 19, 2025 are portable. EU and UK users had until that date to export before permanent deletion, and the raw screen-recording archive was never designed to be moved into another tool. That is why moving to a local-first replacement matters going forward.

What is the closest on-device Rewind replacement?

For the combination of screen capture, meeting transcription, and fast search that Rewind offered, LUCI is the closest actively-shipping tool with a local-only mode — and it hands that memory to the AI agents you already run instead of locking it in its own search box.

Is Limitless a good Rewind alternative?

No. Limitless is the same company that made Rewind, now owned by Meta, with Pendant sales stopped. Migrating to it means migrating to the same shutdown.

Is there a free way to replace Rewind?

Screenpipe is source-available with a one-time license, TwinMind has a free tier, and LUCI is completely free with everything processed on-device. Compare them against your must-haves — on-device storage, screen plus meeting capture, and active development in 2026 — in the full comparison of Rewind AI alternatives.