Home security + room sensing · on the Mac you already own
An intrusion in an armed house, a fall in the bedroom, someone home who shouldn't be — Vigil senses it and alerts your phone, with no camera required. Everything it senses stays on your Mac. Nobody in this house is on camera.
$0.83/day · no contract · no monitoring center · cancel from your account
The real app, in its built-in sample mode. Yours starts empty and fills with your rooms.
Vigil doesn't. It reads presence from sound, signal, and — only if you choose — a lens. Inaudible sonar hears motion and breathing. Optional nodes sense through walls. The feed that never exists can't be leaked, subpoenaed, or streamed to a stranger's screen.
The Mac on your desk has a speaker, a mic, a camera and a WiFi radio — a sensing platform you don't have to buy. Vigil switches it on: 18–22 kHz sonar in the room it sits in, on-device body pose if you grant the camera, and command of the smart devices already on your network.
Discovery, control, scenes, arming, sensing — all of it runs on your LAN. Cut the internet and the house keeps working. There is no vendor cloud in the path, no account inside the app, and your raw sensing has nowhere to be uploaded to — we didn't build a server for it.
The sense layer
No lenses. Nodes on the walls, sensing lines converging on a moving presence, room by room. Drag to look around — this one is simulated; yours is built from your rooms and your nodes.
Live — your machine
Read live from the browser you're using right now. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, no permission is asked — this is the same information any website can see. Vigil's answer to "will it work on my machine," before it asks for money.
Reading your machine… If this doesn't fill in, your browser is blocking it — which is fine, and tells you something good about your browser. Vigil's requirements are simply: a Mac on macOS 14 or later, Intel or Apple Silicon.
What this can't tell you: a web page cannot read your macOS version, your microphone quality, or your WiFi chipset — treat this as an indication, not a guarantee. Vigil itself checks properly on first launch, explains every permission before asking, and works without the ones you decline.
Capabilities
Two things that usually need separate apps and a cloud account — smart-home control and room sensing — fused into one on-device hub. Presence surfaces only when a real signal passes its gate, and that presence drives your lights, your climate, and your security mode.
01 · DISCOVER & CONTROL
Open Vigil and it scans your network — HomeKit, Matter, Google Cast, AirPlay, Hue, WLED, cameras, plugs — and labels every tile honestly: controllable, pairing-required, or read-only. Open-API devices are driven directly over local HTTP. An empty network shows an honest "no devices found," never a stage-set of fake gear. Then rooms, favorites, and one-tap scenes: "Good Night" sets the whole house at once.
02 · AUTOMATIONS
A testable engine chains triggers → conditions → actions: time, sunrise/sunset, device state, geofence — and confirmed presence from sensing as a first-class input. PIR sensors blind out the moment you sit still; Vigil's rooms stay lit while a real signal says someone is in them.
03 · ROOM SENSING
Grant the mic and your Mac runs inaudible 18–22 kHz sonar — motion and breathing in the room it sits in. Grant the camera and Apple Vision reads a 17-joint body pose (2D, labeled that way on screen) plus on-device heart rate. Vitals are accurate-or-nothing: a marginal reading shows "—", never a made-up number.
04 · THROUGH-WALL
A compatible ESP32 node streams WiFi channel-state into Vigil's built-in reader for through-wall pose, presence, range and vitals — behind the same gates as everything else. No board yet? The bundled simulator replays a real capture through the same pipeline, marked synthetic end to end.
05 · SECURITY & LOG
Home / Away / Night / Off. Armed modes treat confirmed presence in a house that should be empty as an intrusion — a logged alert plus a macOS notification, run by a clean state machine. Every device change, presence event, scene and alert lands in a local, exportable activity log. No false "armed" theater, no fabricated history.
06 · AWAY ALERTS
Self-monitored: no monitoring center, no dispatch, no fee. An intrusion or a gated fall POSTs to an endpoint you control — a free ntfy topic, an Apple Shortcuts or Pushover webhook, any HTTPS endpoint. One tap sends a real test alert, and the app only shows "reached" on a genuine delivery.
For the technical buyer: Bonjour/mDNS (_hap · _matter · _googlecast · _airplay) + SSDP/UPnP discovery · 18–22 kHz acoustic sonar · Apple Vision 17-joint pose (2D) · rPPG heart rate, confidence-gated · WiFi CSI reader on udp:5005 · ESP32 S3 / C6 / WROOM · local HTTP device control · activity log in ~/Library/Application Support/Homefront/
The sensor line
Vigil's planned own-brand presence radios — compatible ESP32 boards running the included firmware path. $25 one-time each, no subscription, and any node can be assigned to presence, security, or vitals duty in-app when compatible hardware is online. The Mac app stands alone without them.
One per room when installed. Reports occupied or empty, so lights and climate follow confirmed presence — the everyday building block of whole-home coverage.
Hardware-gated through-wall intrusion detection that arms with Away mode — no camera in the room. Confirmed presence in an empty, armed house raises a logged, notified alert.
Best-effort breathing and heart presence plus no-motion / fall alerts — the eldercare and bedroom tier, with no lens where it doesn't belong.
Onboarding guides flashing the bundled firmware, joining WiFi, and streaming to your Mac. Don't have a board? The bundled CSI simulator shows you the through-wall view first — real pipeline, clearly marked synthetic.
A day with Vigil
Vigil scans the LAN, lists the real devices it finds, and explains each permission before asking — none are required to start. It ships empty: everything on screen is your actual home.
Sonar — and node presence, when installed — confirms you're awake in the bedroom. The lights lift, the thermostat nudges. No wave-your-arms-at-the-ceiling motion sensor.
Empty rooms drop their lights. The room you're in stays lit while confirmed presence remains true — and only then.
You set Away. From that moment, confirmed presence anywhere in the house is an intrusion.
A node, when installed and streaming valid frames, senses presence through a wall in a house that should be empty → a logged alert, a macOS notification, and a push to your phone via your own webhook.
Night mode arms quiet zones. A bedroom node watches for breathing and no-motion / fall conditions — alerts that never depend on a fabricated vital.
The activity log shows who/what/when for every event — stored locally, exportable, never uploaded.
Why not a cloud hub?
An account, an internet dependency, and motion-only sensors that go blind the moment you sit still. Vigil keeps the brains on your Mac and reads actual presence.
Who it's for
The privacy-first owner
You're done renting your home's data to a platform. Discovery, control and sensing stay on your LAN — the app has no sign-in and never calls a server of ours. The only account is the website one your subscription runs through; it holds your email and your entitlement, and nothing from inside your home.
A smart home that answers to no one but you.
The sensor-fatigued tinkerer
You've wired up motion and door sensors and they still miss a still person and run out of battery. Nodes report through-wall presence when installed and streaming valid frames.
Occupancy from confirmed signals, with fewer devices to babysit.
The eldercare household
You want fall and no-motion alerts for an aging parent without putting a lens where it doesn't belong. The node route is the hardware-gated path for breathing, stillness, and no-motion signals.
Dignified, no-camera monitoring with honest, gated vitals.
The Mac household
There's a Mac on the desk already. Its mic, camera and WiFi radio are a sensing platform you don't have to buy.
Real room sensing from the machine on your desk.
Pricing
The subscription is a license, not a cloud dependency — the app runs entirely on your Mac. Nodes are optional, one-time, and exist to extend sensing through walls.
Before you subscribe — the renewal terms
Vigil for macOS is a recurring subscription. It bills $25 (USD) today and $25 every month after, on the same day each month, automatically, until you cancel. There is no free trial and no minimum term. You can cancel at any time from your account or by replying to any Vigil email — cancellation takes effect at the end of the month you have already paid for, and you keep access until then. Prices are exclusive of any tax charged at checkout.
Before you pre-order a node — read this
The Vigil sensor nodes do not exist yet. The reader software is built and tested and the node firmware is written and validated in simulation, but the physical nodes have not been manufactured, and we cannot give you a shipping date. A pre-order charges your card now and reserves a unit from the first manufacturing run. Because we cannot promise shipment within 30 days, you are entitled to — and we commit to — a full, no-questions refund on request at any time before your node ships. Ask by replying to your receipt and the refund is issued to your original payment method. If we ever conclude the line will not be manufactured, we refund every outstanding pre-order without being asked. Buying a node is not required: the Mac app and its own sensing stand alone.
Questions before you subscribe? See support. All payment runs through Stripe checkout; the app never handles payment. macOS 14+ · Intel or Apple Silicon · Developer ID, notarized — then sign in, drag to Applications, right-click → Open once.
Guides
Questions
No. Discovery, device control, scenes, automations and all native sensing run on your Mac and your LAN. The $25/mo subscription is a license billed through the storefront — it is not a cloud dependency: your raw sensing never leaves your Mac and the core works with the internet completely off.
The Mac's speaker + mic run acoustic sonar (motion + breathing in that room), and the camera runs a 17-joint body pose (2D, labeled that way on screen) plus on-device heart rate. That's room sensing using the Mac hardware you already own. Through-wall, whole-home coverage requires compatible ESP32 nodes; the bundled simulator exercises that CSI pipeline before hardware arrives.
It's accurate-or-nothing. Every vitals path must pass a confidence/SNR gate — a clear periodic peak in the cardiac band, sufficient signal over noise, and stability across a window — before a number is shown. Fail the gate and you see "—", never a marginal or interpolated value. These readings are best-effort and are not a medical device.
No. The app and its native Mac sensing stand alone. The Vigil nodes are a one-time purchase (no subscription) for whole-home, through-wall coverage. You can also try the through-wall view first via the bundled simulator, which streams a recorded capture into the real CSI pipeline.
It discovers what's on your network over Bonjour/mDNS and SSDP and labels each one honestly. Open-API devices (WLED, generic HTTP on/off) are controlled directly. HomeKit / Matter / Cast devices are tracked for status and drive automations; some require pairing in their own hub, and Vigil marks those "pairing required" rather than pretending to control them.
A Mac on macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. The app is a universal binary — it runs natively on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, and every sensing surface is available on either. Camera, microphone and local-network permissions unlock the matching sensing surfaces — each denial is explained in-app with the exact System Settings path to fix it. Optional sensor-node coverage requires compatible ESP32 boards (S3 / C6 / WROOM) running the bundled firmware.
Vigil is built by a small independent software company. Purchases run through Stripe; your download and account live behind your sign-in; the app itself never phones home.
Right now. Subscribe ($25/mo, cancel anytime), sign in, and download the notarized macOS app. The sensor line is still pre-order / notify — email us and we'll reach out as hardware ships.
Get told when the sensor line ships and when a new build lands. Product updates only — no daily mail, no list sharing, unsubscribe in one click.
Smart-home control, Mac-native sensing, optional through-wall nodes — and not one byte of your home's life on someone else's server. $25/mo, cancel anytime.