Beta on TestFlight
Ambient Link
In beta: your iPhone asks, your Mac thinks.
Ambient Link pairs with Ambient on your Mac over your home Wi‑Fi. The iPhone listens and speaks for itself; the Mac does the thinking, with the same memory and the same conversation. Only words cross between them, encrypted end to end.
Run the demo: the iPhone pairs with the Mac above it, sends a note home and asks a question out loud. Turn your sound on to hear her.
Ambient, with your Mac
On your Mac, open Ambient › Settings › iPhone and show a pairing code.
The iPhone listens and speaks
The microphone, the transcription and Mary’s voice all run on the iPhone. Sound never crosses, in either direction: what you say leaves as words, and what she says arrives as words.
Your Mac thinks
The model that writes each reply, and Thread, the memory it draws on, stay on your Mac. The iPhone holds neither: it asks, and shows what the Mac wrote.
One conversation
There is one conversation, and it lives on your Mac. The iPhone mirrors it, so a question asked from the kitchen is on the Mac when you sit back down, brushstrokes and all.
Paired by you, sealed end to end
Pairing takes a code scanned from the Mac and one Allow, clicked there. From then on everything between the two is encrypted with keys that never leave them. For now they need the same Wi‑Fi, or to be near each other.
The Mac’s screen stays out of it
A question from the iPhone is answered from memory. It sees the window in front of the Mac only when you turn that on in Ambient Link.
Notes come home
A note written on the iPhone is filed in Thread on your Mac, under Notes from iPhone, and Mary draws on it like anything else you have read. A locked note never leaves the iPhone.
On-device, or signed in
On-device, nothing leaves the two of them: the Mac’s own model writes every reply. Signed in, the Mac may answer with hosted replies, as it would a question typed on it. Either way the iPhone talks only to your Mac, the link between them is sealed, and the memory stays home.
Away from home
Next, your Mac from anywhere — through a relay that can’t read a word.
For now the iPhone and your Mac share your home Wi‑Fi. Next, a relay will let the iPhone reach your Mac from anywhere.
It carries, it cannot read
The relay passes on only what the iPhone and the Mac have already encrypted. It holds no key and cannot read a word.
The thinking stays home
Away from home, the model and the memory are still on your Mac. The relay answers nothing itself.
Yours to switch on
Reaching your Mac through the relay will be a switch in Settings › iPhone. Today it reads Coming soon.
In beta. Ambient Link is how Rao means to keep every one of its users private in what comes next: your own Mac does the thinking, your iPhone carries it around the house, and on-device, nothing you say leaves the two of them.