Guardigan logoGuardigan

A free NVR for macOS

Security footage that only you can see.

Guardigan records your security cameras and understands what's happening, entirely on your Mac.

Download for macOS See what it does

Requires an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 12 or later.

Bring your own cameras

Guardigan speaks RTSP, the protocol most IP cameras already use. Even a $40 camera works.

Finds people, cars, and animals

Package gone missing? See who came to the door in seconds instead of fast-forwarding through the day.

Nothing to sign up for

No account, no email. We never learn who you are.

No internet required

When your internet goes down, every camera keeps recording.

It won't fill up your Mac

You decide how much space it gets. When that's full, the oldest footage goes first.

View from anywhere Coming

Check on your home from your phone. End-to-end encrypted, and footage still lives only on your Mac.

The deal

Guardigan is free. Everything it does today stays free, and no feature will ever move behind a paywall. Eventually we'll sell optional cloud extras, like remote viewing and off-site backup. That will pay for the servers and keep the lights on.

Questions

Will it work with my camera?
Guardigan needs an RTSP stream. Most IP cameras produce one; Ring, Nest, Blink, and recent Wyze don't. See the cameras we run.
Does my Mac need to stay on?
Yes. Guardigan keeps your Mac awake while it runs, but the screen can still sleep. Closing a MacBook's lid overrides that. An always-on Mac mini is ideal.
Will it slow down my Mac?
No. We run nine cameras on an M1 MacBook Pro. That uses less than one CPU core and about a quarter of the GPU, even with motion on several at once.
Does anything leave my Mac?
Only an update check, once a day, and that goes to GitHub, not to us. There are no analytics. Turn automatic updates off in Settings → General and Guardigan is fully offline. Either way, your footage never leaves your Mac.
Is it open source?
No. You can still verify what it does: with automatic updates off, a tool like Little Snitch will show Guardigan talking to nothing but your cameras. And recordings are ordinary files on your own disk. Matroska video, SQLite metadata. They play in VLC.

Get Guardigan

Free. Requires an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 12 or later.

Download for macOS