Getting tired of useless AI chatbots, we introduced Eney – a proactive AI assistant for Mac

“AI can do anything,” they said. I believed them. I asked AI to organize my desktop files and got a 500-word instruction manual on how to do it myself. I asked AI to extract specific information from a 200-page report, and got quotes and stats that weren’t even in the document.

In the end, I realized that what I could do with AI from day to day was very limited, and complex routine tasks were out of the question. And my story isn’t unique.

I’m Oleh, Head of Product Management at Eney by MacPaw. Throughout my career, I've constantly worked in tech companies and interacted with Mac and iPhone users. And you know what? All of them complain about the overwhelming complexity of using too many apps. It takes a lot of time to find the right app, figure out how it works, manage subscriptions, and check for security. Eventually, you find that the tool doesn't have the functionality you need.

So, we created Eney by MacPaw. It’s a proactive AI assistant for Mac and iPhone that implements solutions instead of suggesting them. It doesn't explain how to convert file formats, organize folders, or clean up your system — it does it for you to save time and effort.

Sounds too good to be true? Let me show you how it works. You can also check it out on Setapp (get Eney for Mac) or the App Store (get Eney for iPhone) because we’ve just released the public version.

What is Eney? A simple explanation from its creators

Eney is a proactive AI assistant for Mac and iPhone that handles tasks for you and spots what needs attention on your device. Here’s what it means:

1. Eney is an actual AI-powered assistant. Its companion view hides quietly on your desktop and doesn't impose itself unnecessarily. But when you need it, it appears instantly, ready to complete your task — often before you've fully explained it. For example, when you copy text in a different language, Eney will give you a one-click translation suggestion.

2. Eney transforms your interaction with Mac and iPhone by taking over repetitive or annoying tasks. Unlike traditional AI chatbots that generate text responses, it is designed to act. Just enter your task, such as “Convert HEIC to PNG,” and Eney will perform it in seconds instead of giving you a manual.

3. Eney keeps an eye on what might need your attention. Scheduled 5 meetings a day? Eney can advise you to put longer breaks in between to get ready, eat lunch, and rest. Recently, the AI assistant reminded me that I hadn't restarted my Mac in 55 days and advised me to do so for better Mac health.

By the way, look at the way Eney speaks – no pressure, just friendly advice!

4. Eney is context-aware. This AI assistant understands your preferences, saves them, and references them through contextual memory. And you are always in control of the information because you can remove items from memory whenever you want.

So you don't need dozens of apps to perform mundane tasks. Just ask Eney. That's why we call it a proactive AI assistant for Mac and iPhone.

What's new in Eney

The biggest change with the new release (October, 2026) is that you can use Eney on both your Mac and iPhone. The new version also gives users new ways to use the AI assistant, from several proactive skills to connectors that let Eney work with the apps you use.

Let me give you a quick overview:

Eney’s features
Area	Eney details
Platforms	Mac and iPhone
Ready-made skills	Proactive skills such as Start my day, Review my week, and News digest
Connectors	Connect 15+ tools once, without any technical setup
Eney Wand	Act on text, numbers, images, and files on your screen
Views	Companion view and window view

The new mobile version brings a similar experience to iPhones. It also comes with proactive skills and connectors that allow you to automate parts of your day. You can use it for everyday tasks like creating reminders, managing calendar events, and reviewing your schedule.

You can either run the skills manually or set a particular time. For example, I’ve set Plan my day skill to run every weekday at 9 a.m. It checks my calendar, Slack, Gmail, and Google Tasks and gives me a realistic plan for the day. I still approve the final plan myself.

Then there’s Eney Wand. Instead of copy-pasting or uploading files, you can use it to act on items on your screen. It can be anything from numbers to just asking “what’s this?”

How Eney on Mac works

The main thing I like about Eney’s design is that it’s built to handle tasks the way you already work. You don’t need to learn any special language or master commands. Just give Eney something to do, and it will process the request and execute the task.

For example, you can just attach a Word file and tell Eney “Convert to PDF.” The AI assistant won’t even bother you with explanations. It will just complete the task and give you a link to the new file.

Contextual memory in Eney

To be more useful, the AI assistant uses contextual memory. Basically, it tries to understand you and your Mac based on your current chat, the items it has saved to memory, and the access it has to your system. It doesn’t monitor your activities, and you can always ask Eney to forget some things or even everything. For example, if you tell Eney that you prefer short, professional emails, it will use that style whenever you ask it to draft an email.

Eney's skills and proactive skills

Eney also heavily relies on skills, which are activities it has been programmed to do in a specific way. For example, when you ask the AI assistant to summarize a PDF, it will load the specific skill and follow the instructions provided at creation. You can also create your own skills using the Create Skill skill.

Proactive skills go even further to combine several actions and start automatically or come up as a suggestion when they are useful. I’ve set Eney to watch my downloads folder, and it often asks for permission to move things around before the folder becomes a total mess.

Eney's connectors

To get even more out of the AI assistant, you can use Connectors. Essentially, this is giving Eney access to some of the apps you use so that it can make them part of its tasks and skills.

You can connect your Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, Figma, and more. From there, just ask Eney to fetch information from your account or complete a task. It’s a great way to create a complete workflow in Eney. For example, you can ask the AI assistant to help you draft an email, then send it to a particular contact (if you’ve provided access) through Gmail. It will first save it as a draft, then ask for outright permission to send the email.

Multi-view interface in Eney

To interact with the AI assistant, you can use the companion view or the window view. The former just hangs around on your desktop until you need it. No imposition. Then, when you want to see your previous chats or configure workflows, you can use the window view to use Eney more like a regular app.

Eney Wand

If you’ve enabled Eney Wand and its shake option, you don’t necessarily have to use the companion view or window view. When you shake your mouse, it will let you point at anything on your screen and act on it. It can be text that you want to summarize, numbers that you want to calculate, or a screenshot you want to add markups to.

How Eney on iPhone works

Eney brings a similar approach to the iPhone. Instead of installing multiple apps and jumping between them, you can ask Eney to handle most of the small things you do throughout the day.

Manage your calendar and reminders

Eney on iPhone lets you connect your Apple Calendar, Apple Reminders, Google Calendar, and Google Tasks. And when you do, you no longer need to switch between these apps. Eney can create, edit, and delete your events when you ask in plain language. It also pulls up your meetings and lets you join with one tap.

Work with your contacts

Eney makes it easy to work with your contacts. You can use the AI assistant to look up a number, create a new contact, send a message, or make a call. And instead of being caught by surprise, you can just ask Eney, “What are the upcoming birthdays?”

Use your camera to get things done

Need to know more about something you are looking at? Just use Eney’s AI camera. It can explain physical things or even translate signs and menus when you are traveling.

Handle quick everyday tasks

You don’t need an app to generate QR codes, another to recognize songs, and 10 more for things like running speed tests and converting units and currencies. Eney can handle all that and much more. It essentially gives you a chance to cut down subscriptions (or avoid annoying ads), and it will also save you from constant app switching.

What Eney can actually do for your Mac and iPhone workflow

Eney can complete common tasks across productivity, system maintenance, and creative workflows. Let me share some of the ways I often use the AI assistant across Mac and iPhone to turn common tasks from frustrating time-sinks into simple interactions:

Task	How I used to complete it	How I do it with Eney	Where
Finding a specific document	Manually search through folders, trying different keywords	“Find me the report with our Q1 results”	Mac
Converting file formats	Research conversion tools, download the app, learn the interface, convert	“Convert this photo to PNG” or “Convert Word file to PDF”	Mac & iPhone
Cleaning up storage	Run disk analysis, manually delete files	“Help me clean Mac storage”	Mac
Sending an email with attachments	Open the Mail app, compose message, search for the file, attach it	“Send this document to Andrew”	Mac
Summarizing content	Read an entire article or watch a video and take notes	“Summarize the key insights from this video”	Mac & iPhone
Extracting text from an image	Find an OCR tool and copy the extracted text	“Extract the text from this image” or Shake a mouse > Select area > Copy as text	iPhone, Mac
Removing an image background	Open an editor, select the background manually, remove it, export	“Remove image background”	Mac & iPhone
Creating a reminder	Open Reminders and enter the details	“Remind me to follow up with Andrew tomorrow”	Mac and iPhone
Creating a QR code	Find a QR code generator and enter the information	“Create a QR code for this link”	Mac and iPhone

Thanks to its natural language processing, I can communicate with Eney as an AI assistant, and it understands me at a glance. Recently, I asked it to tell me jokes to cheer me up and then to pick out shoes. The AI assistant did a great job!

If you need to perform a complex task, such as sending key insights from a recorded meeting to colleagues, Eney will divide this task into several smaller ones and do the work for you. You don't need to ask it to “record the meeting,” “provide transcription,” “summarize key points,” or “send the meeting outcomes in an email attachment”. All you need to do is say what you want to accomplish. Eney will even offer to do it for you if it detects that you’ve started a meeting.

I asked Eney to transcribe and summarize our Zoom meeting, and here’s the result:

Eney usually adds it to your meetings to allow you to retrieve the notes, action items, transcription, and even audio.

Eney's proactive skills to try first

While Eney mostly helps based on your requests, it also comes with proactive skills you can use now and then to simplify some of the tasks that come up in everyday work. Some will help you get started, and others will save you from repetitive tasks.

Here are four I love that you can try first.

Start my day

If you are anything like me, getting a clear picture of your day in the morning helps make sure the things that need doing get done. The problem is it often involves checking the calendar, Slack, Reminders, and doing a 15-minute email triage. Start my day replaces all that. It goes through all necessary apps on my behalf and packages everything I should know in one brief.

To try it, all you need to do is tell Eney “Start my day.” You can also specify whether you want to work with Google Calendar or Apple Calendar.

Plan My Day

This one is closely related to Start my day but more hands-on. I mostly use it when I have a lot on my plate but don’t want to go through everything and plan it manually. When I tell Eney to “Plan my day,” the AI assistant pulls all my tasks from Jira, Linear, Notion, Reminders, Slack, and Gmail. It then creates a realistic plan that prioritizes urgent tasks and suggests moving some to the next day if I’m too busy to work on them.

Mac health alerts

This is one of my favorites because it keeps an eye on my Mac without me having to intervene. It checks the Mac in the background and only speaks up when something needs my attention. I always know when the disk is nearly full, when an app keeps crashing, when an app is using too much memory or CPU, and when it’s been a while since I last restarted my Mac. You can enable this skill under “Workflows” to let it run in the background. It won’t bother you at inappropriate times.

Folder manager

Folder manager helps make sure that your Mac doesn’t look like a junkyard of files and installers. When you enable it, the skill keeps an eye on your Downloads, Desktop, and Documents folders. Then, when Eney feels that a folder is turning into a cluttered mess, it shows you what’s in it and where each file should go. You can then ask for changes and give Eney permission to do a cleanup.

To try it, activate it under “Workflow.”

Who will benefit most from Eney?

Eney is available now for Mac and is free to try for your first 14 days with 10,000 AI credits. Eney is also available for iPhone on the App Store. Get Eney and enjoy the new level of interaction with your Mac and iPhone.

Eney is an essential assistant for different types of users.

General Mac and iPhone users

No matter how much we try, some of us just can’t keep our personal and work lives in separate lanes. You might use your iPhone to plan your workday and update your tasks, but it’s still the same device you’ll pull out to remember a birthday or save a recipe you found online.

Eney can help with both without building a complicated setup. You can use it to plan your day using Gmail, Google Tasks, Slack, and Jira. You can also ask for dinner ideas and send them to Apple Notes. And while you cook, Eney can tidy up your Mac by sorting the Downloads folder and organizing the Desktop.

Assistants

An assistant also needs an assistant. If you need to take notes during a meeting, you can outsource that to Eney. It will transcribe the meeting without joining your call and give you detailed notes with discussions, decisions, and action items. You can even ask the AI assistant to save them to your notes app or share with particular people.

Eney can also help pull information from your various work apps instead of manually digging through messages. It can then use this to plan your day, draft emails, and review your week.

Managers

Eney can take over the conversations and follow-ups that always fill up the time around meetings. Start My Day will prepare you for all upcoming client calls, and Eney will help draft the follow-up email in a preferred tone. 

You can also use the AI assistant to catch up on all project updates before a call and even prepare the presentation deck. And if priorities change within the day, you can just ask Eney to adjust your schedule.

Freelancers and small business owners

If you are the admin, the worker, and the manager, Eney can plug in the gaps and take a lot of admin work off your plate. You can use the AI assistant to plan your entire schedule. If you have an upcoming client call, the morning brief will remind you. If you need to respond to an email, just tell Eney what to write and give it permission to send it after review. 

You can then upload your scattered notes and ask the AI assistant to create a full proposal and export it to PDF. These are tasks that quickly add up over a day and a week, so Eney will save you a lot of time.

How did we build Eney: Insider’s info

Instead of building another chatbot that feels technical and impersonal, we wanted Eney to feel natural and easy to use. That meant designing everything around the way people actually work, from how you talk to it to how it proactively helps. And that was a challenge of its own.

To solve it, we had to implement several unconventional and highly creative solutions.

“We had to rethink standard UI patterns, experiment extensively, and iterate multiple times to achieve an intuitive and delightful UX. One of the most technically challenging and exciting aspects was developing a custom 3D engine that powers our animated character — a core part of the user experience,” says Maksym Mova, Engineering Manager at MacPaw.

Despite AI's growing popularity, creating a product based on an AI agent still feels like paving a new road. While it’s relatively easy to build a basic prototype, turning it into a stable and valuable product is a completely different challenge.

Unlike deterministic development, it involves embracing uncertainty and moving fast through experiments and trial and error — like Build — Measure — Learn. It demands a shift not only in process but also in the mindset of the entire team.

How to get Eney on Mac and iPhone

You can install Eney on both Mac and iPhone. Getting started is completely free. Eney is available now for Mac and is free to try for your first 14 days with 10,000 AI credits. Eney is also available for iPhone on the App Store.

How to Install Eney on Mac

Eney works on any Mac running Apple Silicon, from M1 and up. Here’s how to install Eney on Mac:

1. Download Eney from Setapp.
2. Install it on your Mac.

Now, just grant Eney the necessary permissions. You can then give it a task like organizing your day or summarizing a PDF.

How to install Eney on iPhone

You can also install Eney on an iPhone running iOS 26 and later (supported on iPhone 11 and up). The app is available on the App Store.

Here’s how to install Eney on iPhone:

1. Install Eney from App Store.
2. Open it on your iPhone and start using it.

You can use Eney for everyday tasks on your iPhone, from creating reminders and checking your calendar to sending emails and pulling up information from work apps.

Is Eney free?

Eney is free to try for your first 14 days with 10,000 AI credits. You can then top up to keep using it. In the first few weeks, you can try different skills to see which ones fit your day-to-day work.

My advice? While it can do lots of fun stuff on your behalf, start with the tasks you find annoying or time-consuming. For me, it’s email triage and planning my day.