I build a strace clone for macOS
Details
- External ID
- 45954517
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- I build a strace clone for macOS
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- Nov. 17, 2025
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 8
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.4421397379912664
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
Ever since I tested software on macOS, I deeply missed my beloved strace that I use when programs are missbehaving. macOS has dtruss but it's getting locked down and more unusable with every machine. My approach uses the signed lldb binary on the system and re-implements the output you are know from the wonderful strace tool. I just created the tool yesterday evening, so it may have a few bugs, but I already got quiet a few integration tests and I am happy so far with it.
Enrichment
- Theme
- lightweight and on-device AI runtimes
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- strace alternative for macos
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No Intercepting system calls on macOS without DTrace requires low-level Mach kernel primitives, LLDB C++ API bindings, and deep understanding of Darwin OS internals.
What it would actually take: Building a macOS syscall tracer requires driving the LLDB framework or using Mach debugging APIs (`task_for_pid`, `mach_vm_read`, and breakpoint traps) to intercept registers upon entering syscall instructions across Apple Silicon and Intel ABIs. The challenge is circumventing System Integrity Protection (SIP) restrictions and mapping Apple's dynamic syscall tables and pointer authentications (PAC). It demands deep expertise in macOS kernel architecture, binary instrumentation, and reverse engineering.
Discussion
No comments on this launch.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 99 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #59 of 100 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 16 days after the earliest competitor.
- 1VM · ph · 2026-09-23 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- I wrote a macOS C++ audio driver to fix HDMI volume controls · hn · 2026-03-18 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.39
- A terminal glued to the macOS dock · hn · 2026-08-06 · 55 upvotes · similarity 0.38
- apple-silicon-printer-drivers · github · 2026-09-19 · 15 upvotes · similarity 0.38
- Persistent Jupyter kernel execution and live output streaming in VSCode · hn · 2026-09-09 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- macuda · github · 2026-09-16 · 30 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- replicaro · github · 2026-09-20 · 17 upvotes · similarity 0.36
- I built a version of Omarchy that runs on Apple Silicon · hn · 2026-09-02 · 27 upvotes · similarity 0.36
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a dev tools tool for Sales yet.