1. Getting Started

1.1 The Notch

Hover your mouse over the notch to open Alter.

On an external screen, you can hover anywhere except on the mic to open Alter.

1.2 Hotkey - Alter Quick Menu

Press your Alter Quick Menu shortcut to open Alter from anywhere.

You can configure the Alter Quick Menu in Settings > Shortcuts

1.3 Voice Command

Speech-to-prompt

Hold the mic icon to speak on your notch or use your speech-to-text hotkey to start a quick prompt using your voice.

You can configure the speech-to-text hotkey in Settings > Default. The currently active window will be selected by default for context.

Dictate

Click once on the mic icon on your notch to dictate a prompt, and click again to finish dictation.

The transcript of your recording is visible in the context of Alter.

Mouse Interaction

Text Selection

Select text anywhere to invoke the Alter Floating Menu.

The Alter Floating Menu only shows the system’s Alter actions.
Favorite system Alter actions will appear at the top of the menu instead of in their respective folders.

Right-Click

Right-click on a file or folder, then select Add to Alter to send it to Alter.

2. Chosing your language

You can choose your generation langue in the setting pannel

Settings > Defaults > Language

3. The Alter Window

3.1 General Concept

The Alter window is your gateway to improving productivity.
It is divided into three main sections:

1. Context
2. Prompt
3. Additional Selection

You can navigate within the Alter window using a mouse or the following keyboard keys:

• ←, ↑, → , ↓ to navigate between objects.
• Enter to select an object.

See the Prompt Box section for details on manipulating it using keyboard keys.

3.2 The Context Section

The Context section displays elements sent to Alter for reference.

You can send multiple context elements to Alter and mix different types, including:

• Files
  • Any files supported
  • Emails
• Text selection
• Audio Transcripts
• Youtube transcripts
• Folders
• Workspaces
• Applications
• Web pages

You can use the following key strokes to manipulate your context slection:

• Space Bar: add/remove selected context(s)
• Cmd+k: remove all the context
• Cmd+j: create a workspace with the selected contexts

Using your clipboard

You can paste the content of your clipboard Cmd+v to automatically add it to Alter’s context.

3.3 The Prompt Box

The Prompt Box is where the magic happens.
Start typing your prompt or an Alter Action title to send it to your LLM model.

• Use Enter to prompt with your actif model.
• Use Cmd+Enter to prompt using a web search (via Perplexity).
• Use Shift+Enter to do a line break.

To invoke an Alter Action, type any character in its title.

Prompt Box shortcuts:

• @: Add elements to the context.
• #: Show your history of Alter Conversation.
• /: List and choose your model
• ?: Show the help menu.

Help menu

3.4 Additional Context Selections

This section lets you add more elements to your context.

4. Choosing Your Generative Model

By default, Alter offers a variety of models, listed alphabetically by their hosting company.

You can also use your API key or use your local model.

4.1 Choosing your model

After opening Alter, just type / to show available models and select the model you want to use.

Chosing a favourite model

Select with your mouse the pin icon next to a model to select the model as your favourite

When using your API key or a local model, these appear at the top under Custom.
All other interactions are routed through Alter Cloud.

4.2 Using Alter Cloud

By default, you connect to models via Alter Cloud. The default model is Claude-3.5-Sonnet-Latest.

You can change the default model in Settings > Defaults > Model.

List of the models via Alter CLoud

Model with vision

Name	Context size
gemini-1.5-flash	1000000
gemini-1.5-pro	1000000
gemini-2.0-flash-001	1000000
claude-3-haiku-20240307	200000
claude-3-opus-20240229	200000
claude-3-5-sonnet-20240620	200000
claude-3-5-sonnet-latest	200000
claude-3-7-sonnet-latest	200000
chatgpt-4o-latest	128000
gpt-4o	128000
gpt-4o-2024-08-06	128000
gpt-4o-mini	128000
gpt-4-turbo	128000
pixtral-12b-latest	128000
pixtral-large-latest	128000
gpt-3.5-turbo	4191

Model without vision

Name	Context size
codestral-2501	256000
deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1	163840
deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3	131072
meta-llama/Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct-Turbo	131072
meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct-Turbo-128K	131072
deepseek-r1-distill-llama-70b	128000
llama-3.1-70b-versatile	128000
llama-3.1-8b-instant	128000
llama-3.1-sonar-large-128k-online	128000
llama-3.1-sonar-small-128k-online	128000
sonar	127000
sonar-pro	200000
mixtral-8x7b-32768	32768
meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct-Turbo	32768
meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct-Turbo	32768
mistral-small-latest	32768
nvidia/Llama-3.1-Nemotron-70B-Instruct-HF	32768
Qwen/Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct-Turbo	32768
Qwen/Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct-Turbo-lora	32768
Qwen/Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-Turbo	32768
mixtral-8x7b-instruct	16384
mistral-7b-instruct	16384
llama-3.3-70b	8192
llama-3.3-70b-specdec	8192
llama-3.3-70b-versatile	8192
llama3-70b-8192	8192
llama3-8b-8192	8192
llama3.1-8b	8192
meta-llama/Llama-3-70b-chat-hf	8192
meta-llama/Llama-3-8b-chat-hf	8192
Gryphe/MythoMax-L2-13b	4096

4.3 Using Your API Key

You can use your own API key to connect directly to your provider’s endpoint:

1. Go to Settings > API keys > Custom provider.
2. Enable Custom Provider
3. Pick your provider in the list

Once connected, a tick will appear next to Custom Endpoint.

Your provider’s models will be listed under the Custom section.

We only support OpenAI compatible endpoints meaning you can’t use your Anthropic API keys.

Where to find your API keys

Provider	URL for generate an API Key
Google (Gemini)	https://aistudio.google.com/app/apikey
Mistral	https://console.mistral.ai/api-keys/
OpenAI	https://platform.openai.com/api-keys

4.4 Locally using Ollama or LM Studio

To use Alter with local models (via Ollama or LM Studio):

1. Go to Settings > API keys > Custom provider.
2. Enable Custom Provider
3. Pick Ollama or LM Studio in the list of provider

Once connected, a tick will appear next to Custom Endpoint.

]

Your local models will be listed under the Custom section.

5. Core Features

5.1 Interacting with Your Apps

Appsense - Understanding Your Mac

Unlike traditional screen capture methods, AppSense reads actual data directly from macOS applications, allowing Alter to access information beyond what’s visible on your screen.

Current Application

Alter will automatically suggest using the active window as context.
Click Current Application below the prompt. Or press ↓ and Enter.

5.2 Follow mode

Follow Mode is a core feature of Alter that enables real-time synchronization of data from your active applications, documents, and files during chat sessions.

How It Works

Follow Mode continuously monitors the state of applications and files you’re working with, providing Alter with comprehensive context about your current workflow at each turn of your conversation.

This allows you to work or browse pages and have a conversation always in sync with what you’re doing.

A great example is working on a landing page copy: While you make changes and have Alter as your Marketing Coach, Alter sees the changes you made without the need for you to explain what you did.

Using Follow Mode

1. Add the applications or documents you wish to include to the context list
2. Start your chat session - Alter will automatically track the state of the selected applications
3. Ask questions, even if that content isn’t currently visible on screen
4. Interact with the selected apps or updates the documents
5. Keep chatting, Alter knows what you changed.

5.3 Interacting with Files and Folders

You can add files to Alter as context.

Drag-and-Drop Support

Drag and drop files or folders onto Alter’s notch icon, or use Right Click > Add to Alter.

Supported File Types

1. Document Files: .xlsx, .docx, .pdf, .txt, .md, .org, .rtf.
2. Image Files: .jpg, .png, .heic, .gif, .tiff, .svg.
3. Web Content: .html, URLs, dragged text.
4. Email Content: .eml, Apple Mail messages.
5. Audio Files: .mp3, .wav, .m4a, .aac, .flac.
6. Code Files: Common programming languages, configuration, shell scripts.
7. Special Handling: Directory drops, OCR for images and PDFs, text encoding detection.

When dropping an image file, use a model with vision capability.

Audio files and transcript

When adding an audio file, you need to generate the transcript manually.

If you drop a video file in Alter, it will try to extract the audio, and probabaly not work. Stay tuned on this

5.4 Workspaces

Workspaces are a powerful feature in Alter that allow you to save, organize, and automatically refresh collections of folders, files, and apps for efficient AI-assisted workflows. Think of workspaces as intelligent folders that maintain context across your chat sessions.

How Workspaces Work

Workspaces create an indexed map of your selected resources, enabling Alter to:

• Retrieve only the most relevant files for your queries
• Deliver faster, more accurate responses
• Reduce processing costs
• Handle large folders and codebases efficiently

Programming languages supported within Workspaces

1. C
2. C++
3. C#
4. Elixir
5. Go
6. Java
7. JavaScript
8. Lua
9. PHP
10. Python
11. Ruby
12. Rust
13. Scala
14. Swift
15. TypeScript
16. Zig

Creating a Workspace

• Drag and drop contexts to merge as a Workspace: You can combine folders, files, apps.You can hold shift while clicking to select multiple items before dropping them together

Alternativelly, you can also use the following key strokes to manipulate your context selection:

• ←, ↑, →, ↓ to navigate between objects.
• Space Bar: add/remove selected context(s)
• Cmd+k: remove all the context
• Cmd+j: create a workspace with the selected contexts

Rename and edit a Workspace

Click on the workspace name to customize it (e.g., “Project Research” or “Development Environment”)

You can also remove elements from the Workspace and disabled or enable follow mode for apps.

Follow mode makes Alter retrieve the latest context of the app followed at each turn of the conversation.

5.5 Interacting with a YouTube video

When visiting a YouTube video page:

• Alter will notify you with an option to summarize the video.
• The video’s transcript will be added to your context window, even if you ignore the notification

This works only if the Youtube video has a transcribe available

5.6 Recording Meetings

During online calls, Alter suggests recording via a subtle notification.

Manually start the recording:

• Start recording by clicking the mic icon on the notch. It will turn into a red recording button
• End recording by clicking the red button.

The mic will animate during transcription

You can find your recordings and your transcripts in ~/Library/Application Support/Alter/Transcripts

In the case Alter crashes, there is a fair chance you could find the audio file in the following folder: /private/var/folders and search for filles called “recording”

5.7 Alter Actions - Workflows

General Principle

Alter Actions are advanced prompts configured with triggers and instructions.
Default actions are organized in folders.

Create Your Actions

You can create actions via:

• Action Editor: Accessible from the menu bar.
• Prompt Box: Invoke “Create > Alter Action” and specify your requirements.

Built-in actions cannot be edited but can be duplicated.

6. Alter Settings

The Alter settings window provides comprehensive control over the application’s functionality, appearance, and integration capabilities.

6.1 Accessing Alter Settings

When the Alter window is visible

1. Use the keyboard shortcut when the Alter window is open: cmd+,

or

2. click on the 3 dots on the main window /

When the Alter widow is not visible

Access it via the menu bar

Here’s a detailed breakdown of each section

6.2 Defaults

Quick access settings:

• Open notch keybinding (default: \Space)
• Selection Button toggle for quick access when selecting text

LLM settings:

• Max Tokens: Set maximum text generation length (default: 2,048)
• Temperature: Adjust from deterministic to creative (default: 0.70)

6.3 Dictation

6.4 Profile

My profile:

• Personalization section for better responses

Watch the video on creating the perfect profile text

• Generation Language: Select preferred language for outputs Note: Language selection affects generation only, not application interface

6.5 Appearance

Theme options:

• System (follows system settings)
• Light mode
• Dark mode Panel customization: Default Panel Position (e.g., top center)

Menu Font size (default: 16) Message Font size (default: 16)

Display notch toggle

6.6 Billing

6.7 Permissions

• Launch at Login: Toggle switch to control whether Alter starts automatically when the system boots up

Required Permissions

Alter will work at best when those permissions are enable

• Accessibility permissions

  • Purpose: Used to get selected text system-wide and to paste text anywhere
  • Status: OK
  • Action button: “Check Accessibility”

• SystemEvents permissions

  • Purpose: Used to interact with other applications
  • Status: OK
  • Action button: “Check SystemEvents”

• Screen Recording permissions

  • Purpose: Used to capture screen content
  • Status: OK
  • Action button: “Check Screen Recording”

• Microphone permissions

  • Purpose: Used to record audio input
  • Status: OK
  • Action button: “Check Microphone”

Disable analytics

We rely on analytics to improve Alter. However you are free to disable it if you prefer it

• Disable Analytics: Toggle switch to control analytics collection

6.8 External API keys

This is where you want to set up your API keys if you are using your own providers, for example, OpenAI, OpenRouter, or your local models.

Partners integration:

• Straico support
• Custom provider options

Provider configuration:

• Enable/disable custom providers

Provider selection (e.g., LM Studio)

List of providers:

• LM Studio
• Mistral
• Ollama
• OpenAI
• Open Router
• Custom (any OpenAI compatible endpoind)

6.9 Router

Alter can be used as a gateway to provide its cloud models to other tools in the same manner than OpenRouter.