Perplexity’s AI agent, Computer, can now run entirely on a Mac. The fully local mode arrived in the Perplexity Mac app on 20th October 2026 for subscribers on the Pro, Max and Enterprise plans. In it, both the AI model and the agent directing the task run on your computer, and your files don’t go to Perplexity’s servers.
Computer is Perplexity’s agent that lets you describe a job, such as sorting your email or updating a spreadsheet, and it breaks the job into tasks and carries them out. When we listed the AI tools worth knowing in 2026 in June, Perplexity was there as an answer engine with a multi-step mode of its own.
Computer has been moving off the cloud all year. It launched in February for Max subscribers, handing tasks to several AI models from other companies, all working in Perplexity’s own computing environment. In May came Personal Computer, a Mac app that let it work with your local files and native apps. Then in September, Hybrid Compute split the work, keeping private files with a model on the Mac while cloud models did the research and reasoning.
This is the second fully local version of Computer. In August, Perplexity released Portable Computer for NVIDIA’s DGX Spark, a compact Linux AI computer with 128 GB of memory. Far more people own Macs, and whether yours can run the new mode comes down mostly to memory.
What runs on your Mac
You start by downloading one of two models through the app. The first is Qwen 3.6 from Alibaba, a family of models whose smaller versions are open-weight, which means anyone can download the trained model and run it on their own hardware. The second is PPLX Pro, Perplexity’s own post-trained version of Qwen.
Planning the task, reasoning through it and reading the files all happen on the Mac. With your permission, Computer works across Notes, Messages, Mail and Numbers. In Perplexity’s own example, it reads your recent messages and email, picks out deadlines and writes an action list into Notes. Code and tool commands run in a sandbox, a walled-off space with controlled access to the rest of the Mac’s files and apps.
The cloud is still there when a task needs it. If Computer has to look up current information, use a browser or reach an online app, it asks you first, and from there it can call on more than 15 frontier models, the most capable models from the large AI labs. Hybrid Compute stays in the same app, and you pick the mode task by task. So if your Mac has the memory, you can turn confidential client notes into a proposal without the notes ever leaving it.
Which Macs can run it
Perplexity recommends 36 GB of memory or more. A language model has to sit in memory while it works, alongside macOS and whatever else you have open. On Apple silicon that memory is shared by the processor and the graphics, and you can’t add more after you buy the Mac. When Perplexity benchmarked Qwen3.6-35B-A3B on a MacBook Pro in September, the compressed 4-bit version of that model alone took 19.4 GB. Perplexity hasn’t said which size of Qwen 3.6 the local mode installs, but that figure shows where the memory goes.
That rules out a lot of Macs, including the cheaper of the two Mac minis Perplexity names in its announcement. On Apple’s own spec pages:
- The M6 Mac mini starts at 16 GB and tops out at 32 GB, so it can’t get there.
- The M5 Pro Mac mini starts at 24 GB and needs the 48 GB or 64 GB option.
- The cheapest Mac Studio, the M5 Max model, starts at 36 GB.
Older Apple silicon Macs with 36 GB or more also qualify. In Nairobi, Nextbuy lists the M6 Mac mini with 16 GB at KES 153,000. Itey Store lists the M5 Pro Mac mini at about KES 265,000 and the M5 Max Mac Studio at KES 485,000, but it doesn’t say how much memory either one has.
If your Mac has less, Hybrid Compute is the fallback. It needed at least 24 GB when it launched, and Perplexity’s product page now recommends 32 GB. So an M6 Mac mini bought with the full 32 GB can run Hybrid Compute, but it falls short for the fully local mode.
What it costs
The local mode comes with the Pro, Max and Enterprise plans. Pro costs USD 20 a month, about KES 2,600, and Max costs USD 200, about KES 26,000. Last year we wrote about Airtel giving customers in India a free year of Pro, an offer we managed to redeem even here in Kenya.
You pay for Computer’s work in credits, at 100 credits for USD 1, about KES 130. Perplexity estimates that a quick fact uses 15 to 70 credits and a data dashboard 2,400 to 9,800, or about KES 3,100 to KES 12,700. Max includes 10,000 credits a month. Pro has no monthly credits and gets a weekly allowance of Computer use instead. Perplexity says the local mode gives you more control over your credit spend, but it doesn’t say outright that a task run entirely on your Mac costs no credits.
Perplexity also hasn’t given the macOS version the local mode needs (the Personal Computer app requires macOS 15 Sequoia or later), and it hasn’t published figures for how fast whole tasks run compared with the cloud. Nor has it said the mode works offline. Its product page notes that sending a message or a meeting invitation still goes through that app’s own service, so an agent that sends email still needs the network to send it.
We like the idea. If you handle documents that shouldn’t leave your desk, such as client records or payroll, an agent whose model lives on your Mac answers an obvious objection to handing that work to AI. It narrows the risk without removing it, since the agent still reads every file you point it at and can still be fooled by instructions hidden inside a document.
The bigger problem in Kenya is the hardware. Among Apple’s current Mac minis and Mac Studios, the cheapest that meets Perplexity’s recommendation without a memory upgrade is the M5 Max Mac Studio, and it lists here at more than three times the price of the base M6 Mac mini. For now, the fully local mode is for people who already own a high-memory Mac. Everyone else gets Hybrid Compute or Computer in the cloud, where the reasoning still happens on Perplexity’s servers.
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