Frequently asked questions

Orb is a native macOS menu-bar app that keeps your agent sessions one keystroke away. Press a global hot key and a Liquid-Glass dock slides in: a column of session bubbles on the right, the active session on the left. Each bubble is one running agent, and switching between them is instant because nothing restarts.

Sessions can run inside Apple's native container runtime, not just on your host. You set a session up once (install tools, clone repos), Save Snapshot to freeze that filesystem, and every new session boots from it with zero setup. From one snapshot you launch several sessions in parallel and run tasks against identical state.

Yes. Download the macOS build from the download page. No account, no subscription, no telemetry.

Orb requires macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later and the claude CLI on your PATH. A Local profile runs on the host with no extra setup. Container profiles run inside Apple's container runtime on macOS 26 (Tahoe).

No. Orb runs the Claude Code CLI for you and gives it a home: it launches your sessions, organizes them, and keeps them instantly reachable. It can also run each session inside its own container. You still need the claude CLI installed.

Today Orb drives the claude CLI, so each session is a claude session. Orb is built as a workspace for agents in general, so a single profile can keep several on hand. Support for other agent CLIs is on the roadmap.

A session can run inside Apple's native container runtime instead of on your host, so the agent gets its own isolated filesystem and toolchain. You pick the profile when you create the session. The agent works exactly as it would locally, and none of its writes touch your machine.

Once a session is set up the way you want (tools installed, repos cloned, dependencies built), Save Snapshot freezes that container's filesystem as the profile's baseline. Every new session on that profile boots from the snapshot, so there is no per-task setup. When your setup changes, update the baseline and snapshot again.

Yes. Instead of juggling worktrees to give each task a clean tree, you boot a fresh session from a snapshot that already has the repo and tools in place. Every session starts from identical state, and your working copy is never involved.

Yes. New sessions are copy-on-write clones of the snapshot, so you can launch several in parallel from the same baseline. Each one runs against identical state and stays isolated from the others. That is how you fan a task out across concurrent agents.

A profile defines where a session runs. A Local profile runs on your host, the way you would run claude yourself. Container profiles run inside the container runtime and carry a snapshot as their baseline. Both live under one Profiles concept, and a remote destination is the direction we are headed.

No. Credentials are stripped when a snapshot is saved, so secrets never get baked into a baseline that later sessions inherit. You bring credentials in per session instead of freezing them into the filesystem.

None by default. The global hot key uses Carbon's RegisterEventHotKey, which needs no Accessibility permission, and per-Space identity uses a private CoreGraphics call. The one opt-in exception is "New session from selection," which reads the frontmost app's selected text and so needs the Accessibility permission. It stays off until you turn it on.

No. Orb has no backend and collects nothing: it launches and manages local claude processes. Your prompts go wherever the claude CLI sends them, and Orb is not in that path.

Settings (hot keys, launch folders, claude command, dock sizes, restore-on-launch, selection capture) live in the menu-bar Settings window and persist via UserDefaults. Sessions persist locally under com.orb.sessions so they can be restored.

A bubble is one agent session. Click it to bring its session to the left, and its process keeps running even when another bubble is on screen. Switching bubbles only hides and shows views, so it never restarts a session.

Yes. Every session has a Claude pane and an on-demand Terminal (shell) pane, and you switch between them in the dock header. Both panes stay live, so you can inspect files, run a command, or roll something back right next to the agent without leaving the dock.

Each bubble belongs to the Mission Control Space it was created on and never follows you elsewhere. Switching Spaces shows that Space's bubbles. Space identity comes from the private SkyLight CGSGetActiveSpace API, wrapped defensively so Orb degrades to a single shared bucket if that call is ever unavailable.

Yes, if you enable "Restore sessions on launch" in Settings. Bubbles return after you quit or restart, and each resumes its last conversation with claude --continue the first time you open it. Because raw Space ids are not stable across a reboot, restored bubbles are remapped onto the Space current at launch.

Yes. It honors Reduce Motion (content animations are gated), Reduce Transparency and Increase Contrast (glass and semantic colors adapt), and Dynamic Type (real text uses semantic styles). Bubbles are real, focusable buttons reachable with Full Keyboard Access and VoiceOver.