Almost every social media scheduler is a website with a monthly bill. You upload your photos to their servers, connect your accounts to their app, and pay per channel, per user or per "social set". For a team that needs shared inboxes and reports, that model makes sense. For a solo creator, a small shop or someone running a few passion accounts, it often means paying every month for a calendar.

There is another way to do it: a scheduler that runs on your own computer. This article explains what "local-first" means for social media, what you gain and give up, and how to set one up on a Mac.

What a local scheduler actually is

A local scheduler is an app on your Mac that holds your library, captions and calendar in a file on your disk, and posts by talking directly to each platform's official API at the scheduled time. There is no middleman account where your content lives.

Social Snagger works this way. It runs a small local server on your Mac and opens its window in your browser. Your library, queue, settings and logs live in your user Library folder (Application Support, Social Snagger), never on our servers. When a post is due, the app sends it straight to Instagram, Threads, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr or Bluesky.

"Your keys": what that means

To post through an API, an app needs credentials: tokens that say "this app may post to this account". With a hosted scheduler, you click "connect", sign in, and the scheduler's company holds those tokens on its servers.

With a local scheduler you hold them. In practice that means:

  • Meta (Instagram, Threads, Facebook Pages): you create a Meta developer app for your own accounts and paste its access tokens into the app. Instagram needs a professional (Business or Creator) account to publish through the API. Meta's API fetches media from a public web address, so Social Snagger uploads each file to a storage bucket you control (Cloudflare R2) just before posting.
  • Bluesky: an app password, created in Bluesky's settings. Images go up directly.
  • Tumblr: you register an app on Tumblr and use its keys.
  • Pinterest: an app with standard API access, which Pinterest grants on application.

The same applies to AI. Instead of paying for a bundled AI feature, you paste an API key from Claude, OpenAI, Gemini or OpenRouter and pay that provider directly for what you use, or you run a model on your own Mac with Ollama or LM Studio and pay nothing. See our guide to local AI captions.

This is honestly more setup than a one-click "Connect Instagram" button. It is a one-time job per account, and once it is done nothing about your posting depends on a third-party company staying in business or keeping its prices.

What you gain

  • No monthly fee. Social Snagger is free to download and pay what you want. Your only running costs are optional AI usage and storage, which for most people is very little.
  • No per-channel or per-brand pricing. Run several brands on one Mac, each with its own logins, voice, folders and calendar.
  • Privacy. Your unposted drafts, your library of saved posts and your keys never sit on someone else's server.
  • Your files stay where they are. Link folders on your Mac and the app reads them in place; nothing is copied or uploaded until a post goes out.
  • Your choice of AI, including free local models.

What you give up

Be clear-eyed about the trade-offs before you switch:

  • Your Mac has to be on. Posts go out while your Mac is awake and the app is open. Anything missed while it slept catches up when it wakes. If your laptop lives closed in a bag all day, a hosted scheduler suits you better, or keep an older Mac at home running it.
  • Mac only. There is no web dashboard and no phone app for planning. (You do get a phone side: see Telegram below.)
  • Setup. Developer apps and tokens take time, and Meta's tokens need renewing.
  • No analytics, comment inbox or team accounts. Local-first tools are built for one person or a small operation on one Mac. If you need approvals across a team or deep reporting, look at the hosted tools in our comparison.
  • TikTok and YouTube. Both platforms require an app review before third-party tools can post publicly; until then, unreviewed apps can only upload privately. Social Snagger therefore sends TikTok and YouTube Shorts posts to your phone instead.

The phone side: Telegram

Because there is no mobile app, Social Snagger uses a free Telegram bot you set up yourself. It sends you hand-offs for TikTok and YouTube (the file plus the caption, ready to copy and post), alerts when something needs you, and a morning brief. Share a link to the bot from your phone and it gets snagged into your library on the Mac.

Setting it up, step by step

  1. Check the requirements. macOS 11 Big Sur or later on Apple silicon or Intel. There is nothing else to install: on first launch the app downloads its own copy of Python and its fetch tools by itself, which takes about a minute.
  2. Download and open it. The app is not yet notarized by Apple, so macOS asks once. The download page shows exactly what to click for your macOS version.
  3. Create your first brand. Name, voice ("how this brand sounds"), brand kit colours and fonts, and default hashtags.
  4. Connect one channel first. Bluesky is the quickest (an app password). Get one post out before connecting the rest.
  5. Add content. Link a folder of your own photos, paste links to posts you want to share with credit, or follow a few creators and hashtags.
  6. Pick, then fill. Swipe through the Pick deck, then press Fill my week and look over what it booked.
  7. Set up Telegram if you post to TikTok or YouTube or want alerts.
  8. Leave the app open. Set your Mac not to sleep during your posting hours, or accept that posts catch up when it wakes.

Is local-first right for you?

It probably is if you post most days, manage more than one account, curate other creators' work, and spend most of your working day at a Mac. It probably is not if you need a team inbox, client approvals or reports, or if you do most of your social work from your phone.

If you are weighing it against a subscription tool, read the best Buffer alternatives for Mac users and our side-by-side comparison.

Try it

Social Snagger is free, runs on your Mac and keeps your keys with you. Download it, connect one channel, and schedule your first week tonight.