HoverAsk

HoverAsk is a native macOS floating voice assistant that sits above your apps. Tap the glass orb or companion, speak in English or Hinglish, and get a text plus spoken answer from your chosen AI route.

It supports logged-in CLI accounts, private local model servers, and optional BYOK providers with keys stored in macOS Keychain. No screenshots, no browser scraping, no screen capture.

Features

• Floating macOS assistant with glass orb, dog, and cat avatars.
• Voice-first flow with live transcript, typed fallback, and spoken replies.
• Account CLI providers: Codex, Claude, Cursor, OpenCode, and Antigravity.
• Private local providers: Apple Intelligence availability, Ollama, and LM Studio.
• BYOK cloud providers: OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, OpenRouter, and Groq.
• Provider routing with draggable fallback order and per-provider tests.
• Local chat history with Markdown/JSON export.
• Editable global wake shortcut.

HoverAsk is not notarized by Apple yet. Homebrew is the cleanest install because it uses the release .pkg and avoids the DMG quarantine cleanup. Direct downloads work too, with one small one-time step if macOS blocks them.

Homebrew (recommended)

brew tap arpitagarwal1301/tap
brew install --cask hoverask

Homebrew may ask for your macOS password while installing the package.

Installer (.pkg)

1. Download HoverAsk-v1.2.0-macos.pkg from the latest release.
2. Open it; if macOS calls it "unidentified," right-click -> Open or use System Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Open Anyway once.
3. Click through the installer. HoverAsk lands in Applications.

Disk image (.dmg)

1. Download HoverAsk-v1.2.0-macos.dmg from the latest release.
2. Drag HoverAsk into Applications.
3. If macOS says HoverAsk is damaged or blocked, clear quarantine once:

   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/HoverAsk.app
   open /Applications/HoverAsk.app

Requires macOS 14+ on Apple Silicon. HoverAsk asks only for Microphone and Speech Recognition permissions.

Usage

1. Launch HoverAsk.
2. Tap the orb or companion, or press the global shortcut.
3. Speak or type a question.
4. HoverAsk routes it to the selected provider and shows the answer in the anchored chat chip.

Configure providers, voice, avatar, history, and BYOK keys from Settings.

Provider Setup

Use any provider route you already have access to:

• CLI accounts: install and log in to codex, claude, cursor-agent, opencode, or agy.
• BYOK: connect OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, OpenRouter, or Groq from Settings -> Providers. Keys stay in macOS Keychain.
• Local: run Ollama at localhost:11434 or LM Studio at localhost:1234.

Only ready providers appear in quick pickers. Auto tries ready CLI providers first, then private local providers, then BYOK cloud providers.

Permissions

On first use, macOS may ask for:

• Microphone for voice input.
• Speech Recognition for converting speech to text.

HoverAsk does not request Screen Recording permission because it does not capture your screen.

Build From Source

Requires Xcode Command Line Tools.

native-swift/HoverAsk/Scripts/build.sh
open outputs/HoverAsk.app

Release packaging scripts:

native-swift/HoverAsk/Scripts/package-pkg.sh
native-swift/HoverAsk/Scripts/package-dmg.sh

More

• Privacy · Terms
• Release notes
• Third-party notices
• Current release artifacts: HoverAsk-v1.2.0-macos.pkg and HoverAsk-v1.2.0-macos.dmg

HoverAsk is proprietary software; see LICENSE.