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Getting started

Download and first open#

Download Moe from moebot.app/download. Every Download button on the site opens a short sheet first, saying what is in the box and what opening it looks like; Download Moe for Mac starts the download. It is a large download, a little over a gigabyte, because everything Moe needs is inside it: the speech and voice models that run on your Mac, and the part of Moe that does the thinking. Setting up fetches nothing, so the first run works offline.

Open the disk image and drag Moe onto Applications. Moe is signed and notarized by Apple, so the first time you open a copy you downloaded, macOS checks it and asks once: "Moe" is an app downloaded from the Internet. Are you sure you want to open it? Click Open. That is all of it: there is no trip to System Settings and no Privacy & Security step.

After that, Moe asks for what it needs as it first needs it: the microphone the first time you talk to it, permission to control your Mac the first time you ask it to do something there. Those are macOS asking on your behalf, not warnings about Moe.

Moe keeps everything it makes in ~/Library/Application Support/Moe: memories, meeting notes, transcripts, settings and connections. That is where macOS puts an app's data, and where to look to back it up. (An older name for the same folder, ~/.moe in your home folder, still works; it points at the same place.)

The welcome#

The first time Moe opens, a short welcome walks you through it: seven screens, one thing each, all of them skippable. Back and Skip are on every screen, nothing in it is permanent, and nothing breaks if you say no.

  1. Hi, I'm Moe. The four things it does: answer out loud, take meeting notes, remember you, reach your things. One line says Moe is in beta.
  2. Can I hear you? The one permission asked up front. Turn on the microphone shows macOS's own prompt. Say no and Moe still works; you type to it instead. Your voice is turned into words on this Mac and is never sent anywhere.
  3. Give me something to think with. Moe has no account of its own, so pick the one you already use. The first two are marked Recommended, side by side, because they are a plan you may already pay for: Sign in with Claude or Sign in with ChatGPT; Moe works as well with either. Below them: Paste a key you already have (Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, xAI and others), or Run a model on this Mac. Signing in happens in your browser, never in a Terminal: Moe opens the page, and for ChatGPT it shows you the code the page asks for, already copied. On a fresh copy of Moe this screen says getting ready for the few seconds it takes to lay down the part that thinks.
  4. Say hello. Hold right ⌥, say "what can you do?", and let go. Double-tap the key to stop Moe, or press ⌃⌥Space to start it and again to stop. This screen also asks for the two macOS permissions a first task needs, one button and one line each, both skippable: Accessibility, so Moe can hear the talk key in any app and click for you when you ask, and Screen Recording, so Moe can see your screen when you ask about it. Screen Recording takes effect the next time Moe opens. If System Settings shows Moe switched on for Accessibility and Moe still says it is off, macOS is remembering an older copy: Reset and ask again clears that. The ⌃⌥Space shortcut works without any of it.
  5. I'll take the notes. What a meeting records and where it stays, and one switch, Start and stop a meeting with ⌃⌥M, off: a key that records other people is one you switch on yourself.
  6. What may I read to learn about you? One switch for each thing on this Mac Moe could read back over (Read Calendar back and learn about me, and its like), and under them the daily pass itself, Once a day, read back over what I've allowed and note what it learns. Everything connected starts switched on, marked Recommended; untick what you would rather Moe left alone and press Save and continue. Nothing is read until you save. Skip records nothing, so Moe can ask again later, the first time you connect something. With nothing connected yet, the screen says so. See Memory.
  7. Connect your world. What to connect first, in the order the Connections page lists it: the apps already on this Mac (Calendar, Reminders, Notes and Contacts), then Google (Gmail, Calendar and Drive, one sign-in for all three), then everything else. Then two switches you see before the welcome closes: Start Moe when my Mac starts, on, and Let Moe send problem reports, off, with What is sent? beside it and Report without saying who I am under it. Both are the same switches as Settings › Privacy. Take me to Connections ends the welcome.

Skip everything and Moe still takes meeting notes; the brain can be chosen any time in Settings › Brain.

Moe starts with your Mac#

When you finish the welcome, Moe adds itself to System Settings › General › Login Items, so it is there under the notch when you sign in. The last welcome screen shows it as the switch Start Moe when my Mac starts, already on; turning it off there and turning it off in Login Items are the same thing. Moe never switches it back on behind you: it asks macOS once, and after that the switch is yours. A copy that opens after Erase Moe from this Mac adds nothing.

The part of Moe that thinks looks after itself#

Moe's thinking part ships inside the app and is laid down on first launch. Moe starts it when Moe opens and restarts it if it stops. If it keeps stopping, Moe says so once, The part of Moe that thinks kept stopping, and then keeps trying quietly in the background about once a minute until it is back; you don't have to quit Moe or open it again. New Conversation tries right away. Each version of Moe also keeps that part current on its own: a small update in the background, one brief restarting, and that is all you see.