FeyNoBg — Open-Source Background Removal at SOTA Level
Feyn released FeyNoBg, an open-source background removal model that matches or surpasses existing leaders across eight benchmarks. Alongside the model, they also open-sourced NoBg, the training library used to build it. You can try it directly on HuggingFace without local setup.
Background removal is one of those tasks that everyone needs occasionally — product photos, video call avatars, social media posts — but good open-source options are limited. FeyNoBg stands out by open-sourcing not just the model weights but also the training code, which is especially useful for teams needing custom solutions for specific image categories.
ViewKit — Dataset Viewer in Your Browser
ViewKit is a browser-based interactive dataset viewer supporting HDF5, Parquet, CSV, Arrow, and more formats. The best part: you never need to upload files to a server — all processing happens locally in your browser.
Anyone working with ML knows the pain: you get an HDF5 file, don't have a viewer installed, and need to hunt down tools just to peek at the data. ViewKit solves this cleanly — drag and drop, and you're looking at your data. Great for privacy-sensitive datasets too.
Yap — On-Device Voice Dictation for macOS
Yap is a macOS menu-bar app that uses Apple's Speech framework for entirely local speech-to-text. No model downloads, no internet connection, no API keys needed. Press a hotkey to start dictating, press again and the text is pasted into your current input field.
Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer and SpeechTranscriber APIs in macOS 26 reportedly beat Whisper Small on accuracy while running three times faster. Yap taps directly into these native APIs — clean, minimal, MIT licensed. If you need dictation on macOS and prefer keeping everything local, this is a lightweight option worth trying.