A native macOS menubar app that puts Apple Intelligence at your fingertips — no API keys, no cloud, no Ollama. Powered entirely by on-device inference via apfel.

Requires macOS 26 Tahoe (beta) and Apple Silicon. Apple Intelligence must be enabled on your device.

grapfel sits in your menubar. Click the icon (or press ⌘⇧Space from anywhere) to open a lightweight prompt window, type your request, hit Enter to send, and get a response from the on-device foundation model — instantly, privately, offline.

• no API keys — runs entirely on-device via Apple Intelligence
• no cloud — your prompts never leave your Mac
• no Ollama — uses Apple's own foundation model, not a third-party runtime
• fast — apfel's server mode keeps the model loaded; responses start in ~1 second
• persistent conversations — pick up exactly where you left off between sessions

Download the latest release from the Releases page.

1. Download the latest grapfel-X.Y.Z-macos26.zip from the Assets section of the release.
2. Unzip and move grapfel.app to /Applications.
3. Launch. The ✦ icon appears in your menubar.

grapfel is signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple — no Gatekeeper prompt, no quarantine step required.

grapfel requires apfel to be installed and available on your PATH.

brew install apfel

apfel is in homebrew-core as of v1.0.0. The tap (brew tap Arthur-Ficial/tap) is no longer required.

Verify it works:

apfel "say hello"

grapfel can be installed from a pre-built zip (see download above) or built from source.

1. Clone the repo:

   git clone https://github.com/sfegette/grapfel.git
   cd grapfel

2. Open the project in Xcode 26:

   open grapfel.xcodeproj

3. Select your Mac as the run destination and press ⌘R.

The app will appear in your menubar as a ✦ icon.

Note: The global hotkey (⌘⇧Space) uses Carbon RegisterEventHotKey and does not require Input Monitoring permission.

grapfel maintains full multi-turn conversation history. Each message you send includes the complete prior context so the model can refer back to earlier turns.

Conversation state is automatically saved to ~/Library/Application Support/grapfel/conversation.json — when you reopen the window (or relaunch the app), your conversation is restored exactly as you left it.

To start fresh, click the ✏ (compose) icon in the header. This clears the history and deletes the saved state.

Every assistant response has a Copy button at the bottom of its bubble. Tap to copy, or right-click for options:

A brief Copied ✓ confirmation appears for 2 seconds after copying.

The options panel exposes the main apfel generation parameters:

Token usage (prompt / completion / total) is shown beneath each response.

Permissive mode (disables content safety filtering) is a server-level setting — enable it in Settings → General. The server restarts automatically when toggled.

grapfel (menubar app)
  └── launches apfel --serve on port 11434
        └── wraps Apple's on-device foundation model
              └── exposes OpenAI-compatible HTTP API at 127.0.0.1:11434/v1

grapfel manages the apfel --serve process lifecycle: starts it on launch, health-checks it, restarts on crash, and terminates it cleanly on quit. All communication is over localhost — nothing touches the network.

AppDelegate
  ├── GrapfelPanel (NSPanel subclass — Liquid Glass, borderless, canBecomeKey)
  ├── ApfelServerManager (actor — subprocess lifecycle)
  ├── ServerState (@Observable — propagates .starting/.running/.binaryNotFound/.startFailed to UI)
  └── Carbon hotkey (⌘⇧Space, no Input Monitoring permission required)

ChatViewModel (@Observable @MainActor)
  ├── history: [ChatMessage]   — full conversation context
  ├── send()                   — appends turns, calls API, saves to disk
  └── clearHistory()           — resets state and deletes saved file

ConversationView
  ├── MessageRow (user: right/.quaternary, assistant: left/purple tint)
  ├── MarkdownContent (fenced code blocks + AttributedString inline markdown)
  └── CopyButton (tap = raw markdown; context menu = code block / plain text)

grapfel uses Sparkle for automatic updates. Right-click the ✦ menubar icon → Check for Updates… to check manually, or let it check in the background automatically.

• Global hotkey is not yet configurable — ⌘⇧Space is hardcoded; a settings UI is on the roadmap (#8).
• macOS 26 only — Apple Intelligence and Liquid Glass APIs require the macOS 26 SDK.

• Menubar icon + panel (Liquid Glass, GrapfelPanel)
• apfel server lifecycle management (start, health-check, crash-restart)
• Prompt → response via OpenAI-compatible API
• Options panel (temperature, max tokens, system prompt, etc.)
• Enter to send, ⌘+Enter for newline
• Global hotkey (⌘⇧Space, no Input Monitoring permission)
• Multi-turn conversation history with full context
• Conversation persistence (auto-save/restore across sessions)
• Markdown rendering (code blocks, bold, italic, inline code)
• Copy response (raw, code block, plain text)
• App icon (interim generated; final hand-crafted artwork pending)
• Build output to build/Release/grapfel.app (Release config)
• Release zip published to GitHub Releases (v0.1.0)
• Error UI for binary-not-found / server-start-failed (first-launch onboarding)
• SSE streaming (enabled — apfel 1.3.3)
• Sparkle auto-update (v0.1.3)
• Developer ID signed + notarized (v0.1.3)
• apfel version check + upgrade nudge (v0.1.3)
• Token usage display (v0.1.3)
• JSON mode (v0.1.3)
• Permissive mode in Settings (v0.1.3)
• Configurable hotkey in Settings (#8)
• Full test suite (#10)
• Final icon artwork (#9)

• apfel by Arthur-Ficial — the CLI/server that makes Apple Intelligence scriptable
• Built with SwiftUI + Swift 6 on macOS 26 Tahoe

MIT