schlonk-pad

macOS GUI for grabbing videos from social media posts. Includes fast-start upload flow button for other sites, and video can be dragged into posts or any local filesystem location. Native Swift app wrapping yt-dlp for the download.

A social-media post pasted into schlonk-pad, downloaded, then dragged into an MS Teams chat. The recipient gets the video file directly — no sign-up, no need to visit the source platform. Source video: @effinbirds.com on Bluesky.

Sister project to schlonk (the CLI). They share the name, not the engine.

Installation

Stable:

brew install --cask crux/tap/schlonk-pad

Dev channel (latest builds from main, may be unstable):

brew install --cask crux/tap/schlonk-pad-dev

Both versions co-install; dev installs as SchlonkPad Dev.app. The cask strips the Gatekeeper quarantine attribute on install — no manual right-click-and-Open dance required, no Apple notarization in the path. (See Why the warning? below for the rationale.)

Upgrade: brew upgrade --cask schlonk-pad. Uninstall: brew uninstall --cask schlonk-pad.

Manual install (no Homebrew)

Brew is the recommended path because it handles the quarantine strip and auto-updates. If you don't use Homebrew, the same DMGs are also published on the GitHub releases page:

1. Download the latest SchlonkPad-x.y.z.dmg (stable) or SchlonkPad-dev-yyyy.mm.dd.n.dmg (dev).
2. Open the DMG, drag the app into /Applications.
3. First launch will be blocked by Gatekeeper — see below.

Why the warning?

When you first launch a manually-installed copy, macOS shows "schlonk-pad can't be opened, the developer cannot be verified". That's Apple's Gatekeeper. This project deliberately doesn't go through Apple's notarization flow — notarization means submitting every build to Apple for review-and-stapling before it can launch cleanly, which would put Apple in the role of gatekeeper for an open-source tool that they don't need to be in.

Two ways past the dialog:

• One-time bypass: right-click the app in Finder → Open → confirm in the dialog. macOS remembers; subsequent launches just work.

• Strip the quarantine attribute (the same thing the Homebrew cask does automatically):

  xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Applications/SchlonkPad.app
  

The Homebrew cask runs that xattr line in its postflight hook on every install/upgrade, which is why brew users never see the warning. Manual install is fine if you'd rather skip the terminal route — you just do step 3 once per install.

Use

Paste a URL into the field and press Enter, or drop a URL onto the window. When the download completes, drag the thumbnail anywhere to copy the file out, or click a "Post to" button to open the target platform's compose URL in your browser — keep the schlonk-pad window visible so you can drag the file into the open composer.

Files land in ~/Downloads/schlonk-pad/.

Local development

Prerequisites: macOS 13+, Xcode.

make deps                   # fetch yt-dlp into deps/
make build                  # debug build
make run                    # build + launch
make build-release          # release-config build, no packaging
make dist VERSION=x.y.z     # release build + DMG (local validation before tagging)
make clean
make icon                   # re-render iconset from assets/icon-1024.png

build/ and .git/ are symlinked to ~/.nosync/projects/schlonk-pad/ to keep build artifacts and git internals off cloud-synced filesystems.

Releases

Two channels:

Channel	Tagged version	Trigger	Cask
Stable	vX.Y.Z (suggested: v0.YYYYMMDD.N)	push of a v* tag	Casks/schlonk-pad.rb
Dev	YYYY.MM.DD.runNumber (auto)	every push to main	Casks/schlonk-pad-dev.rb

Make targets that drive them:

make release-dev                    # push main → dev release
make release VERSION=v0.20260510.0  # tag + push tag → stable release
make tag VERSION=v0.20260510.0      # local tag only, no push

CI (in .github/workflows/{release,release-dev}.yml) builds the .app, patches CFBundleShortVersionString to the version string and CFBundleVersion to the GitHub Actions run_number, packages a DMG, attaches it to a GitHub release, and pushes a fresh cask file into the crux/homebrew-tap repo. Users get the new build via brew upgrade --cask schlonk-pad[-dev].

Known limitations

• ffmpeg not bundled yet — sites that need post-processing (YouTube videos requiring separate video+audio stream merging, etc.) may produce lower quality or fail. Follow-up.
• App Sandbox disabled — schlonk-pad has full file system + network access. Trade-off for skipping the Mac App Store sandbox dance.
• Re-share is open-composer + manual drag — web composers don't accept media via URL parameters, so the flow is "open the compose URL in your browser, drag the file from schlonk-pad into it."

License

MIT.