Perplexity is taking its Mac assistant out from behind the most expensive door.
The company says Personal Computer is now available to all Mac users through the Perplexity macOS app. The assistant had previously been tied to Perplexity’s $200-per-month Max plan, but the company says it can now be used for everyday queries, attachments and dictation, with usage governed by Pro and Max credit limits.
Personal Computer is Perplexity’s attempt to make an AI assistant that can move across local files, apps, the web and Perplexity’s cloud. It is not trying to do everything locally on the Mac. Instead, Perplexity says the assistant leans on cloud models for heavier work, including Gemini for deep research and ChatGPT for long-context recall and broad search.
That cloud-first design is both the feature and the tradeoff. It could make the assistant lighter on the Mac, especially for people running it on something like a Mac mini all day. But it also means users have to be comfortable with a helper that reaches beyond the device for parts of its thinking.
Perplexity says actions are auditable and reversible, which is the kind of promise these desktop agents badly need. The whole category is still in its trust-building phase, and nobody wants an assistant that can confidently make a mess across files and apps.
Still, opening Personal Computer beyond Max makes the product far more interesting. The Mac is becoming one of the main battlegrounds for agentic AI, and Perplexity clearly does not want to wait for Apple to finish catching up.
