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Use the Mac Apps You Already Have Open

A lot of schoolwork never makes it into a tidy chat box.

The lab partner wrote in Slack. The PDF is sitting in Finder. The draft is in Notes. Mail has the TA's reply. Spotify is already playing. You can describe all of that to an assistant. You can also spend the next ten minutes copying, pasting, and explaining which window you meant.

Computer Use is for the second kind of evening: the work is already on the Mac, in apps you actually use. AideAI can look at those running apps, and — only for the ones you approve — help you click, type, or run a small curated action. When the turn is over, AideAI comes back to the front so you can read the answer.

It is not a second browser. It is not a screenshot of your whole desktop. And it does not run in the Mac App Store build. You need the direct Mac download.

Schoolwork lives in apps, not in prompts

Students do not fail because they forgot how to ask ChatGPT a question. They fail because the useful sentence is in Slack, the rubric is in Mail, and the files are in a folder they opened three hours ago.

The usual workaround is unpaid intern work for your own brain:

  1. Find the right window.
  2. Copy the useful bit.
  3. Paste it into AI.
  4. Forget a name, a date, or the message above it.
  5. Repeat.

Computer Use shortens that loop. You stay in AideAI chat. The assistant works with the app that is already open, instead of asking you to become the integration.

That only works if the control is boringly explicit. So it is.

What Computer Use is — and is not

Computer Use is an AideAI extension for already-running Mac apps.

After you turn it on in Apps, you add apps yourself. Read lets the assistant see window titles and the accessible UI for that app. Write lets it act — click, type, or a curated command such as jumping to a Slack person. Write is never granted from chat. You flip it in the Apps UI.

It asks before sending, deleting, paying, or other actions that are hard to undo. You can stop it from the Computer Use card or the AideAI menu.

It is not:

  • Browser Automation. That feature uses AideAI's own browser to open and read web pages. Different tool, different trust model. If you are choosing between them, read Computer Use or Browser Automation?.
  • A silent desktop takeover. Off-screen clicks are blocked. Typing does not go through your clipboard. The action log stores the app, the action, and redacted titles — not screenshots of your screen.
  • Available in the App Store build. macOS rules for that channel do not allow this kind of control. Use the DMG.

Asking about what is on screen, without treating every screenshot as automatically shareable, is a separate workflow. That story is Ask AI About Your Screen Without Oversharing.

A Tuesday that does not fit in one tab

You get out of lab at 6:40. Slack has a thread from a teammate. Finder has last week's PDF. Notes has the half-written methods section. You still have not decided what is due tomorrow.

You can keep context-switching until the thread is cold. Or you can ask AideAI, with Computer Use on and Slack plus Finder approved:

What did Alex write in Slack about the lab, and which PDF in Finder looks like the one they meant?

The assistant can open the Slack conversation you named, look at the visible thread, and help you match it to a file — then bring AideAI forward again so the recap is sitting in chat, not buried under Slack.

The Slack-shaped version of this, start to finish, is Ask AideAI What Someone Wrote in Slack. The click-by-click setup card is Turn On Computer Use in AideAI.

Finder, Mail, Notes, and Spotify are the same idea: the app is already part of how you work. Computer Use does not invent a new place for the files to live. It meets them where they already are.

How you turn it on without making it scary

Setup is supposed to feel like adding any other Mac permission, not like handing over the machine. The full walkthrough is Turn On Computer Use in AideAI. The short version:

  1. Download AideAI as a DMG, not from the App Store.
  2. Open Apps → Computer Use and turn it on.
  3. Grant Screen Recording and Accessibility when macOS asks. Screen Recording here is for one approved window, not a continuous film of the whole desktop.
  4. Add apps that are already running, or pick one from disk.
  5. Leave Write off if you only want the assistant to look. Turn Write on only for apps you want it to control.
  6. For a few curated commands (play/pause, sending Mail), macOS may also ask for Automation. That list is not your Computer Use allowlist. It appears after the first such command.

If a remote setting has Computer Use off, the card will say so. The assistant will not run it until that setting is on.

This is the same family of "native on the Mac" product as Why a Native Mac App Feels Better Than Another Browser Tab: the assistant is useful because schoolwork is already in macOS, not because we added another website.

Who this is for

Computer Use is for students and builders who already live in Mac apps:

  • group projects that happen in Slack, not in the LMS comment box
  • files that never left Finder
  • mail from instructors that you do not want to forward into a random chatbot
  • notes you started in Notes and will not migrate "later"

It is a poor fit if you need a web page that is not open in a real desktop app. Use Browser Automation for that. It is a poor fit if you wanted the assistant to launch a pile of apps you do not already have running. Computer Use starts from what is already open.

Agent Desk can still be the place you keep the conversation. Computer Use is what the agent is allowed to touch on the desktop. See Meet Agent Desk: A Multi-Agent Workspace for Students.

Try it on one app first

Do not allow the whole Dock on day one.

Add Slack or Finder. Keep Write off and ask a read-only question. If the recap is useful, turn Write on for that one app and try a jump or a click — you will see a confirmation for the consequential step.

Download the Mac app, open Apps, and turn on Computer Use when you are ready. If the thing you needed was a webpage rather than an app, start with Too Many Tabs? Use AideAI to Work With What You're Already Reading instead.