Ari Helper

SuperGrok sign-in for Grok models — use your SuperGrok / X Premium+ subscription instead of (or alongside) a console API key. Prefer SuperGrok-only billing when you want, with automatic session refresh via iCloud Keychain. Code Session tooling is much more reliable: Grok tool calls are parsed and forced when needed, shell commands work better under App Sandbox (Shell Helper setup), and the Mac sidebar now tabs Browser, Terminal, and Activity so they don’t all fight for space. Open multiple browser tabs and terminal sessions side by side. Session diffs, expandable activity rows, and multi-agent task settings round out the agent workflow. Also in this release: image attachments with Apple Intelligence via on-device Vision; Grok 4.5 agentic coding; Local Inference API; OpenAI GPT-5.6; and animated-image fixes.

OpenAI's new GPT-5.6 models are here. Pick GPT-5.6 Sol (flagship), Terra (balanced), or Luna (fast and cost-efficient) in the model picker and in Shortcuts — and when Ari auto-selects a model for you, complex reasoning, coding, and research now go to Sol while everyday chat uses Terra. Fixed: animated images (GIF, APNG, WebP) streamed from a personal media server with a self-signed certificate no longer show a black screen in the full-screen viewer.

Lighter, faster install. Ari no longer bundles a one-size-fits-all AI model, so the download is dramatically smaller and installs much quicker. Apple Intelligence is now the default. On supported devices (iOS 26 / macOS 26) Ari chats with Apple's private on-device model right out of the box — no setup, no API key, and nothing leaves your device. Optional on-device vision, sized to your device. On first launch Ari offers to download Google's Gemma 4 model so you can send photos and images to a fully on-device assistant that works offline. Ari automatically picks the best-fitting Gemma version for your hardware instead of shipping one heavy copy for everyone — and you can always skip it. Manage or switch models anytime in Settings. Fixed: a downloaded model could occasionally appear twice in your model list. Downloads are now de-duplicated correctly.

Ari now brings Apple Intelligence chat. On supported devices Ari talks to Apple's on-device foundation model directly in the app — streaming answers, full conversation history, and text-to-speech, with zero data leaving your device and no API key. If Apple Intelligence is off or still downloading, Ari explains why and falls back to its built-in local model automatically. The "Ask Ari" Siri shortcut uses it too when available. Find any chat with Spotlight — even by what's in its pictures. Regular conversations now appear in system Spotlight, and Ari can index the contents of their images entirely on-device: text in screenshots and photos becomes searchable, and recognized objects and scenes become keywords. It's controlled by a new "Index Image Contents" setting, and private conversations, their media, and Fortress Mode sessions are never indexed. New sensitive-content guards: when Sensitive Content Warning is enabled in iOS Settings, Ari checks every chat image — attached, AI-generated, or incoming — on-device before showing it, and blurs anything flagged behind a "Show Anyway" interstitial. Adults who verify their age with Apple's privacy-preserving Declared Age Range check can optionally skip the warnings. Ari is now a first-class Shortcuts citizen. Every action takes a dynamic AI Model parameter — Apple Intelligence, any downloaded local model, or any configured cloud provider — resolved live. New actions: Start Conversation, Generate Image, Edit Image, Analyze Documents, Speak Response, Get/Set Ari Setting, Run Code Session Task on macOS, and Dispatch Task to Mac. Private conversations stay invisible to Shortcuts, and Fortress Mode applies everywhere. And Ari is on your wrist. The new Apple Watch app is a remote control for Ari on your iPhone: dictate or scribble a question and the answer streams back, generated by whatever model you have selected — including fully-offline local models. Add the "Ask Ari" complication or Smart Stack widget, have replies spoken aloud, hand long answers off to your iPhone, and let questions queue automatically when your iPhone is out of reach. Private conversations are never accessible from the watch.

5.4.0 is a major step up for agentic coding. The AI can now drive a sandboxed in-app browser, take screenshots of your local dev server, edit files between turns in a TreeSitter-powered editor, and run real git operations via libgit2 — including push and pull with your saved Personal Access Token, in-memory anonymous remotes so no token ever lands in your .git/config, plus stash, amend, and force push. Local model downloads also got a polish pass. Multi-shard MLX repos finally show smooth byte-accurate progress instead of the old staircase. Add a Hugging Face token to unlock gated models like Gemma. Cancel + retry buttons on every in-flight download, with proper partial-file cleanup.