Perplexity is expanding its presence on macOS with a new privacy-focused capability called Hybrid Compute, now available in the Perplexity Mac app. The feature is designed to keep sensitive information on your device by splitting AI tasks between cloud models and a local model running on your Mac.
The company first revealed work on this approach in June, describing a system that divides processing between remote and on-device models. With today’s rollout, the tool is officially live for Mac users.
How Hybrid Compute Works
According to Perplexity, its Computer tool now begins each task in the cloud before shifting portions of the work to a local model. Users can trigger a task from an iPhone, after which the Mac accesses relevant files and runs sensitive steps locally.
Privacy is handled through an on-device PII classifier, which reads each task on the Mac before anything is sent to the cloud. Names, addresses, and account numbers are replaced with stand-ins, then restored once the answer is returned. Perplexity says it has open-sourced this on-device classifier, which was trained in collaboration with the company’s Secure Intelligence Institute.
System Requirements for Mac Users
Hybrid Compute is limited to Macs with Apple silicon running macOS 15 or later. Machines with 8GB or 16GB of RAM cannot run the feature. The minimum requirement is 24GB of unified memory, with 32GB recommended for the best results.
Setup involves a one-time download of the local model, PPLX Qwen 3.8 27B, which the company says can be installed in a single click. There is no need for Ollama or manual runtime configuration, and no API key is required. Tasks handled locally use no cloud credits.
Perplexity’s Growing Mac Focus
Hybrid Compute is the latest example of Perplexity building tools around the capabilities of the Mac. In May, the company released a completely rebuilt version of its Mac app. Perplexity was also featured by Apple during the launch of the M6 Mac mini, with Apple citing Perplexity Personal Computer as a productivity use case for the new machine.
The feature is available today in the Perplexity Mac app, and setup requires a one-time download of the PPLX Qwen 3.8 27B local model.
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Image: 9to5mac.com
