macMCP v0.2.0 — drag, windows, flows; never steals focus

New capabilities + a stronger "never interrupts you" guarantee. 19 tools now.

New tools

• mac_drag — press-drag-release between two screen points: sliders, canvas drawing, reordering, resize handles, drag-and-drop. (A drag uses a real mouse-down, so it's the one action that raises the window.)
• mac_window — Accessibility window management: move / resize / minimize / unminimize / close / raise / list, targeted by window title or the focused window. move/resize/minimize are attribute writes that don't raise or steal focus; only raise brings a window forward.
• mac_wait_for — wait until an element (by label/role) appears — or, with absent, disappears — before acting. No more screenshot-polling by hand.
• mac_do — run a whole sequence in one call: click / type / key / scroll / wait / delay, stopping at the first failure. Fewer round-trips = fewer model turns.
• mac_click by query — find-and-click a control by its label in one call, no prior read.

Never steals focus

Control clicks now invoke the element via Accessibility (AXPress) instead of synthesizing a mouse-down, so driving an app no longer raises it or pulls your focus. Screenshots never activate the app either (ScreenCaptureKit captures occluded windows). The only things that raise a window are an explicit mac_window raise, or a mac_drag (which needs a real mouse-down).

Fixes

• Empty bundleId no longer shadows a provided pid when targeting an app.
• windowMapping uses the backing scale of the display a window actually sits on — accurate clicks/screenshots on multi-monitor mixed-DPI setups.

Project

• CI (GitHub Actions): swift build + protocol self-test on every push.
• A prebuilt macMCP.app.zip is attached to this release by CI. It's ad-hoc signed and not notarized, so clear quarantine first:

  xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine macMCP.app && mv macMCP.app /Applications/

  For regular use, building from source (make install) with your own signing identity is recommended so TCC grants persist.

macMCP v0.1.1 — never steals focus

Patch release focused on not interrupting you while it drives an app.

Fixed: driving an app no longer brings it to the front

• Clicks now invoke controls via Accessibility (AXPress) at the target point instead of synthesizing a mouse-down. A synthetic mouse-down makes a window key and raises it; AXPress invokes the control without raising or focusing the app — so the app stays exactly where it is in your window stack. Falls back to a real click only when there's nothing actionable under the point (blank space, a canvas, text-cursor placement), which inherently needs a real click. Applies to mac_click and mac_computer.
• mac_screenshot never activates the app — the bringToFront option is gone. ScreenCaptureKit captures occluded/background windows, so a capture never needs to raise the window.

Net effect: reads, accessibility-tree snapshots, control clicks, typing, and screenshots all leave your focus and window order untouched. (Verified live: pressing a control leaves the previously-frontmost window in place; a synthetic click on blank space is the only thing that still raises a window.)

Also in this line since v0.1.0: faster AX reads (batched attribute fetches), downscaled + JPEG screenshots, window-enumeration caching, and mac_menu for controlling backgrounded (incl. Electron) apps via the menu bar.

macMCP v0.1.0

macMCP lets Claude (or any MCP client) control any macOS app — enumerate apps, screenshot a window, read its accessibility tree, click / type / scroll / press keys, drive menus, and watch per-app network connections. Sister project to safari-mcp; same idea, for native apps (Lark, Slack, Spotify, …) instead of Safari.

Zero third-party dependencies, hand-rolled JSON-RPC, no paid Apple Developer account required.

Permission model

Per-app, two tiers (keyed on bundle id), managed from a menu-bar app:

• Default — Claude only learns an app exists/is running, plus window titles + frontmost state.
• Full — screenshot, accessibility read/drive, input, and network metadata for that app.

Granting is a one-click native prompt (or a menu-bar toggle); revoking is one click. Claude can never self-grant. The gate fails closed on signing-identity mismatch, and an app can only screenshot its own windows.

Tools (15)

• Default: mac_list_apps, mac_app_info, mac_list_windows, mac_permissions, mac_network_status
• See: mac_screenshot (ScreenCaptureKit, downscale + JPEG), mac_read_ui, mac_find_element
• Act: mac_click, mac_type, mac_scroll, mac_key, mac_computer (coordinate fallback), mac_menu (menu-bar control — works on backgrounded apps without stealing focus)
• Network: mac_read_network (per-app connection metadata via lsof; works on every app including cert-pinned ones — bodies are out of scope)

Background & focus

Input is delivered via CGEventPostToPid and AX presses, and captures via ScreenCaptureKit — so macMCP never moves your cursor or steals focus. Native apps drive fully in the background; Electron apps (Chromium) only expose their in-window tree while focused, but mac_menu controls them backgrounded.

Install

make install   # builds + installs /Applications/macMCP.app, registers the `macmcp` MCP server

Then grant Accessibility + Screen Recording to macMCP in System Settings, and restart your MCP client. Set MACMCP_SIGN_IDENTITY to a stable code-signing identity so the permission grants persist across rebuilds.

Requirements

macOS 14+.