Later - Free and Open-Source and a Security Risk
Mac Apps
Later is a Mac menu bar app that saves and restores any workspace
easily. You may want to save a workspace for several reasons:
- To save battery life by closing your open apps while transporting your laptop
- To take a break
- To work on a different project with different apps
- To take screenshots for a document
- To share your screen in a meeting
With Later you can choose to hide or close your open apps. You can
exclude system apps (Finder, System Settings, App Store, Activity
Monitor) from being affected. There are four presets for reopening your
apps (15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 5 hours) and you can manually
restore them from hiding or a closed state with the click of a button.
Later was created by developer Alyssa X who has since turned the source code and the project over the the FOSS community. You can download Later on Github. There are multiple forks of the original code.
Later triggered a Little Snitch warning by trying to connect to a web
address I did not recognize, and it requested permission to access areas
of my computer I didn't see a reason for it to access. I denied all the
requests without affecting the functionality of the app. I further
inspected the app's security features and found that it is not
notarized, and it has an ad-hoc signature. For these reasons I cannot
recommend this app.