Perplexity Launches Personal Computer for Mac, an Always-On AI Agent for $200/mo Max Subscribers (April 2026)

Perplexity on April 16, 2026 began rolling out Personal Computer for Mac to its $200-per-month Max subscribers — a local AI agent that lives on your machine, responds to a global Command-Command shortcut, and can read, write and orchestrate work across your files, native apps and the Comet browser without sending data through a cloud browser session.

What Happened

Perplexity first announced Personal Computer on March 11, 2026 as a waitlisted extension of its cloud-based Perplexity Computer agent. On April 16 the feature officially left the waitlist and started shipping to every Max subscriber on macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Max subscribers who had joined the waitlist were prioritized; the company told press it expects full Max rollout within days.

The product is shipped inside the existing Perplexity for Mac app. Pressing both Command keys activates Personal Computer anywhere on the system; it accepts text or voice input and can then orchestrate teams of AI agents across more than 20 frontier models to complete a task. Every action the agent takes is logged and reversible via a kill switch, and files it creates are written to a sandboxed location with an auditable action history.

Key Details

• Pricing — Personal Computer is exclusive to Perplexity Max at $200/month. Pro subscribers at $20/month do not get local access; they continue to use the cloud-only Perplexity Computer.
• System requirements — Any Mac with macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Perplexity explicitly recommends a Mac mini as a dedicated "always-on" machine for 24/7 agent workloads.
• Capabilities — Read and write access to any folder the user grants, integration with native apps including iMessage, Apple Mail and Calendar, use of the Comet browser for web tasks, and the ability to be triggered remotely from the iPhone app with two-factor authentication.
• Safety primitives — Every action is logged, a kill switch ends an agent run instantly, and generated files land in a sandbox rather than anywhere on disk.

What Developers and Users Are Saying

Reaction across Hacker News, the r/MacApps subreddit, and the MacRumors forums has been mixed but leaning positive on the concept and sharply critical of the price. Power users are excited about turning an idle Mac mini into a dedicated local agent machine — "a server for you, not a cloud provider," as one top-voted HN comment put it. Others were blunt about the sticker shock: "I was very curious to run it, but I am not looking for a $200/month subscription just to mess around with it," wrote one MacRumors commenter.

Skeptics on Hacker News also challenged Perplexity's productivity claims, with one user calling them "a wild statement that does not seem to be supported by any actual data." The privacy framing landed better than the pricing: several threads highlighted that, unlike cloud agents, Personal Computer keeps local file access on the user's machine rather than proxying it through a cloud browser session.

What This Means for Developers and Users

For developers, Personal Computer is the first mass-distributed consumer agent that runs natively on macOS with real local file and native-app access — a design closer to what agent-framework builders have been prototyping on Claude Desktop and OpenAI's Operator than to a chat UI with plugins. The implication is that the agent wars are now partly a fight over which frontier model vendor gets the keyboard shortcut on the OS.

For users, the practical question is whether $200/month is worth an always-on Mac agent. The pitch is specific: a machine that works overnight, processes to-do lists, reorganizes files, compares local documents against fresh web research, and lets you kick off work from your iPhone. If that sounds like a full-time virtual assistant, it may be priced fairly. If it sounds like a fancy shortcut, Pro at $20/month will do the same things in a browser tab.

What's Next

Perplexity has not announced a Windows or Linux version. The company has signaled that the Comet browser and Personal Computer share an agent runtime, so further integration between the two is likely. A developer API for third-party app orchestration has been hinted at but not dated. Watch Perplexity's Hub blog and the Personal Computer page for rollout updates.

Sources

• Perplexity — Personal Computer Is Here — the official launch blog post.
• MacRumors — launch coverage including system requirements and Mac mini recommendation.
• 9to5Mac — full launch coverage and Max-only pricing confirmation.
• Engadget — feature details and rollout timing.
• Thurrott.com — industry context and analyst reaction.
• Cult of Mac — user reactions and price skepticism.