Install and permissions

Put Saiki in your Applications folder, open it once, and it asks for each macOS permission only when a feature first needs it.

What you need

A Mac with macOS 15 or later.
macOS 26 or later for the Liquid glass look. On earlier versions the bar uses a blur instead. See Looks and motion.
For AI: the claude or codex command-line tool, signed in with your own plan. See Set up AI.

Install

Download Saiki.dmg from the home page and open it.
Drag Saiki onto the Applications folder beside it. Saiki is signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens without a security warning.
Open it. Saiki has no Dock icon and no window of its own: it lives in the menu bar as a small S, and the bar appears when you call it.
Tap Right ⌘ twice quickly, or press ⌥Space, to open the bar.

Open at login. To have Saiki ready every time you start your Mac, open Settings (⌘, in the bar) and turn on General → Startup → Open at Login.

Updates

Saiki keeps itself up to date. Once a day it asks GitHub whether there's a new version; nothing installs until you choose to.

When there's one, a Saiki … is ready row waits at the top of the empty bar, under any agent waiting for you. Press ↵ (Install Update), or ⌘K for Dismiss (until a newer version) and Turn Off Update Notices.
To check now, type update and run Check for Saiki Updates, choose Check for Updates… in the menu bar menu, or use Check for Updates on Settings → About.
Settings → About → Updates has Check for updates automatically and Show a new version in the bar, both on to start with. With the second off, there's no row, only checking yourself.

How permissions work

Saiki asks for nothing up front. The first time you use something that needs a permission, like pasting into another app or taking a screenshot, Saiki asks for that one permission and then carries on.

There are two kinds of permission:

Lists in System Settings (Accessibility, Screen Recording, Full Disk Access). Saiki opens the right pane of System Settings and shows a small floating card with Saiki's icon next to it. A pointer shows you what to do: drag the card into the list, then turn on Saiki's switch. Saiki notices the change straight away, the card turns green, and it closes itself.
System prompts (Microphone, Notifications, Automation, Bluetooth). macOS shows its own prompt; click Allow. If you said no earlier, Saiki opens the matching page in System Settings so you can turn it on there.

Screen Recording needs a relaunch. macOS only applies a new Screen Recording permission after the app restarts. When you grant it, the card offers a Relaunch Saiki button.

See and grant permissions

Every permission, with what it's for and whether it's granted, is in one place. Open it any of these ways:

Type permissions in the bar and press ↵.
Open Settings and pick Privacy & Permissions at the bottom of the sidebar.
Right-click the S in the menu bar and choose Permissions….

Use ↑ ↓ to pick a permission and press ↵ (the footer says Grant and its name), or click Grant… on its row. Granted permissions show a green check.

When you turn off every feature that uses a permission, its row says No longer needed and names the features that are off. You can then turn the permission off in System Settings if you like.

What each permission is for

Permission	What uses it
Accessibility	Pasting into the app you were in (Clipboard History, emoji, answers), window management, menu item search, switching Spaces, Cleaning Mode, and Auto Quit quitting apps when their last window closes. It also lets Saiki ignore shortcuts like Right ⌘ + C, so fast copying never opens the bar by mistake.
Screen Recording	Screenshots, screen recording and Copy Text from Screen.
Full Disk Access	File search across your whole Mac, without macOS asking folder by folder. Also looking inside the Trash, and finding every leftover an app keeps for the Uninstaller.
Automation: Google Chrome	Finding and switching to your open Chrome tabs.
Automation: Terminal	Jumping to the exact terminal tab an agent runs in. If you have iTerm, it gets a row of its own.
Automation: Finder	Cut and paste in Finder (what's selected, and the folder a paste lands in), Empty Trash, the Finder switches like hidden files, and uninstalling items only an administrator can move.
Automation: System Events	Restart, Shut Down and Log Out from the bar, so each app can save first. macOS asks the first time you run one. See System commands.
Microphone	Dictation. Audio is transcribed on your Mac.
Camera	Camera Preview: your camera's picture in the bar. Nothing is saved unless you take a photo.
System Audio Recording	The Volume Mixer's per-app volume. macOS asks the first time you change an app's volume.
Bluetooth	The Bluetooth Devices view: listing your paired devices with their batteries, and connecting and disconnecting them. Also needed to turn Bluetooth off while the Mac sleeps. Saiki asks only when you choose Allow Bluetooth Access in that view, or grant it from Settings → Bluetooth or Privacy & Permissions.
Notifications	Telling you when an AI chat needs you while the bar is closed, when a long file conversion finishes, after an automatic cleanup if you asked for that, when App Updates finds an update in the background, for Monitors' alerts, and for AI usage alerts.
Keep Awake with the Lid Closed	Keep Awake holding a closed lid. This isn't a privacy switch: macOS asks for your administrator password once, to allow only turning sleep and Low Power Mode on and off.

Automation status. macOS can only report Automation for an app while that app is running. If Chrome or Terminal isn't open, the row says Open Google Chrome to check (or the app's name) instead of a status.

Turning features off

Each feature has a switch in Settings, and all of them are listed on Settings → Features with the permissions each one uses. A feature that's off doesn't load at all and leaves search, so it never asks for its permission.

Quit Saiki

Type quit in the bar and run Quit Saiki, or right-click the S in the menu bar and choose Quit Saiki.