Nameplate

Nameplate is a small utility app for macOS, Windows, and Linux that solves a specific annoyance for anyone who remotely controls several computers: the screens all look identical once you connect, so it is easy to lose track of which machine you are actually on. Nameplate labels each computer visually, drawing a colored frame around the edge of the screen, a small name tag pinned to a corner, and an optional large translucent watermark across the display, all rendered as overlays that sit on top of everything else without changing the wallpaper underneath or taking up any usable screen space.

When a remote session appears to have just started, the machine's identity briefly animates into focus with a traced border and nameplate before fading away. A version of the label also lives in the menu bar, and clicking it opens a small dashboard showing uptime, IP address, CPU load, memory, and free disk space, alongside toggles for each visual layer. Every machine gets a default color automatically derived from its hostname, so even a fleet with no manual configuration is still visually distinguishable.

A separate feature, called attention alerts, lets scripts or AI agents pop up a prominent, hard-to-miss message card with pulsing screen borders when they need a human to step in, for example right before a password manager prompt appears. This is delivered through a bundled command-line tool, and the project even ships a ready-made skill file so AI coding agents can use it directly. Configuration for an entire fleet of machines can be centralized in one shared JSON file, keyed by hostname, so settings like name, color, and location sync automatically wherever that file is placed.

Installation differs by platform: a downloadable disk image or Homebrew cask on macOS, a single self-contained executable on Windows, and a Homebrew formula or tarball on Linux (which needs the GTK4 runtime and works best on X11-based remote setups). Building the macOS app from source requires Xcode and Swift. The project is written in Swift for its core, released under the MIT license, and made by a solo developer.