bgbgone — Background, be gone.

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Mac app<br>v0.3.4<br>Apple silicon

Rather have a window than a flag? Get the app.

The same on-device engine, in a native macOS window. Drop a folder, watch it process —<br>end up with a folder of clean cutouts. Never touch a terminal.

Download for macOS<br>v0.3.4 · Apple silicon · notarized

$brew install --cask Arthur-Ficial/tap/bgbgone-app

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Free · open source · signed & notarized · checks for its own updates.

01 · Live demo<br>Pick a subject. Pick an algorithm. See the real cut.

Red pandaanimal

Corgipuppy

Singerperson

Astronaut1984

Motor carvintage

Aeroplanevintage

auto<br>person<br>saliency

$ bgbgone red-panda.jpg --algo auto

person shows only where Vision finds a person — never faked.

02 · Receipts<br>Numbers, not adjectives.

Measured bgbgone performance and cost figures

81msper image

12.3/sthroughput

3MBbinary

0netnetwork calls

0$forever

03 · Install<br>Install. Run.

Install

brew tap Arthur-Ficial/tap<br>brew install Arthur-Ficial/tap/bgbgone<br>From source: make install. macOS 26+, no Xcode.

Use

# default: writes photo_bgbgone.png next to input<br>$ bgbgone photo.jpg

# transparent PNG to stdout<br>$ bgbgone photo.jpg > cutout.png

# on a solid colour<br>$ bgbgone photo.jpg --bg color:white -o on-white.png

# on an image<br>$ bgbgone photo.jpg --bg image:beach.jpg -o beach.png

# pipe in<br>$ cat in.png | bgbgone > out.png

# batch a folder<br>$ bgbgone *.jpg --out-dir ./out/

# local HTTP API on 127.0.0.1:8787<br>$ bgbgone --server

04 · Examples<br>One flag at a time. Real output.

$ bgbgone red-panda.jpg

↔ drag

$ bgbgone red-panda.jpg --bg color:#1a2233

$ bgbgone red-panda.jpg --bg image:nebula.png

$ bgbgone red-panda.jpg --bg image:red-panda.jpg --filter bg:grayscale

$ bgbgone red-panda.jpg --bg image:red-panda.jpg --filter bg:blur=60

$ bgbgone woman-singer.jpg --type person --bg image:woman-singer.jpg --filter bg:zoom-blur

↔ drag

$ bgbgone corgi-puppy.jpg --crop --filter fg:outline=color=#fff:width=30

05 · Flags<br>The whole surface.

Background

--bg color:solid colour

--bg image:image file

--bg-color shared solid colour field

--bg-image shared background image field

--bg-fit cover|contain|tile|centerfit mode for image backgrounds

Matte / edge

--mask-onlyoutput the alpha mask only

--channels rgba|alphafinalized image or alpha mask

--feather edge softening (default: 1)

--threshold mask binarisation

--padding extra space around subject

--crop-margin API-style crop margins

--croptight-crop to subject bbox

--roi "x1 y1 x2 y2"region of interest, px or %

--scale scale subject on canvas

--position place scaled subject

--semitransparency true|falsekeep or harden semi-transparent pixels

--shadowdrop shadow under cutout

--shadow-type auto|drop|3D|car|noneshadow selector

--shadow-opacity shadow darkness

Algorithm

--algo auto|vn-mask|person|saliencydefault: auto

--type auto|person|product|car|animal|graphic|transportationtype hint

Multi-instance

--multione file per detected instance

--instance-naming "{base}-{n}.{ext}"filename template ({n:NN})

Output

--to, --format png|jpg|zip|heic|avif|tiffoutput format (default: png)

--size preview|full|50MP|autooutput megapixel cap

--quality 1..100for lossy formats (default: 92)

-o, --output explicit output file

--out-dir batch output directory

Server

--serverrun local HTTP API

--host bind address (default: 127.0.0.1)

--port bind port (default: 8787)

--corsenable CORS for allowed origins

--allowed-origins add allowed browser origins

--no-origin-check | --footgundisable browser origin checks

--token | --token-autorequire Bearer token

--public-healthkeep /health public on non-loopback binds

--max-body-mb request body limit (default: 32)

Meta & exit codes

--json | --ndjsonstructured output

--quiet | --verboselogging level

--version | --help | -hmeta

--checkcapability report

Exit codes

0success<br>1user error (bad input, refusing TTY)<br>2parser error or no result<br>3framework error (Vision unavailable)

06 · Privacy<br>Run it with Wi-Fi off.

01<br>No network.

02<br>No telemetry.

03<br>No accounts.

04<br>Images stay yours.

07 · Ecosystem<br>Part of the apfel family.

apfel

LLM · text generation

FoundationModels

auge

Vision / OCR · see

Vision

bgbgone this

Background removal · do

Vision + Core Image

ohr

Speech-to-text

SpeechAnalyzer

kern

Embeddings

NLContextualEmbedding

Install<br>Background, be gone.

$brew install Arthur-Ficial/tap/bgbgone

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View source

Read the README