Alter is the Mac AI assistant that lets you get stuff done fast. Just talk to extract insights from YouTube videos, draft emails, or extract data. It understands what's on your screen and works across your apps, bringing intelligence to your entire day.
I'm Samuel, founder of Alter, and after months of building with a tight community, we're finally launching the first AI assistant deeply integrated with your mac!
🫠 The Problem
Let's be real - our workday is a mess. We jump between countless apps, tabs, and tools, constantly losing context and focus. AI tools should help, but most just add another window to manage and another place to check.
✨ What Makes Alter Different
We've built intelligence that belongs in the flow of everyday life:
Lives in your notch - Always accessible, never in the way
System-wide integration - Works with ALL your apps, files & folders
Privacy-ready & accessible - Can run offline or use your own API key
Voice commands built-in - Because talking is so much faster
Meeting superpowers - Instant actionable notes from any conversation
🚀 Getting Started & Community
Download Alter for free—no credit card needed! All core features are unlocked, and you get a 14-day trial of our Pro plan with access to 50+ AI models.
After your 14-day trial ends, you can continue using Alter with all features by connecting your own AI provider or local models.
Pro Tip: Just hold the mic button or the FN shortcut to start a voice commands for quick tasks. Drop or paste files, images, folders directly to the notch to quickly build your context.
Join our Discord community—we're building this together, and your feedback shapes what comes next! Our community members are creating amazing workflows every day and sharing them with each other.
Would love to hear your thoughts and questions! 🙏
(And a huge thank you to our beta testers who enjoyed our countless Fridays releases—no worries we'll keep shipping!)
Excellent, well thought through app. It integrates seamlessly into my daily workflow and I find myself using it all the time, even for little searches, then live (follow me) context aware text selection, clipboard and open document assignment and interrogation, idea validation, decision making challenges, tweaking emails and messages (with smart format pasting). I almost never search Google ("Give me the latest research on …") or read web pages (combining my current web page context with web search) anymore, and watching endless YouTube videos to learn something to help me on a project is a thing of the past -all I do now is identify the video of interest ("Show me YouTube videos about …), have Alter tell me what I need to know and where I need to actually watch - this alone saves me hours in a month. Oh, and did I mention dictating instead of typing? You have to learn how to do that - thousands of keystrokes saved each month - keyboards will last years longer.
I locally (auto) record all my meetings and relevant conversations (with the option of a quick "don't record" feature) and have Alter transcribe, automagically identify and add speaker names and summarise the meeting for me. This, building my local knowledge repository for each client. I have Workspaces configured that allows me to quickly set the context for my next project tasks - combine this with Co-Intelligences and hours of work is compressed into minutes.
Ever built a full Keynote presentation (with chosen theme and # slides) from a PDF document? Takes less than 1 minute. No copy pasting.
It really is my go to, even though I have paid subscriptions to Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini - which are each useful for project tasks (but the way Alter is progressing, I see those subscriptions slowly ending). Alter has a 'Best' model feature - I no longer have to figure out which vendor model is best for the task at hand - Alter works that out for me, yet another point of friction in my day elegantly solved. If I want to use a specific model - 1 second model selection and voilà.
Ever configure services and resources in Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure? Who needs to read the documentation anymore (and if you've done that, you'll know what I'm referring to) - I simply open the resource page and ask Alter to tell me how to do the configuration and with my Workspace context set, it even retrieves the PRD/specs/URI's, … from the contextual workspace and tells me what values to enter in each field + explains why and what for. This feature has reversed my age - who needs anti-ageing products?
The Co-Intelligences + Workspaces + Actions (customisable) are a regular go to as I do my daily tasks. The combo's are a force multiplier in improving the quality of my work and the speed at which things get done. With the new Automation feature coming soon (external 3rd party app integrations) … sigh!!!
Apple Intelligence - you missed a trick here while you were napping.
The future of computer relationship with humans: AI first, no friction, full context, vocal ready 🔥
After searching for many months for an AI application for my daily use on Mac, I finally found a gem!
Functionally strong and has taken a good stab at integrating the AI into the OS in a natural way. Launching files and sites from the UI into the app worked well. It picked up contexts accurately, including when it would be suitable for offering a transcription.
It offers a fair amount of access to LLMs and apparently you can use its API in other apps to allow you to utilise your token limit there, which is very generous.
I couldn’t figure out how to use Claude with it. It says on the main website front page it supports it, but then I found under the FAQ it doesn’t, so not sure.
The notch integration needs a rethink on non-notch devices, it overlaps other UI elements and the chat window drops down weirdly from where the notch should be. A proper centralised quicksilver style UI feels an obvious alternative.
I think that the “Talk to your Mac” is an odd selling point. For people that work in busy spaces, talking to your Mac isn’t attractive, and in truth it’s not necessary for the app. It works great with text input too. It’s a fun addition but making your primary marketing about voice input feels like it’s just going to limit your audience. People who don’t want to chat to their Mac will just assume it’s not for them.
I’d prefer a proper permanent chat window view, to be able to return to interactions from a few days ago, which is useful for things like research. The transactional drop menu is going to be a limiting factor for longer complex tasks.
Not super cheap but the pricing is fair imo.
A solid product. It’s in that second gen of Mac AI products that go beyond simple GPT Chat windows and try and integrate AI into daily workflows. A few quibbles means it’s not my app of choice for now, but I’ll watch the development with interest.
Love the “lives in your notch” detail—feels native, not intrusive. Curious, how does Alter handle conflicting inputs from overlapping apps or permissions? That context-juggling is where most tools stumble.
Finally gonna feel like Iron Man with this one. 🔥 Having AI baked right into the system, not just another window to juggle, is exactly the upgrade I didn’t know I needed. Can’t wait to try it out—congrats on the launch! 🫡
The Recording Meetings feature is very useful especially the capability to name the speaker.
I tried this for about half a day and I really like it. It's like having @Perplexity, @ChatGPT by OpenAI, and @Strawberry bunched into one. What I currently use it most for is context research - if I'm on a site, reading documentation, or need additional help on something I'll reference the app/window and chat alongside Alter. The UI also makes it really fun to use :)
Curious if anyone has any hints or good actions they've created. Congrats on the launch @0xgrrr!
why would I pay a provider if it's already offered by Apple?
btw, your site is laggy - the vid playback is playing up, I think
LOVING this. It's the Mac control app I've been waiting for.
Some of the interaction with apps is a little fiddly, but that's a beta thing.
I've been using Alter since v1, and I'm happy to finally see it launch here. More people need to know it exists, because it levels up your productivity. It's not your typical AI app.
Any way to sync with Google photos (or a screenshot saving folders) to get more contextualized AI work?
I discovered this promising app in beta and submitted 50 feature suggestions and bug reports to assess developer responsiveness before committing to a purchase. The trajectory looked good, and it seemed to be what Apple should have done, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't throwing my money away. The developers addressed most issues within a week and release new features every Friday, which ultimately convinced me to buy.
It's also one of the few apps offering a lifetime purchase option that includes unlimited API access (subject to fair use) to most models. It doesn't require you to provide your own API keys, although that option is still available.
I find myself frequently dictating prompts now due to the efficiency, though regular input is also available. Highly recommend!
