Earn money from your Mac with one small ad in the menu bar

How it works

MacAd, the product inside the AdChanger app, puts one ad in your menu bar. There are no pop-ups, no sound and no window to keep open.

• Step 1: Install AdChanger on a Mac running macOS 12 or later and sign in with an email link, Google or GitHub.
• Step 2: Tell the app your age band and, if you wish, what you do on your Mac, your interests and what you plan to buy. These answers are optional.
• Step 3: The bar appears in your menu bar, next to the clock, and shows one ad at a time.
• Step 4: Each time the whole ad has been on screen for 60 seconds while your Mac is awake and in use, AdChanger's server counts one verified minute.
• Step 5: Your share of each minute is added to your balance, waits 3 days, and can then be withdrawn through Whop.

If you are away from your Mac for 8 minutes, the clock waits. If the Mac locks, sleeps or shuts down, or you pause, snooze or stop the bar, the unfinished minute does not count.

When no ad fits you well enough, or during a short break between paid stretches, the bar shows AdChanger's own message instead. Those minutes earn nothing.

What a minute is worth

The price of a minute is published and fixed per currency. You keep 65% of it; AdChanger keeps the rest.

• GBP: the advertiser pays £0.004 a minute (£4 per 1,000); you keep £0.0026 a minute, which is £2.60 per 1,000 minutes.
• EUR: the advertiser pays €0.005 a minute (€5 per 1,000); you keep €0.00325 a minute, which is €3.25 per 1,000 minutes.
• USD: the advertiser pays $0.006 a minute ($6 per 1,000); you keep $0.0039 a minute, which is $3.90 per 1,000 minutes.

If you joined with someone's affiliate code, you keep 70% instead (£2.80 per 1,000 minutes in pounds). The price the advertiser pays does not change.

An ad only shows in the countries its advertiser chose, so what is on offer depends on where you are.

A worked example

This is an example, not a promise. Suppose an ad runs for a full 8-hour working day (480 minutes) while you are at your Mac and using it:

• GBP: about £1.25 a day, or roughly £37 over 30 such days.
• EUR: about €1.56 a day, or roughly €47 over 30 such days.
• USD: about $1.87 a day, or roughly $56 over 30 such days.

One person is counted for at most 1,000 minutes of the same ad a day (16 h 40 min), so one ad can pay you at most £2.60, €3.25 or $3.90 in a day.

What you actually earn depends on the ads running for your country and on how long your Mac is awake and in use. AdChanger does not pay for a Mac that is idle, locked, asleep or left unattended, and it promises no fixed amount.

Getting paid

• Each minute's earnings wait 3 days so invalid activity can be checked, then become available.
• You can withdraw available earnings from £10, €10 or $10 upwards, one withdrawal at a time.
• Payouts go through Whop. You link a Whop account once, and Whop checks your ID before it pays out.
• From Whop you send the money to your bank or card. Whop's own terms and fees apply to that step.
• AdChanger never sees or stores your bank or card details; Whop holds them.
• You are responsible for any tax on what you earn.

Whop is the only payment route today. Stripe, Wise and PayPal are planned.

What it needs from you

• A Mac with macOS 12 Monterey or later.
• Room in the menu bar for one bar, 180 points wide. If the menu bar is too full, the app tells you, and nothing counts until there is room.
• Your real age band. You must be 13 or older.
• One account per person. Only one of your Macs earns at a time.

People aged 13 to 17 can earn. They never see ads for alcohol, gambling, tobacco, dating or adult content, and in the UK and Europe their optional answers start switched off. Whether a payout can reach someone under 18 depends on Whop's rules.

What it never does

To count a minute, the app only checks that the ad is on screen and that your Mac is awake and in use. It never sees:

• your screen, screenshots or recordings (it asks for no Screen Recording permission);
• what you type (it asks for no Accessibility permission);
• your microphone or camera;
• what is inside your apps, documents or messages;
• your browsing or search history.

To pick a fitting ad, it checks which app is in front, such as a coding or design tool. The name of that app never leaves your Mac, and you can switch this off in Settings.

The full details are on Is AdChanger safe? and in the privacy notice.

How it compares with other ways to earn from a Mac

Apps that pay you on a Mac generally pay for one of four things. Each is a fair trade if you know which one you are making.

• Surveys and micro-tasks pay for your active time: you earn while you answer or click, and stop when you stop.
• Bandwidth-sharing apps pay for your internet connection, which other parties route traffic through.
• Compute or mining apps pay for your processor and electricity.
• AdChanger pays for a small area of your menu bar while you work: one still ad, counted only while you are using your Mac. It does not share your connection or use your processor for mining.

AdChanger asks for no extra effort once it is running. In exchange, its earnings are tied to the hours you are at your Mac, and the rate per minute is small.

Is it worth it?

For most people the honest answer is: a small, steady extra. At £2.60 per 1,000 minutes, the amount grows with the hours you spend at your Mac, not with anything extra you do.

It suits people who are at a Mac for many hours a day, such as developers, designers, writers, students and people running a business from their laptop. It is not a way to earn while you are away.

You can stop at any time, so the simplest test is to run it for a few weeks and look at the Dashboard, which shows your earnings by day, week, month and year.

Join the waitlist

AdChanger has not launched yet: the Mac app is being built and the download is not public yet. Features, including payouts, may not all be switched on at first.

To join the waitlist, email yigit@adchanger.net with the subject "Waitlist". You get an email when the download is ready, and it will be on the home page the same day.

Questions about earning