Built for macOS 26+ · lives in your menu bar

Ask about anything you select.Understand anything you hear.

Cue is an AI assistant that lives quietly in your menu bar. It works on whatever you select and whatever you hear — no switching windows, no copy-and-paste.

Download for macOS See how it works ↓

Free download · v1.2.1 · Requires macOS 26 or later · Selection skills run on the Claude Code or Codex CLI you already use — or your own API key

Feature 1 · Selection toolbar

An AI toolbar built from your own skills

In your browser, email, documents, or code editor — wherever you highlight text, a floating AI toolbar appears right next to it. Every button is a skill you build: write the prompt, pick an icon, and it's on the bar. One click opens a streaming conversation you can keep going — or give a skill a keyboard shortcut and its result replaces your selection in place.

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

Or skip the toolbar — one keystroke rewrites your selection

Give any skill a global shortcut. Select text in any app — Slack, Mail, a browser, your editor — press the shortcut, and the translated or polished text replaces your selection right where you typed it. Only the final text goes in; anything else your prompt asks for, like a list of what changed, stays out of your document. Press ⌘Z to get the original back.

Select text → ⌥⇧T → Replaced in place

Feature 2 · Live meeting translation

Read live subtitles in your language

Cue captures your meeting app's audio, then transcribes and translates it entirely on your Mac. Read along in a floating subtitle bar — original on top, translation below. No internet connection, no cloud AI.

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 stay on your Mac by default

Speech recognition and translation run 100% on-device using Apple's Speech and Translation frameworks — zero network requests, no cloud AI. AI summaries are opt-in: only if you turn them on does Cue send the transcript to the AI backend you chose — the Claude Code or Codex CLI, or your own API key — to write the summary.

Under the hood

Two engines, one interface

1 Selection skills → your AI, your choiceUses the Claude Code or Codex CLI already signed in on your Mac and streams the answer token by token — or bring your own key and point Cue at any OpenAI-compatible API. Cue keeps the conversation history itself, so stopping a reply never loses your context.

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 else is a floating panel that appears next to your selection and can be dragged anywhere.

Data flow

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

The details

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, and bind a global shortcut.

Built for speed

Skills run without tools or MCP servers, so there's nothing extra to load — and answers stream in as they're written.

Bring your own key

No CLI? Add your own API key instead — any OpenAI-compatible endpoint (OpenAI, DeepSeek, OpenRouter…). Save several and switch between them in Settings.

Follow-up conversations

Clicking a skill opens a chat window where you can keep asking follow-ups. Cue holds on to the context, even if you stop a reply halfway.

Per-app audio source

Capture all system audio or just one app. Words are translated as they're recognized, then refined once each sentence is complete.

Label speakers

Turn it on and, after the meeting, Cue re-transcribes the recording on-device and tags who said what — Speaker 1, Speaker 2 — fully offline.

AI meeting summaries

Turn it on and Cue saves the full transcript when a session ends, then asks your AI backend — Claude Code, Codex, or your own API key — to summarize it. Your prompt, your model, saved to the folder you choose — and, if you like, readable by your local AI agents over MCP.

Pick your model

Choose from the models your CLI actually offers — the list comes straight from Claude Code or Codex — or type any model name. Reach for Haiku when speed matters most.

Menu-bar resident

No Dock icon, no main window — just the menu bar. Settings open in their own window (⌘,) only when you need them.

Your meetings stay on your Mac by default

Speech recognition and translation run entirely on-device — no cloud AI, no network requests — and transcripts are saved locally as Markdown. AI summaries are opt-in: only when enabled does Cue send the transcript to your chosen AI backend. Selection skills use the Claude Code or Codex CLI you've already signed in to — or, if you prefer, an OpenAI-compatible endpoint with your own API key. Keys and settings stay in local JSON files under ~/Library/Application Support/Cue/.

Use cases

Less context switching. More flow.

A few ways Cue fades into the work you're already doing — until the moment you need it.

Highlight a dense paragraph and ask exactly what you want to know, without breaking focus. It feels less like opening an AI app and more like macOS learned a new gesture.

Student Study & research

Build skills for reviewing code or polishing release notes, and they're one click — or one shortcut — away in every app.

Software engineer Code & release workflows

Follow international interviews in your own language and stay present in the conversation. Transcription and translation never leave your Mac, so it works for sensitive research too.

Independent researcher Interviews & field notes

Pricing

Start free. Upgrade when you need more.

Cue is free for everyday selection skills and on-device meeting translation. Go Pro to unlock unlimited skills, Live Notes, AI summaries, and more — a one-time purchase, no subscription.

Free

Everything you need to get started

Selection toolbar in any app
Up to 2 toolbar skills
On-device meeting translation
Floating live subtitles

See how it works

Put AI into every selection and every conversation

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

Replay the demos