Aipointer is live · free · last verified 26 Oct 2026 · viability monitor
Aipointer
A desktop AI overlay that answers questions about whatever your cursor is pointing at on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
For the narrow but constant problem of needing to know something about what is already on your screen, AIPointer removes more friction than a chat tab. Holding Right-Cmd and pointing beats alt-tabbing to ChatGPT or Claude and pasting a screenshot. The BYOK model keeps the app itself at $0 and provider-agnostic, and the live model picker plus primary-with-three-fallback router make it a daily driver rather than a demo. Two caveats decide it for you: you must supply and pay for your own API key, and macOS requires Accessibility and Screen Recording permissions. If you want persistent threads or agentic tasks, look at Skales instead.
Verdict generatedVerified 19d ago · liveness 57/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/aipointer
- Developers who want inline explanations of code without leaving the editor
- Analysts and researchers asking about charts, PDFs, or images already on screen
- Writers doing lookups or translation mid-flow without breaking concentration
- Power users who already hold provider keys and want a lightweight desktop assistant
- Users who don't want to supply and manage their own provider API key and billing
- Teams needing SSO, role-based access, or centralized billing
- Anyone who needs persistent chat history or a thread timeline by default
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Skip AIPointer if you want an assistant you can log into from a phone or browser tab, or if you'd rather not supply and pay for your own OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, or Gemini key.
The app is free but every question bills your own provider account, so a heavy day of pointing and asking shows up on your OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, or Gemini invoice, not anyone else's.
AIPointer sits at the cheapest end of the desktop AI assistant category because there is no subscription: the build is free under BSL-1.1 and your only recurring cost is provider tokens on your own OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, or Gemini account. That makes it cheaper than flat-fee desktop assistants for light users, while very heavy users pay proportionally more than a fixed monthly plan would cost.
In short
Aipointer — A desktop AI overlay that answers questions about whatever your cursor is pointing at on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Best for Developers who want inline explanations of code without leaving the editor, Analysts and researchers asking about charts, PDFs, or images already on screen, Writers doing lookups or translation mid-flow without breaking concentration. Free to use.
What is Aipointer?
Aipointer — A desktop AI overlay that answers questions about whatever your cursor is pointing at on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Best for Developers who want inline explanations of code without leaving the editor, Analysts and researchers asking about charts, PDFs, or images already on screen, Writers doing lookups or translation mid-flow without breaking concentration. Free to use.
AIPointer is a small desktop overlay that answers questions about the exact thing you are already looking at. Hover your cursor over a line of code, a chart, or a PDF, hold Right-Cmd on macOS (Right-Ctrl on Windows and Linux), and a glass capsule opens beside the pointer. Type or speak a question and the reply lands next to that region, with no window switching and no screenshot pasting. You can also summon it by wiggling the cursor left-right-left within about 700ms or by clicking a status pill at the bottom of the screen, and holding the trigger key again lets you drag a rectangle to capture a custom region. The economics are bring-your-own-key. You paste an OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google Gemini key, which the OS keychain, DPAPI, or libsecret encrypts, and you pay your own token bill. A live model picker pulls each provider's current model list on demand, so you are not waiting on an app update for a newer Claude, GPT, or Gemini route. Underneath sits a primary-plus-fallback chain of up to three fallbacks, each able to pin its own model, and the router walks the chain on 5xx and 429 failures while still surfacing bad-key auth errors. Version 1.1.7 is the second reliability hotfix on top of 1.1.5: Local TTS now loads cleanly on every Mac variant, the Kokoro voice picker remembers your saved selection, and a Preview button lets you audition all 28 voices. Voice runs on three engines — System by default, Local Kokoro 82M for fully offline read-aloud after a roughly 231 MB download, and Cloud for top quality. Finder/Explorer auto-attach pulls up to five selected files into the prompt via the hotkey, and slash commands cover /web, /summary, /brief, /explain, /code, /translate, /improve, /define, /solve, /reply, and /identify. Against general chat apps in a browser tab, AIPointer competes on proximity and privacy: no telemetry, no analytics, no auto-collected crash reports, and source available under BSL-1.1 so you can audit the data flow yourself. If you need multi-step agents, computer use, or persistent workflows, the same author points to Skales as the wider-scope sibling.
Key features
- Hotkey-triggered AI overlay for the region under your cursor
- Right-Cmd on macOS, Right-Ctrl on Windows and Linux; hold 200ms to summon
- Mouse-wiggle trigger (left-right-left within ~700ms) and bottom status pill as alternate summon methods
- Hold the trigger key again and drag to capture a custom screenshot region
- Bring your own key: OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google Gemini
- Live model picker refreshes each provider's model list from its API
- Primary plus fallback chain: up to three fallbacks, each pinning its own model
- Router walks the chain on 5xx / 429 failures; auth errors still surface
- Three TTS voice engines: System (default), Local Kokoro 82M, and Cloud
- Local TTS runs fully offline after a one-time ~231 MB download
- 28 Kokoro voices with a Preview audition button (v1.1.7)
- Voice input via microphone alongside typed prompts
- Finder/Explorer auto-attach: select up to five files and press the hotkey
- Slash commands: /web, /summary, /brief, /explain, /code, /translate, /improve, /define, /solve, /reply, /identify
- No telemetry, analytics, or auto-collected crash reports; keys in OS keychain, DPAPI, or libsecret
Behind the verdict
AIPointer's core bet is that proximity beats feature count. A general assistant in a browser tab makes you describe what you are looking at; AIPointer takes a 512×384 JPEG screenshot of the region at trigger time, attaches your prompt and optionally your clipboard text, and sends all three straight to the provider you configured over TLS with your own key. There is no AIPointer-operated relay, so token billing lands on your provider account and the vendor never sees your queries, screenshots, or responses. What it does well: the trigger is physical and fast (hold the key 200ms, or wiggle the cursor left-right-left within about 700ms, or click the bottom status pill), and ESC dismisses. Slash commands give you shortcuts that plain prose does not — /web forces a web-grounded answer, while /summary, /brief, /explain, /code, /translate, /improve, /define, /solve, /reply, and /identify are content templates. Finder/Explorer auto-attach reads up to five selected files and attaches them automatically, routing images through vision, inlining text and code, and passing PDFs by name; with an empty prompt it auto-summarizes. Voice is unusually complete for a small utility: System TTS by default with no setup, Local Kokoro 82M fully offline after a roughly 231 MB download, and Cloud for maximum quality, with every engine failing safely back into System with an inline notice. What it does not do: there are no accounts and no cloud sync, and sessions stay in memory unless you opt into saving them to disk, so it is not a replacement for a threaded chat history. Local speech-to-text via whisper.cpp is listed as arriving in v1.2.0, so voice input today runs through the OS voice path. It is desktop-only for macOS, Windows, and Linux — no mobile or web build. And it is a pointer-and-answer tool, not an agent: for multi-step tasks and computer use the author himself redirects you to Skales. The licensing is worth reading before you build on it. BSL-1.1 makes it free for personal, educational, and internal business use, but commercial redistribution, SaaS hosting, and resale need a license until the code reverts to Apache 2.0 on 2030-05-19. If you are an internal team using it on your own machines, that is a non-issue. If you were planning to wrap it in a product, it is the whole issue. Where it fits: developers who want an inline explanation of highlighted code without leaving the editor, analysts summarizing a chart mid-presentation, writers doing a translation lookup without breaking flow, and privacy-conscious power users who already hold provider keys. Where it does not: anyone who does not want to manage API keys and billing, teams needing SSO, role-based access, or centralized billing, and anyone unwilling to grant macOS Accessibility and Screen Recording permissions — both are required, and there is no degraded mode if you skip the setup wizard.
Models under the hood
as of 2026-09-25
Limitations
- AIPointer requires you to supply your own API key and pay for tokens with OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google Gemini; the app has no hosting or billing of its own, so there is no AIPointer-operated relay and provider token costs land on your account.
- It is desktop-only for macOS, Windows, and Linux — no mobile or web version, no accounts, and no cloud sync, and sessions stay in memory unless you opt into saving them to disk.
- Local STT via whisper.cpp is listed as arriving in v1.2.0 and is not available yet, so voice input runs through the OS voice path.
- Model names and availability are fetched live from each provider's API, so behavior varies by provider.
- The BSL-1.1 license permits personal, educational, and internal business use but requires a license for commercial redistribution, SaaS hosting, or resale until it reverts to Apache 2.0 on 2030-05-19.
- On macOS, Accessibility and Screen Recording permissions are both required, and closing the first-run wizard before Complete quits the app — there is no degraded mode.
as of 2026-10-26
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Is Aipointer still active?
Aipointer is live · free · last verified 26 Oct 2026 · viability monitor.
Viability score
How well maintained and how widely used is Aipointer? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: November 2026
How we score →What do users say about Aipointer?
How we verified this
Every listed fact about Aipointer — pricing, features, links, status — is re-read from the vendor's own pages by our verification pipeline and each change is logged with a date; the last pass ran on 26 Oct 2026. Analysis is drafted with AI models and checked against our editorial standards before publishing; see how we verify.
Verification history
We have re-verified Aipointer 10 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — changed link health
- — changed hidden costs, setup time, our verdict, switching out, limitations, who should skip it, pricing fit, summary, description, features, use cases, switching in
- — changed who it suits, who should skip it, summary, description, pricing tiers, our verdict, features
- — changed pricing model, summary, description, our verdict, features, pricing tiers
- — changed features, summary, pricing tiers, who it suits, description, who should skip it, our verdict
- — changed link health
Showing the 6 most recent of 10 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
How much does Aipointer cost in 2026?
Aipointer: Free to use. Pricing last verified 26 Oct 2026.
Plans compared
Every published Aipointer tier, its price as the vendor publishes it, who it fits, and what it adds over the tier below. The 12-month cost projection follows.
| Plan | Price | Billing | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | — | Solo developers and privacy-conscious power users who already hold an OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, or Gemini key and want a $0 desktop overlay.Adds: Starting tier and only tier: the app is free under BSL-1.1 with all features unlocked, and you pay provider token costs directly on your own account. |
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Aipointer's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
AIPointer sits at the cheapest end of the desktop AI assistant category because there is no subscription: the build is free under BSL-1.1 and your only recurring cost is provider tokens on your own OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, or Gemini account. That makes it cheaper than flat-fee desktop assistants for light users, while very heavy users pay proportionally more than a fixed monthly plan would cost.
Has Aipointer's pricing changed?
No plan price for Aipointer has moved since we began logging in Aug 2026; the pricing page is re-read on every verification pass.
Who should pick Aipointer?
Pick Aipointer if you are Developers who want inline explanations of code without leaving the editor, Analysts and researchers asking about charts, PDFs, or images already on screen, Writers doing lookups or translation mid-flow without breaking concentration, Power users who already hold provider keys and want a lightweight desktop assistant.
Look elsewhere if you are Users who don't want to supply and manage their own provider API key and billing, Teams needing SSO, role-based access, or centralized billing, Anyone who needs persistent chat history or a thread timeline by default, Builders wanting to redistribute the code commercially or host it as SaaS.
Skip it if Skip AIPointer if you want an assistant you can log into from a phone or browser tab, or if you'd rather not supply and pay for your own OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, or Gemini key.
GeneratedReal-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Aipointer actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
You're staring at a stack trace in your editor and don't want to lose your place. You hover the cursor over the failing function, hold Right-Cmd, and type /code ask why this throws on an empty list.
Outcome: The explanation opens in the glass capsule next to your cursor, you press ESC, and you're back in the file without a single alt-tab.
A dense revenue chart is on screen and someone asks what drove the dip. You point at the chart region, hold the trigger key, and ask for a verbal summary; the fallback chain keeps the answer coming if your primary provider 429s.
Outcome: You get a plain-language read of the chart beside the pointer while the meeting keeps moving, with no screenshot pasted into a chat tab.
You select a contract PDF in Finder, press the hotkey, and let auto-attach pull it in; with an empty prompt AIPointer auto-summarizes it, and you have Local Kokoro read the result aloud offline.
Outcome: The summary and read-aloud happen with no telemetry leaving the machine and no AIPointer relay, and your key stays in the OS keychain.
Use cases
- Point at a block of code and ask for a bug fix or refactoring suggestion without leaving your editor.
- Hover over a graph or diagram and ask for a verbal summary of what it shows.
- Attach a PDF by selecting it in Finder and ask for a one-sentence abstract.
- Use voice input to translate a foreign-language UI element in place.
- Summarize an email or document by pointing at its window and typing /summary.
- Identify an unknown icon or button in unfamiliar software by hovering over it.
- Read an article or email aloud with offline Kokoro TTS while you work on something else.
- Force a web-grounded answer on something on screen with the /web slash command.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Aipointer — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
About five minutes for a developer: download the build for your OS, paste one provider key into the five-step wizard, and grant macOS Accessibility plus Screen Recording. Analysts and writers should budget ten minutes, mostly deciding between System, Local (a ~231 MB download), and Cloud voice. Skipping the wizard's Complete button quits the app, so finish it in one pass.
Switching to or from Aipointer
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From ChatGPT or Claude in a browser tab: paste your OpenAI or Anthropic key into AIPointer settings and replace screenshot-pasting with the hold-and-ask trigger.
- →From a macOS-only overlay tool: install the Windows or Linux build instead — Right-Ctrl is the trigger and the same provider key carries over.
- →From Skales: keep Skales for multi-step agents and computer use, and add AIPointer alongside it for the single-question lookups the author separates out.
- ↗To Skales: same author, larger scope — move there if you need multi-step agents, computer use, and persistent workflows rather than one-question answers.
- ↗To ChatGPT or Claude in a browser: go back if you need accounts, cloud sync, and threaded history more than cursor proximity.
- ↗To a team plan with SSO and centralized billing: AIPointer has no accounts or admin layer, so a managed seat-based assistant is the path.
Integrations
Resources & guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Aipointer”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Aipointer” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Aipointer.
Official links
What are the best Aipointer alternatives?
The closest alternatives to Aipointer we list are Dot Copilot, Flot.ai and Flakes. Ranked by direct product-type match, not category overlap.
| Alternative | Pricing | Starts at | Last verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dot Copilot | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
| Flot.ai | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
| Flakes | Free | Free | — |
Alternatives to Aipointer
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Dot Copilot
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Tools that pair well with Aipointer
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Aipointer, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Dot Copilot
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Flot.ai
Flot.ai puts an AI writing and reading copilot in a floating sidebar over any macOS or Windows app — plus an AI Memory that recalls what
Flakes
A keyboard-first, AI-native web browser for macOS that reads every tab you have open.
Aipointer vs its closest rival
Aipointer's closest head-to-head is with Guesty.
Our Aipointer vs Guesty verdict written Jul 3, 2026 is more than 90 days old, so it is being re-reviewed against current data and is not shown.
Frequently asked questions
Categories
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For makers of Aipointer
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