Native planetary imaging capture for macOS and Apple Silicon
Laminar is the first planetary imaging capture app built natively for macOS. Record high-framerate SER video of Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon, and the Sun through your telescope with real-time frame quality analysis, atmospheric seeing scores, and automatic target tracking. Built in Swift with Metal GPU acceleration for Apple Silicon. Supports ZWO ASI and PlayerOne cameras. Free to download with an optional one-time Pro upgrade. A native Mac alternative to FireCapture and SharpCap.
Hey Product Hunt! I'm Andrew, a designer who taught himself Swift to solve a problem that's bugged me for years: there's no good native Mac app for planetary astrophotography.
Planetary imaging is a specific workflow -- you record thousands of video frames through a telescope, then stack the sharpest ones to cut through atmospheric turbulence. On Windows there are solid capture tools (FireCapture, SharpCap). On Mac, your options have been Wine wrappers or nothing.
Laminar is my answer to that. It's a native Swift/SwiftUI app that handles the capture side with a few things the Windows tools don't offer: a live frame quality graph so you can confirm focus while you're still at the telescope, atmospheric seeing scores before you set up, and automatic planet tracking that follows your target frame-by-frame.
This is a 1.0 -- I've kept the scope tight on purpose. No filter wheel or mount control yet. I'd rather get capture right first.
I'm also building a companion stacking app called Strata (currently in beta) so the full pipeline can stay on Mac.
Free to download, one-time $34.99 Pro upgrade for the advanced features. No subscription.
Happy to answer any questions about the app or the dev journey -- this was my first Mac app and building it with Claude Code has been quite an experience.
About Laminar on Product Hunt
“Native planetary imaging capture for macOS and Apple Silicon”
Laminar launched on Product Hunt on April 7th, 2026 and earned 75 upvotes and 5 comments, placing #40 on the daily leaderboard. Laminar is the first planetary imaging capture app built natively for macOS. Record high-framerate SER video of Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon, and the Sun through your telescope with real-time frame quality analysis, atmospheric seeing scores, and automatic target tracking. Built in Swift with Metal GPU acceleration for Apple Silicon. Supports ZWO ASI and PlayerOne cameras. Free to download with an optional one-time Pro upgrade. A native Mac alternative to FireCapture and SharpCap.
On the analytics side, Laminar competes within Mac, Photography and Science — topics that collectively have 247.5k followers on Product Hunt. The dashboard above tracks how Laminar performed against the three products that launched closest to it on the same day.
Who hunted Laminar?
Laminar was hunted by Andrew Burwell. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
For a complete overview of Laminar including community comment highlights and product details, visit the product overview.
Andrew Burwell