TL; DR
- Mac Duo recreates the iPhone Duo-inspired fold and blur animation on MacBooks.
- The desktop bends, blurs and disappears as you close the lid, then returns as you open it.
- It includes five effects: Duo, Roll, Shutter, Flex and Iris.
- The app is free and open source, with support for Apple silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later.
Apple’s new iPhone Duo has introduced a rather fun way of showing the foldable display opening and closing. As the device moves, the interface bends and progressively blurs around the hinge before disappearing completely. Now, developers are starting to recreate that idea elsewhere. Dhananjay Tech has built Mac Duo, an open-source macOS app that brings a similar effect to MacBooks.
Mac Duo uses the MacBook’s lid angle to animate the desktop. As you close the lid, the desktop bends toward the hinge, becomes progressively softer and eventually disappears. Opening the lid reverses the animation and brings the desktop back into focus.
The effect responds continuously to the lid movement, so changing direction also reverses the animation. Users can pause the lid at any angle, and after a configurable 1-5 second delay, the desktop and live preview return to their normal state.
The app also stops rendering settled previews and reuses blur data, with refresh limits that adjust based on power and temperature. Dhananjay Tech says desktop frames remain in memory on the Mac, with no uploads, recordings, accounts or analytics.
Mac Duo also includes four additional effects: Roll, which makes the desktop curl toward the hinge; Shutter, which splits it into four sliding panels; Flex, which bends the display inward; and Iris, which uses overlapping blades to mimic a closing camera aperture.
The app is built with Swift and Metal and keeps desktop frames locally in memory, with no uploads, recordings, accounts or analytics. It is available for free on GitHub under an MIT license and requires a compatible MacBook lid sensor.
Check it out here: Mac Duo
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