MacPaw’s Mac AI assistant is now faster and more reliable, thanks to an overhaul of its underlying technology. Here are the details.
A bit of background
Last May, MacPaw announced Eney, an “AI-powered companion” that accepts requests in natural language and performs actions on the user’s behalf.
Here’s MacPaw on Eney’s original announcement:
We’re first launching Eney as an OS extension for Macs – an intelligent companion that lives on your desktop and helps you get things done through simple, conversational commands. Eney’s functionality is powered by built-in commands and a variety of integrations, including native MacPaw apps and third-party software provided by independent developers from Setapp, helping users do more in less time.
For example, if you want to remove the background of an image to isolate a subject, you can tell Eney to do so with just a simple command of “remove the background” or a similar phrase. By letting Eney handle small, but often time-consuming tasks, users can stay focused on their workflow without needing to launch a separate app and manually do it themselves.
Following the initial feedback, MacPaw spent the last few months reworking Eney’s underlying technology.
Eney now relies primarily on a local model (rather than relying exclusively on a cloud-based model), and supports platforms such as Google Drive, Google Calendar, and Google Docs, with more integrations “coming soon”.
Today, MacPaw is releasing this revamped version of Eney exclusively on Setapp, ahead of an open beta period scheduled for Spring 2026.
Here’s Mac Paw on today’s announcement:
Since day one, MacPaw has been committed to delivering the best, most innovative software solutions while keeping user privacy and security at the core of all our products. While there are ways to do this via the cloud, local engines keep your data closer to you, making it one of the reasons we’re implementing this change within Eney.
Eney’s new ELIX engine (Eney Local Intelligence MLX) automatically defaults to local processing and storage, meaning that reasoning, context search, skill execution, and conversation history are kept on the device rather than being sent to the cloud.
MacPaw says that if needed, Eney will resort to a cloud-based model to accomplish certain tasks, “such as utilizing API skills that require external services or downloading new skill manifests”.
They also note that having a local modal means that Eney can act faster, and also limit the amount of data that needs to leave the Mac.
Finally, MacPaw says that Eney’s new underlying technology will pave the way for a more personalized experience, with an upcoming memory feature that “will be able to better remember previous interactions, removing redundancies such as the need to repeat instructions within the same conversation.”
But what can Eney actually do?
Great question. In a nutshell, Eney can open, edit, and interact with documents and MacPaw-built apps installed on your Mac.
So, you can ask it to “turn on the VPN,” and it will open MacPaw’s ClearVPN to select a server. If you prompt it to “Upload this file to Google Drive,” it will do so, provided that you give it the necessary permissions.
For PDFs, you can ask it to split them into separate files. For movie files, you can ask it to trim the first few seconds. If you’ve got a Zoom meeting going, it can transcribe the meeting, and you can ask it to summarize it later.
To learn more about today’s update and install Eney on Setapp, follow this link.
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