Intelligent screen capture and knowledge management for macOS.
Perch uses native OCR to detect and underline keywords on your screen in real-time.
Browse, search, and chat with everything you've captured.
Select any area on screen. Keywords and descriptions are extracted automatically.
Download the latest release from Releases.
macOS Security Note: Since the app is not code-signed, macOS Gatekeeper will block it on first launch. To allow it:
sudo xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Perch.appOr if you downloaded the DMG:
sudo xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine ~/Downloads/Perch-*.dmgnpm install
npm run build
npm startmacOS will prompt for Screen Recording permission on first launch. Grant it in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Screen Recording, then restart.
- macOS 10.15+
- Node.js 18+
- LM Studio or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Hold ⌥ Option | Analyze screen, highlight keywords |
| Double-tap ⌥ Option | Toggle knowledge base window |
| ⌥ Option + Drag | Capture screen region |
| Select text + ⌥ Option | Save selected text |
- Browse — View and search all entries (text, images, PDFs, web pages)
- Ask — Chat with an AI agent grounded in your captured content
- Keywords — Explore auto-extracted concepts with descriptions
- Graph — Visualize connections between keywords and documents
- Settings — Configure AI model and API endpoint
Data is stored locally in ~/.perch/. Configure the AI model in the Settings panel or edit ~/.perch/settings.json directly:
{
"apiBaseUrl": "http://127.0.0.1:1234/v1",
"chatModel": "qwen/qwen3.5-9b"
}npm run dev # Watch mode
npm run build # Full build (TS + native module)
npm run package # Package with electron-builderElectron · TypeScript · macOS Vision API · SQLite
Everything runs locally. Your data never leaves your machine unless you point the API endpoint to a remote server.
Perch keeps one screen-capture stream open (in the always-on-top overlay window) so that holding Option can analyze the screen in a few hundred milliseconds instead of starting a capture session every time. macOS therefore shows its screen-recording indicator while Perch is running. The stream never leaves the machine, and the overlay itself is excluded from it.
MIT