Keeping your neck and head correctly positioned when using computers is no easy feat. Poorly designed desks, subpar office chairs, and even a personal history of disregarding spinal health will count against you. This macOS app, however, may help you achieve a better posture almost naturally. You’ve read that right!
AirPosture Detects Head Movements With Your AirPods
AirPosture was created by Japanese developer and professor Atsushi Omata. It works by reminding you to keep your head and neck straight when using your Mac, and that’s it.
The “magic” behind AirPosture is called HeadTracker. This open-source app detects head positioning from compatible AirPods models, which allows for a number of movement-based features.
Apple itself pioneered this approach. In September 2024, the company updated compatible AirPods models to support Siri interaction via head movements. You can, e.g., nod to accept an incoming call, or shake your head to refuse it.
A macOS App to Help With Bad Posture
AirPosture uses that same technology to detect your head’s pitch: whether you’re keeping it straight, tilting forward, or leaning backward. It also checks for rolling/tilting and yawing, to make sure you’re looking straight up ahead as much as possible.
This data is gathered as a “posture score”, detected by the app through the AirPods and displayed in macOS. The longer you spend with your head poorly positioned, the worse your score will be. There’s even a graph showing how you’re doing at any given moment, so you can correct yourself in real-time.
AirPosture in macOS: Installation and Usage
Right now, you can’t download a compiled version of the app. You’ll need to clone the AirPosture GitHub repository and build it yourself. As the developer puts it, it’s still in alpha stage, but a more polished version should be available soon.
It’s important to mention that AirPosture is a free and open-source app. Therefore, there’s no subscription, one-time purchase, or paywalled premium features to worry about.