GlowPulse measures your heart rate from your Mac's built-in camera using rPPG – no watch, no chest strap, no wearable. Lives in the menu bar with live BPM, sparkline, and color-coded zones. 100% on-device. Camera frames are processed in memory and discarded. No cloud, no account, no telemetry. Pomodoro focus with live HR chart. Breathing sessions with real-time HRV. 30-second stress check. $2.99 once. macOS 13+.
Hey Product Hunt! Vlad here, indie dev behind GlowPulse 🩷
A year ago I noticed I was strapping an Apple Watch on every morning mostly to see my heart rate during work – to know when stress was climbing before I burned out. Then I’d take it off at night, lose it, forget to charge it. The whole wearable dance for one number.
Meanwhile my Mac has a camera staring at me all day.
Turns out there’s a whole research field called rPPG (remote photoplethysmography) that extracts heart rate from microscopic color changes in your skin caused by blood flow. Apple Watch does this with green LEDs on your wrist. A webcam can do it from across the screen.
So I built it. Started with a Python prototype using the POS algorithm (Wang et al. 2017), then rewrote it in Swift with Vision face landmarks and Accelerate FFT. Added an optional DeepPhys CoreML backend for ML-driven extraction. Benchmarked it against my Apple Watch – within ±3 BPM while stationary.
What ended up shipping is more than I expected:
• Live BPM in the menu bar with a sparkline
• Focus sessions (Pomodoro with HR charts – see stress climb during deep work, not after)
• Breathing sessions with live HRV at 0.1 Hz coherent breathing
• 30-second stress checks against your personal baseline
Privacy was non-negotiable from day one: every camera frame is processed in memory and discarded. No cloud, no account, no telemetry. The entitlement list is literally just “camera.”
$2.99 once, lifetime updates. 7-day free trial on the direct download.
Wildly open to feedback – it’s v1.0 and there’s still a lot to improve. AMA!
Neat piece of software but does not track very well and show high drift compared to my Garmin Fenix 7 ( M4 Pro 16" mbp, Avaya HC020 camera) - will revisit in a few months. Would be nice to add a posture tracker, breathing tracker)
This is a really novel idea, did you cross-validate this with another type of HR sensor, such as your Apple watch or an over-chest wearable?
That is so cool honestly!
Do you have another way to measure your heart rate? Did you see any difference between the camera and your sensor?
About GlowPulse on Product Hunt
“Your Mac's camera is now a heart-rate sensor”
GlowPulse launched on Product Hunt on June 2nd, 2026 and earned 93 upvotes and 14 comments, placing #14 on the daily leaderboard. GlowPulse measures your heart rate from your Mac's built-in camera using rPPG – no watch, no chest strap, no wearable. Lives in the menu bar with live BPM, sparkline, and color-coded zones. 100% on-device. Camera frames are processed in memory and discarded. No cloud, no account, no telemetry. Pomodoro focus with live HR chart. Breathing sessions with real-time HRV. 30-second stress check. $2.99 once. macOS 13+.
GlowPulse was featured in Health & Fitness (82.7k followers), Productivity (652.9k followers) and Menu Bar Apps (12.2k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 165.5k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted GlowPulse?
GlowPulse was hunted by Vladislav Zhuzha. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how GlowPulse stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
Vladislav Zhuzha
Hey Product Hunt! Vlad here, indie dev behind GlowPulse 🩷
A year ago I noticed I was strapping an Apple Watch on every morning mostly to see my heart rate during work – to know when stress was climbing before I burned out. Then I’d take it off at night, lose it, forget to charge it. The whole wearable dance for one number.
Meanwhile my Mac has a camera staring at me all day.
Turns out there’s a whole research field called rPPG (remote photoplethysmography) that extracts heart rate from microscopic color changes in your skin caused by blood flow. Apple Watch does this with green LEDs on your wrist. A webcam can do it from across the screen.
So I built it. Started with a Python prototype using the POS algorithm (Wang et al. 2017), then rewrote it in Swift with Vision face landmarks and Accelerate FFT. Added an optional DeepPhys CoreML backend for ML-driven extraction. Benchmarked it against my Apple Watch – within ±3 BPM while stationary.
What ended up shipping is more than I expected:
• Live BPM in the menu bar with a sparkline
• Focus sessions (Pomodoro with HR charts – see stress climb during deep work, not after)
• Breathing sessions with live HRV at 0.1 Hz coherent breathing
• 30-second stress checks against your personal baseline
Privacy was non-negotiable from day one: every camera frame is processed in memory and discarded. No cloud, no account, no telemetry. The entitlement list is literally just “camera.”
$2.99 once, lifetime updates. 7-day free trial on the direct download.
Wildly open to feedback – it’s v1.0 and there’s still a lot to improve. AMA!