My latest project: Rewire Text - system-wide text transforms
After launching my course last month, I planned to take a bit of a break. But who was I kidding? Instead, I finished another project I’d been working on for a few months, on and off: Rewire Text.
Rewire Text is a Windows and macOS tool that transforms text in any app at the press of a hotkey. It sits in the menu bar / system tray until needed. Deterministic transforms (case changes, whitespace cleanup, Markdown fixes, encoding, etc.) instantly run on your machine. AI based transforms (style and tone rewrites, proofreading, bullets, summarization, translation, custom, etc.) either use a remote AI API (Gemini, Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, or OpenAI compatible APIs) with your own key (BYOK) or a local AI model via LM Studio, Ollama, or Llama.cpp.
The reason I built this as a single-purchase ($29; one license runs on two devices) desktop app with BYOK is mainly because of subscription fatigue. I realize subscriptions make sense for most SaaS apps - including those generated by my daily AI pipeline. But when it comes to desktop apps, I want to own them, not rent them. That’s one of many reasons I stay away from Adobe’s apps, for example. And with BYOK, you only pay for your actual usage (a free Gemini key or OpenRouter free model might even be sufficient for you - or a local model like Gemma 4).
Building Rewire Text as a cross-platform app was also important to me, as I go back and forth between Windows and macOS throughout the day and want to use a consistent set of tools and workflows. Most existing text transform tools I found only support one platform.
I use Flutter as a cross-platform framework and have been very happy with this choice; Flutter for desktop has come a long way, and Claude Code is very proficient with it. I may even release a Linux, ChromeOS, or mobile version in the future, if there’s demand.
On the business side, not earning recurring revenue might not seem like a smart move, but that’s ok. I plan to make up for this by growing this into a suite of apps (Rewire Image is the next one I have planned). I may also charge for major new versions (think every few years), but old versions will continue to work.
You can download the Rewire Text fully functional 7-day trial below. After the trial period, a small core set of transforms continues to function indefinitely, and the $29 single purchase unlocks everything on up to two devices.
https://sunsetmesasoftware.com/rewire-text/
If you want to read more about my philosophy around single-purchase, BYOK, and cross-platform, you can also check out this page:
https://sunsetmesasoftware.com/why/
Would love to hear your feedback if you have a chance to try it out. I’m very much open to ideas and feature requests. Even better: If you like it, tell your friends. 🙂
-Mirko
