Introducing macinto.sh 🍎

Today I'm releasing Macinto.sh 🍎, a secure computer use tunnel for agentic control of Mac OS.

It's open source, MIT-licensed, and free forever.

Backstory¶

I really don't like using my mouse. This is because most GUIs drive me insane. Using a GUI hijacks my brain's main context window, require immense focus, they are often downright adversarial in their design. And much uglier than my sweet sweet terminal.

So I like to make AI do that part. I'm a big fan of Chrome automation, Playwright, etc, because like, trying to cancel a "Subscribe & Save" on Amazon.com feels like a freaking escape room, and they keep moving stuff around on me.

Beyond that, sometimes a browser isn't enough, and I want my agent to control my entire Mac. There are so many horrid GUIs that I rely on, and I'd rather not look at them. But to control a Mac from the sweet sweet terminal, or from Codex/Claude/etc, you have to enable Accessibility and Screen & System Audio Recording app-wide, which is tantamount to granting blanket "hack me" permissions to a nondeterministic executor, permanently, Like an opt-in Back Orifice. And that didn't feel very safe to me.

So basically I made macinto.sh to have a more secure way to not have the aesthetic experience of using GUIs. Maybe it'll be useful in other ways to some other people too :)

The Design¶

Macinto.sh consists of two parts:

• Macinto.sh.app (Swift) is a menu bar app that holds the Accessibility and Screen Recording permissions.
• Macinto.sh (Rust) is a command line tool and MCP server that commands the Swift app to click, type, press keys, read the UI tree, take screenshots, and record the screen.

Agents and scripts can call the Rust CLI or use the MCP server to control the machine and interact with apps, but only the Swift app needs to be trusted by macOS.

So you don't have to grant blanket trust to your terminal emulator or ChatGPT or whatever. The app does nothing until a person enables it from the menu bar, and enabling has a 30-minute default timer, in case you forget to turn it off. So the MacOS permission is permanent, but the app itself blocks all automation activity once the timer runs out (or if it's not running, or if you click "Disable").

It also paints a bright red, blinking 🍎 apple in the corner of your screen, and another on your menu bar, so you know you're exposed. Beyond that, it logs all automation activity that has passed through it into a log file.

You can enable it indefinitely if you choose to, but that isn't the default. I only do that for my agent's private Mac Mini, because hey, he's got root on that thing anyway.

Installation¶

Paste this into your terminal to install:

brew install --cask dorkitude/tap/macinto-sh

..or download the DMG from https://github.com/dorkitude/macinto-sh/releases/latest.

The app is signed with my Developer ID and notarized by Apple. The CLI is a single native binary inside the app bundle.