Cue — The ambient AI assistant for macOS

Feature 1 · Selection toolbar

Select text in any app — and act on it

In your browser, mail, docs, code — anywhere you highlight text, a floating toolbar appears right next to it. Each button is a skill you define. One click opens a streaming conversation you can keep asking.

Safari — an article

The transformer architecture relies on a mechanism called self-attention, which lets the model weigh the relevance of every token against every other token in the sequence, enabling it to capture long-range dependencies without recurrence.

Explain

Click the highlighted text, then pick any skill from the toolbar

Feature 2 · Live meeting translation

Read live subtitles in your language

Capture a meeting app's audio, transcribe and translate it entirely on-device, and read it as a floating subtitle bar — original on top, translation below. No network, no LLM.

Zoom — Team weekly sync

LIVE

Sarah · host

You

English → Español Fully on-device

Press “Start capture” below to play the demo…

Translate to

Your meetings never leave your Mac

Speech recognition and translation run 100% on-device using Apple's Speech and Translation frameworks — zero network requests, no LLM, no cloud. Nothing you hear or say is uploaded anywhere.

Make it yours

Settings, the macOS way

A native sidebar window (⌘,). Toggle the toolbar, choose your AI backend and model, manage skills, set your languages — and start Cue at login so it's always there.

Toolbar

Show toolbar on selection

Start Cue at login

Visible skills in toolbar 2▲▼

AI Backend

Backend

Model

Used by all skills. “Default” uses the CLI's own default model; pick a named one for speed/quality, or “Custom” to enter any model the CLI accepts.

Command-Line Tools

Claude CodeInstalled

Codex CLIInstalled

Under the hood

Two independent capability layers

1 Selection skills → local LLM agentCalls the claude or codex CLI already signed in on your machine, streaming token-by-token. Multi-turn context is replayed in-app, so interrupting a turn never loses it.

2 Meeting translation → fully on-deviceSpeech via Apple's SpeechTranscriber, translation via Apple's Translation framework. No LLM, no network — audio and text stay on your Mac.

3 One interaction layerLives in the menu bar — no main window, no Dock icon. Everything is a floating panel that follows your selection and can be dragged.

Data flow

                                    Selection
                                    ─▶ Accessibility read
                                
                                        ─▶ Floating toolbar
                                    (skills)
                                
                                        ─▶
                                    claude / codex
                                    stream
                                
                                    Audio
                                    ─▶ ScreenCaptureKit
                                
                                        ─▶ SpeechTranscriber
                                    (local)
                                
                                        ─▶
                                    Translation (local)
                                
                                        ─▶ Floating
                                    subtitles

More detail

Quiet, fast, and yours to shape

Custom skills

Each skill is a prompt template that references the selection with {{selection}}. Name it, pick an SF Symbol icon, drag to reorder.

Low-latency startup

Tool-free skills skip MCP loading and the CLIs are pre-warmed at launch. Pick a faster model per backend (e.g. Haiku / o4-mini).

Follow-up conversations

Clicking a skill opens a chat window you can keep questioning. Context lives in-app, surviving an interrupted turn.

Per-app audio source

Capture system audio or one specific app. Drafts translate as they're recognized, then re-translate once the sentence finalizes.

Shared glossary

Maintain a list of preferred terms so translations and answers stay consistent on the words that matter to you.

Menu-bar resident

Runs as an accessory app, no Dock icon. Settings live in a sidebar window (⌘,) that appears only when you need it.

Meeting translation never leaves your Mac

Speech recognition and translation run entirely on-device — no LLM, no network requests. Selection skills call the CLI you've already signed in to, and your data stays in local JSON under ~/Library/Application Support/Cue/.

Put AI into every selection and every conversation

Cue never competes for your attention — it shows up only the second you need it.

Replay the demos