Perplexity’s Computer agent can now run fully locally on a Mac, with both the model and the agent on device

Perplexity announced on October 20 that its Computer agent platform can now run fully locally in its Mac app. According to the company, both the AI model and the agent directing the task run on the Mac, so planning, reasoning and file processing stay on the device. With permission, Computer can work across local files and Mac apps such as Notes, Messages, Mail and Numbers. Users can authorize it to escalate to the cloud for current information, browser use and connected apps, where it can call on one of more than 15 frontier models.

Two local models are available at launch: Alibaba’s Qwen 3.6 and PPLX Pro, which Perplexity describes as a post-trained version of Qwen. The company recommends 36GB of memory or more and cites the new Mac mini with M6 and M5 Pro as examples of supported Apple silicon Macs. The feature is open to Pro, Max and Enterprise subscribers. 9to5Mac reports the mode can run tasks without an internet connection, though Perplexity’s announcement does not explicitly mention offline use.

Perplexity says Computer came to local files and native Mac apps as Personal Computer in May. Hybrid Compute, launched in September, splits work between cloud frontier models and an on-device model, and it remains available. On September 24, Perplexity brought Portable Computer, an on-device version, to Windows PCs with AMD Ryzen AI Max processors. What is new on the Mac is that a task can run end to end on the device without touching the cloud.