Summary
A native Swift binary that lets Claude drive macOS through 63 tools spanning Accessibility APIs, window management, screen capture with OCR, Safari and Chrome tab control, synthetic input events, Spotlight search, and system toggles. It's developer-ID signed and notarized, ships as a one-click .mcpb bundle, and runs without Node or Python. The Accessibility bridge alone gives you read/write access to UI trees across every running app, which means you can automate workflows that would otherwise need brittle AppleScript or paid macro tools. File output is restricted to user directories and Desktop to prevent path traversal. Reach for this when you want Claude to operate your Mac the way a user would, clicking buttons and reading windows instead of calling APIs.
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mac-control-mcp
Native Swift MCP server for full macOS automation. 63 tools in one signed .app bundle — no Python, no Node runtime, no Electron.
Gives any MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, etc.) the ability to:
- Read and mutate the Accessibility tree of any running app
- Drive Safari and Chrome (tabs, navigation, JS eval)
- Capture the screen, a display, or a specific window (ScreenCaptureKit)
- OCR what's on screen
- Click, type, scroll, drag, send key events
- Control windows (move / resize / fullscreen / minimize / main)
- Manage the clipboard
- Launch / activate / quit apps
- Search Spotlight's index (NSMetadataQuery) and launch results
- Toggle dark mode, volume, list displays, inspect menus
Install
Requires macOS 14.0+. Three options, in order of simplicity:
1. One-click install (Claude Desktop, recommended)
The server is published as an MCP Bundle — a zip with a manifest.json that Claude Desktop reads directly:
- Download mac-control-mcp-v0.2.6.mcpb from the release page.
- Double-click the
.mcpbfile. Claude Desktop opens an install dialog. - Click Install. The server is registered under the name
mac-control-mcpand available immediately in new chats. - First tool call triggers the macOS TCC consent prompts (Screen Recording, Accessibility, Apple Events). Grant all three once — the bundle is Developer-ID signed and notarized, so grants persist across updates.
It's also listed on the official MCP Registry as io.github.AdelElo13/mac-control-mcp, so any MCP client that supports the registry will find it by searching for "mac-control".
2. Download the prebuilt app
If you don't use Claude Desktop or want manual control:
- Download MacControlMCP-v0.2.6-macos-universal.tar.gz.
- Extract and move
MacControlMCP.appto~/Applications/. - Point your MCP client at the binary inside:
{
"mcpServers": {
"mac-control-mcp": {
"type": "stdio",
"command": "/Users/you/Applications/MacControlMCP.app/Contents/MacOS/MacControlMCP"
}
}
}
Add that block to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (Claude Desktop) or ~/.claude.json → mcpServers (Claude Code).
Verify the download with the published SHA-256:
shasum -a 256 MacControlMCP-v0.2.6-macos-universal.tar.gz
# should match MacControlMCP-v0.2.6-macos-universal.sha256 on the release
3. Build from source
For contributors or if you want to tweak the code. Requires Swift 6 / Xcode 16+:
git clone https://github.com/AdelElo13/mac-control-mcp.git
cd mac-control-mcp
./scripts/build-bundle.sh
Produces ~/Applications/MacControlMCP.app/Contents/MacOS/MacControlMCP. Without a Developer ID cert in your keychain it'll fall back to ad-hoc signing (works for local use, TCC grants reset on every rebuild).
To re-sign + re-notarise an existing Apple Developer account:
# one-time: store notary credentials in keychain
xcrun notarytool store-credentials "mac-control-mcp" \
--apple-id "you@example.com" --team-id "XXXXXXXXXX"
# subsequent builds:
NOTARIZE_PROFILE=mac-control-mcp ./scripts/build-bundle.sh
Tool surface
| Category | Tools |
|---|---|
| Permissions | permissions_status, request_permissions |
| Accessibility | find_element(s), query_elements, list_elements, get_ui_tree, get_element_attributes, set_element_attribute, read_value, perform_element_action, wait_for_element, scroll_to_element |
| App lifecycle | list_apps, launch_app, activate_app, quit_app, force_quit_app, wait_for_app, focused_app |
| Windows | list_windows, focus_window, move_window, resize_window, set_window_state, wait_for_window, move_window_to_display |
| Input | click, mouse_event, drag_and_drop, scroll, type_text, press_key, press_key_sequence, key_down, key_up, convert_coordinates |
| Menus | click_menu_path, list_menu_paths, list_menu_titles |
| Browser | browser_list_tabs, browser_get_active_tab, browser_navigate, browser_new_tab, browser_close_tab, browser_eval_js |
| Screen | capture_screen, capture_window, capture_display, ocr_screen |
| Clipboard | clipboard_read, clipboard_write, clipboard_clear |
| Spotlight | spotlight_search, spotlight_open_result |
| System | set_volume, set_dark_mode, list_displays |
| File dialogs | file_dialog_set_path, file_dialog_select_item, file_dialog_confirm, file_dialog_cancel, wait_for_file_dialog |
Total: 63 tools.
Security model
- Tools that write files (
capture_*,ocr_screen) validateoutput_pathvia a strict allow-list — only the user-scoped temp dir (NSTemporaryDirectory()) and~/Desktop,~/Documents,~/Downloads,~/Picturesare accepted. Symlinks at the target path are rejected to prevent redirection./tmpis deliberately excluded because it's shared across users and opens a TOCTOU window. - AppleScript string interpolation for
browser_eval_jswraps user code in(0, eval)(…)viaJSON.stringify, so quotes/newlines/unicode can't break out of the wrapper. - No network calls. Everything is local system integration.
Status (verified in the current release)
| Scope | State |
|---|---|
| Unit / integration test suite | 63 tests in 11 suites, all green locally and on CI (macos-15) |
| Live tool probe | 43 of the 63 tools exercised end-to-end via real MCP stdio against the running binary, all pass |
| Destructive tools (volume, dark mode, force_quit_app, drag_and_drop, file_dialog_*) | Verified live in a reversible way |
| Code signing | Developer ID Application (A3W973JZ49) with hardened runtime |
| Apple notarization | Accepted by Apple Notary Service, ticket stapled, spctl reports source=Notarized Developer ID |
| Gatekeeper flow | Extracted + launched with the com.apple.quarantine xattr set; no right-click-open needed |
| MCP Registry | Published as io.github.AdelElo13/mac-control-mcp v0.2.6 — distributed as an .mcpb bundle for one-click install |
| Architectures | Universal binary (arm64 + x86_64). Intel slice compiles cleanly but has not been runtime-verified on actual Intel hardware |
move_window_to_display | Skipped — requires a 2+ display setup |
If you run into an untested path, please open an issue with the reproduction — happy to fix fast.
Caveats
- Cross-origin iframes block
browser_eval_js— same-origin policy, not a limitation of the tool. Use AX coords or synthetic CGEvents for content inside embedded iframes from other origins. - First-run TCC prompts are unavoidable. macOS requires the user to grant Screen Recording, Accessibility and Apple Events the first time. The usage-description strings in
Info.plistmake the consent dialogs show up with a clear reason, but you still need to click Allow in System Settings once.
Development
# Run the test suite (63 tests in 11 suites)
swift test
# Build without packaging
swift build -c release
# Live probe the running binary via MCP stdio
python3 scripts/mcp-sweep.py # if included
License
MIT — see LICENSE.
Contributing
Issues and pull requests welcome. Adversarial reviews especially — prior releases went through 11 rounds of external review before shipping.
Featured
Keep your Mac awake while Claude Code and 40+ AI agents run. Sleeps when they're idle.
One time payment $9 →Integrate web data into your AI product. One API to scrape website & brand data.
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Packagehttps://github.com/AdelElo13/mac-control-mcp/releases/download/v0.8.1/mac-control-mcp-v0.8.1.mcpb
TransportSTDIO
UpdatedApr 22, 2026
