Guide

Words your apps choose to share. Never pictures of your screen.

1. Words, never pictures

   Some assistants watch your screen the way a camera would, taking a picture every few seconds and sending it off to be read. Ambient never takes a picture. It doesn’t ask for Screen Recording, and it can’t see anything an app hasn’t chosen to describe. Password fields are never read, in any app.

2. Two keys, both yours

   You let Ambient in once, under System Settings › Privacy & Security › Accessibility. After that, each app decides what it shares. Most share their text from the start. A few hold it back until you switch on their own accessibility setting.

3. Yours to take back

   Switch an app’s setting off, exclude the app in Ambient’s Settings, or remove Ambient from Accessibility, and she stops reading it.

If something you highlight never reaches Ambient, the app is keeping its words back. Here is how to share them, for the apps we have looked at so far.

• One setting

  Google Docs

  Docs paints the page itself, so its words stay out of Accessibility until you ask for them.

  1. In a document, open Tools › Accessibility settings.
  2. Turn on screen reader support (⌘⌥Z).
  3. Turn on braille support. This is the switch that shares what you select.

  You don’t need a braille display. The setting makes Docs write the document out in words, and those words are what Ambient reads.

• One setting

  Google Slides and Sheets

  Drawn the same way as Docs, with the same menu.

  1. Open Tools › Accessibility settings.
  2. Turn on screen reader support, then braille support.

  Not yet tried with Ambient.

• One setting

  Visual Studio Code

  VS Code keeps its editor out of Accessibility unless it believes a screen reader is listening. Until then the editor tells Accessibility only that it “is not accessible at this time.”

  1. In any editor, press Shift+Option+F1, or run Toggle Screen Reader Accessibility Mode from the Command Palette.
  2. To keep it on, open Settings (⌘,), search for “accessibility support”, and choose on.

  The same switch covers the built-in terminal. Chat panels and extension views are web pages and work as they are.

  Not yet tried with Ambient.

• One setting

  Cursor, Windsurf and other editors built on VS Code

  They share VS Code’s editor, and its switch.

  1. Press Shift+Option+F1 in an editor, or set Editor: Accessibility Support to on in Settings.

  Not yet tried with Ambient.

• One setting

  IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm and other JetBrains IDEs

  JetBrains IDEs describe their editors to screen readers only when asked.

  1. Open Settings › Appearance & Behavior › Appearance.
  2. Under Accessibility, turn on Support screen readers.
  3. Restart the IDE.

  Not yet tried with Ambient.

• Works as is

  Chrome, Arc, Brave and Edge

  Chrome and the browsers built on it build their accessibility tree only when something asks. Ambient asks once when you open one, and the browser answers. There is nothing to switch on.

• Works as is

  Slack, Notion, Discord, Obsidian and other apps built on Chromium

  The same as Chrome: Ambient asks, the app answers, and there is nothing to switch on.

  Not yet tried with Ambient.

• Works as is

  Safari, Pages, Notes, Mail, TextEdit and Xcode

  Apple’s apps share their text with Accessibility from the start.

• Can’t be read

  Figma, Miro and other design canvases

  They draw everything as pixels, with no words underneath for the app to share, so there is nothing for Ambient to read. In Figma, layer names still come through.

This guide grows as we try more apps. If an app you use keeps its words from Ambient, write to ritesh@rao.nyc and we’ll add it.