Built-in looks
CRT, Phosphor Terminal, Chromatic Aberration, Black & White TV, Game Boy, Dot Matrix, Vector Phosphor, and ASCII Art ship in the picker. Finally, your expensive capture card can cosplay as questionable hardware.
Target Display · macOS USB capture monitor
your capture card
deserves better.
Target Display is a native Mac viewer for USB capture devices: low-latency Metal rendering, runtime Metal display effects, exact resolution and FPS selection, audio preview, screenshots, recording, OCR, PiP, Shortcuts, MCP automation, and TargetDongle input control.
It mostly tries to be invisible: show the target, get out of the way, and stop wrapping your video feed in chrome like a hostage note.
capture · crop · effect · record · automate · control
// the monitor app got ideas
what it is.
NOT A STREAMING STUDIO
A sharp little window into whatever your capture card is eating.
THE POINT
Plug in a USB capture device, pick the exact mode you want, and use the target system in a clean Mac window. Game consoles, test benches, tiny PCs, weird HDMI gadgets—bring your own questionable hardware.
Under the hood it is doing far more than a preview window should have any business doing. We regret nothing, except maybe the amount of menu code.
// finally, legally distinct nostalgia
display effects.
NOW WITH GPU-BASED VIBES
CRT scanlines, Old TV, phosphor glow, and enough knobs to make a normal person leave.
NOT JUST A FILTER MENU
Target Display can run full-screen Metal post-process effects on the live capture view. The effect system is runtime compiled, parameterized, preset-friendly, and built around single-file .tdfx packages you can import, export, edit, and share.
Effects are display-only: screenshots and .mov recordings stay clean. The target sees reality. You get the haunted television version, because you asked nicely.
CRT
Old TV
Game Boy
.tdfx
// tiny shader goblin library
what ships.
ShaderToy ports
Old TV, Pixelate, and Dithered are adapted from single-pass ShaderToy shaders, with attribution and original licensing carried along instead of buried in a basement.
Importable .tdfx
An effect is one JSON file: metadata, Metal source, sliders, and presets. Drop it in the Effects folder or use Import Effect. Congratulations, you are now one text editor away from GPU crimes.
Shader authoring
Write a single Metal fragment function named effectMain. The app provides resolution, video bounds, time, and up to 24 parameters. Multi-pass feedback shaders can remain in ShaderToy jail.
// yes, there is a lot in here
what it does.
Low-latency Metal rendering
Native rendering with frame coalescing, MetalFX options, sharpening, color-aware output, and the display-effect post-process pass. The pixels arrive, the pixels get shown, then optionally get weird.
Exact capture modes
Select the capture device, resolution, FPS, color behavior, and audio path. It restores devices by stable identifier after relaunch or reconnect, because USB enjoys being dramatic.
Screenshots, OCR, and recording
Grab frames, record video, crop to the interesting bit, and run local Apple Vision OCR when the target is full of tiny text and poor decisions.
Picture-in-Picture
Keep the capture feed floating while you work elsewhere. Useful for installs, firmware updates, and other activities best described as “waiting, but anxiously.”
Shortcuts automation
Automate status checks, frame capture, OCR, timed text logging, timed video capture, device selection, diagnostics, and emergency input release through macOS Shortcuts.
MCP for AI tools
The direct-download build includes a local MCP bridge so AI clients can observe the capture feed, OCR it, wait for changes, and—if you explicitly allow it—control the target.
TargetDongle control
With TargetDongle, Target Display can forward keyboard and mouse input to the captured machine over BLE as plain USB HID. No network séance required.
Diagnostics when it gets weird
Capture devices lie, disappear, reappear, and occasionally pretend 4K means whatever they feel like today. Target Display keeps diagnostics close by for the inevitable nonsense.
// availability, not mythology
release status.
Download coming here
The public direct-download build is not staged on this site yet. When it is, this page gets the big shiny button. For now, enjoy the brochure. Very high-end brochure.
Bring a capture card
Target Display views USB capture devices. HDMI cable goes into the capture hardware, capture hardware goes into the Mac, software tries not to be the problem.
Permissions are normal
Camera permission is required for capture. Microphone permission is optional for audio. Bluetooth is only for TargetDongle control.
// pulled live from the appcast, eventually