PopChat 0.1.3

A bug-fix release. If you installed 0.1.0, 0.1.1 or 0.1.2 from a DMG, please update — those builds crash in two places on any Mac other than the one they were built on.

Fixed: crash when opening the hotkey recorder or rendering a formula

Clicking the shortcut field in Settings › Hotkey, or receiving a reply containing LaTeX, quit the app on the spot. The dependencies that provide the shortcut recorder and the math fonts looked for their resource bundles in a directory that only exists on the build machine; the copies shipped inside the app were never consulted. PopChat now points those lookups at its own Contents/Resources, and the build verifies from inside the assembled app that both bundles resolve there before a release can be produced.

Building from source

build.sh now pins SwiftPM's build backend and, on Command Line Tools whose default SDK requires Xcode's SwiftUI macro plugin (CLT 27.0), builds against the installed macOS 26 SDK instead. Use ./build.sh debug rather than a bare swift build for the headless harnesses.

Install

Download PopChat-0.1.3.dmg below, open it, and drag PopChat to Applications. Signed and notarized; the hotkey (default ⌥Space) is rebindable in Settings.

PopChat 0.1.2

A small release about getting started without a paid API key.

Free tiers are now one menu item

Settings › Providers → Add Provider… is a menu instead of a button. Alongside Custom… it lists a curated Free tiers section — Groq, Google Gemini, Mistral, Cerebras, NVIDIA NIM, Cohere, Hugging Face — and picking one creates an ordinary provider row already pointed at the right OpenAI-compatible base URL. Paste a key, hit ↻ to fetch the models, done.

• Template rows are normal custom providers: renameable, deletable, and they never change which provider the panel is currently using.
• Each one shows a green Free badge in the list and a one-line notice in its editor linking straight to that service's key page, plus the single caveat worth knowing (Mistral's Experiment plan opt-in, Cohere's trial cap, Hugging Face's monthly credit).
• Rate limits and model lists are deliberately not baked in — they go stale. Models come from the live /models fetch, and More free APIs… links the maintained free-llm-api-resources catalog this list was curated from.

Every included endpoint was verified OpenAI-shaped before it made the list. OpenRouter isn't in it because its preset already covers the free models there.

Install

Download PopChat-0.1.2.dmg below, open it, and drag PopChat to Applications. Signed and notarized; the hotkey (default ⌥Space) is rebindable in Settings.

PopChat 0.1.1

A polish release: the first round of real-user feedback, plus smarter attachment handling per provider.

Attachments know what your model can take

• PDFs can now travel as PDFs. When the selected provider/model accepts file input (OpenRouter models with the file modality, OpenAI), the original PDF is sent instead of locally extracted text — scanned PDFs included. Everywhere else, text extraction still applies. Custom endpoints get a Send PDFs directly toggle in Settings.
• Vision is checked per model — from OpenRouter's catalog, Ollama's own capability report, or what a model's rejection taught PopChat. Images are always sent as images (never silently degraded); a model known to refuse them warns right in the composer, and the model picker shows small capability glyphs.
• PopChat learns from rejections. A provider error that clearly points at an image/file part is remembered for that model and warns next time; Settings → Providers lists these exceptions with one-click clear.

Fixes from first-user feedback

• A fresh install no longer pretends an unconfigured provider works — the header pill says "Set up a provider…" until one is ready.
• Codex auto-detection now asks your login shell for its PATH (nvm-style installs found), with a Locate… fallback and which codex hints.
• Dismissing the panel (or switching to another app) also closes Settings; one hotkey press now dismisses even when Settings has focus.
• An empty streaming row shows a live status ("Starting Codex…", "Reasoning…") instead of a bare caret during long model cold starts.
• Screenshot thumbnails dragged straight from the capture preview now attach (file-promise drags), as do raw image drags from browsers.
• Codex app-server streams assemble by item id — no more duplicated text after a mid-stream retry; its web-search rows always name their query.
• Composer warnings render in full and failed-attach notices are dismissible.

Install

Download PopChat-0.1.1.dmg below, open it, and drag PopChat to Applications. Signed and notarized; the hotkey (default ⌥Space) is rebindable in Settings.

PopChat 0.1.0

The first public release of PopChat — a lightweight macOS menu bar app. Point it at whichever model you want — your ChatGPT subscription, an API key, or a local model.

Highlights

• Instant, non-activating panel — showing it never steals focus; dismissing returns focus immediately. ⌘P pins it open.
• Any OpenAI-compatible provider — OpenAI, OpenRouter, Ollama, or any custom endpoint, with model discovery via /models. Switch provider and model from the header pill; models with reasoning controls get a per-model Effort setting.
• Web search & fetch — the model can call web_search / fetch_url in a capped loop, shown as activity rows. DuckDuckGo (default, no key), Tavily, Brave, or OpenRouter's native web plugin. Globe toggle in the input bar.
• Attachments — drag & drop, ⌘V paste (files and raw screenshots), or the picker. Images become vision blocks; PDF / docx / rtf / xlsx / csv are extracted to text; anything unsupported gives an explicit error instead of degrading silently.
• Slash commands, find in chat (⌘F), a large draft editor (⌘E), markdown with cross-block selection, syntax highlighting, LaTeX, and one-click-copy <pasteable> cards.
• Liquid-glass look on macOS 26 with an adjustable tint, a solid fallback below; Light / Dark / Auto, accent presets plus a custom picker, and full Reduce Motion / Reduce Transparency support.

Install

Download PopChat-0.1.0.dmg below, open it, and drag PopChat to Applications. The disk image is signed and notarized, so it opens without a Gatekeeper detour. Settings → General has a launch-at-login toggle.

The hotkey (default ⌥Space) is rebindable in Settings. There's no Dock icon — PopChat lives in the menu bar.