Documentation

#Installing

1. Get the archive from Download, unzip it, and drag At Hand into Applications.
2. The first time you open it, hold Control, click the icon, and choose Open.
3. It lives in the menu bar once it’s running. There’s no main window.

#Permissions

There are two permissions, and each one covers a group of features. Skip one and you lose that group — everything else keeps working.

Accessibility

The selection toolbar and smooth scrolling. System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility.

Finder extension

The right-click menu. System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions → Finder extensions.

#The Finder menu

Right-click a file, or empty space in a Finder window, and At Hand’s items show up in the menu.

New file

Text, Markdown, Word, Excel, Keynote and more. You can set the naming pattern yourself, with variables for the date and a counter.

Cut and paste

Cut, then paste in another folder, and the file moves.

Copy path / Copy name

The full path, or just the file name.

Open in Terminal

Opens the current folder in whichever terminal app you have installed.

Turn off anything you don’t want in Settings → Finder menu → Menu. That’s also where you pick between a single submenu and a flat list.

#The selection toolbar

Drag across some text and let go — the toolbar appears next to it. Hover over an icon and its name shows up underneath.

• The icons change with what you selected. Select a sum and you get a calculator, an amount of money and you get a currency conversion, a URL and you get Open Link.
• Hold fn as you release the mouse to skip it that one time.
• It never appears over a password field, and that isn’t something you can turn on.

To reorder it, hide individual actions, or change which search engine and translator it uses, go to Settings → Text selection → Toolbar.

#Scrolling

This one is off until you turn it on. Switch it on in Settings → Scrolling and your mouse wheel scrolls smoothly. The trackpad is left as it was.

Feel

Three presets: Windows-like, Smooth, and the system default. Open Advanced if you want to tune the numbers behind them.

Both axes

Vertical and horizontal have separate speed and direction.

Per application

Add an app to give it its own settings, or turn At Hand off inside that app completely.

#Model actions

Rewriting, summarising, explaining, translating and suggesting file names all need a model connected first. Set that up in Settings → General → Service.

• Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, OpenRouter, Ollama, and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint.
• Your key is stored in the macOS Keychain, and nothing gets sent anywhere until you run one of these actions yourself.
• Inference is billed to your own key. We don’t resell it or proxy it.

#Trial and activation

Everything is unlocked for 60 days. After that you’ll need an activation code for the paid features.

1. Settings → General → Licence.
2. Paste in the code and press Activate. Capitalisation and dashes don’t matter.
3. You need to be online to activate. After that it works entirely offline.

#Updates

At Hand checks for a newer build every three days and tells you in Settings → General. There’s a Check Now button if you don’t want to wait.

• Nothing downloads until you press Download and Install. Updating is always something you start.
• The download is checked against this copy’s own signature before anything is replaced. A build that isn’t signed the same way is refused rather than installed.
• At Hand restarts to finish. Your permissions and settings carry over — the new build is the same app as far as macOS is concerned.

#Privacy

There’s no account, and no server of ours ever sees your work. This is everything that leaves your Mac, and when.

Usage data

Off unless you say yes in the setup guide or in Settings → General. If you do, it goes to TelemetryDeck: which features get used, the app’s version, your macOS version, language and chip type, tagged with a one-way hash so repeat launches count once. Never the text you select, your file names, what you ask a model, or which other apps you run.

Model actions

Sent straight from your Mac to the provider you connected, with your own key. None of it passes through us. With Ollama it doesn’t leave the machine at all.

Update checks

Every three days At Hand asks this site for the latest version number. The request carries nothing about you.

Activation

Once, when you activate: the code, the app’s version, and a random identifier made the first time At Hand ran. It isn’t a serial number and says nothing about your hardware or about you.

#When something is stuck

The toolbar stopped appearing

Usually the Accessibility permission got dropped during an update. Check it in System Settings, and if it looks granted but still does nothing, switch it off and back on.

The right-click menu is missing

Go to System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions → Finder extensions and make sure At Hand is ticked. macOS sometimes switches it back off after a version change.

The code says it’s already used

A code is tied to one Mac. If this is the same machine after a reinstall, try once more — and if it still refuses, write to me@tdzero.com.

Scrolling feels wrong

You can switch smooth scrolling off straight from the menu bar, without opening Settings.