App Compatibility

Most apps work without any configuration. Some need a small setup step, and a few are not yet supported.

Cotypist needs apps to make their text fields accessible to other software on your Mac. Most apps do this automatically, but some use custom text rendering that prevents Cotypist from reading or inserting text.

Apps marked as "Not supported" don't provide the access Cotypist needs. We cannot work around this on our end — the app developer would need to make changes on their side.

The same applies to anything running inside a virtual machine or remote-desktop session (such as Parallels or Citrix): Cotypist can only see native Mac apps, not the contents of a virtual or remote window.

Cotypist relies on Google Docs' Accessibility mode to read your document and show suggestions. Without it, Google Docs does not expose enough information for Cotypist to work.

When you start editing a Google Doc, Cotypist should automatically show a floating button offering to enable Accessibility for you. If that button does not appear, you can enable it manually:

1. In Google Docs, go to the Tools menu and select Accessibility.
2. Check "Turn on screen reader support".
3. Also check "Turn on braille support".
4. Click OK.

After enabling this, Cotypist should start showing suggestions as you type. If it still doesn't work, try restarting your browser or your Mac.

In some browsers (especially Arc and Dia), Cotypist can only show its suggestions in a "mirror" window above the text field rather than inline with the text itself.

However, it is possible to enable inline text suggestions in Arc and Dia. There are two ways to do this:

Option 1: Enable Text Metrics in the accessibility tab

1. Open chrome://accessibility in Arc or Dia.
2. Check the "Text Metrics" option.
3. Keep that tab open in the background while using Cotypist. Pinning the tab is recommended — it should prevent Arc/Dia from unloading it automatically.

Option 2: Launch the browser with an accessibility flag

If you're comfortable using the Terminal, you can avoid the persistence issues above by launching the browser with the --force-renderer-accessibility=complete flag instead. Quit the browser first, then run:

open -a 'Arc' --args --force-renderer-accessibility=complete

Replace Arc with Dia if you use Dia. Once launched this way, Cotypist's inline suggestions work for the entire session, including when switching between Spaces — no extra tab required.

To avoid running this command by hand each time, you can wrap it in a small app and launch that instead of the browser's regular Dock icon:

1. Open Script Editor (in Applications → Utilities) and enter this single line, using Arc or Dia as appropriate:

   do shell script "open -a 'Arc' --args --force-renderer-accessibility=complete"

2. Choose File → Export, set File Format to Application, and save it to your Applications folder.
3. Launch that app whenever you want to start the browser with inline suggestions enabled — you can keep it in the Dock like any other app.

Cotypist works in the sidebar chat panels of popular code editors — the text fields where you interact with AI coding assistants like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor Agent, or GitHub Copilot.

Cotypist does not automatically suggest in the main code editor area, as code editors have their own specialized completion systems (IntelliSense, Copilot, etc.) that are better suited for code. If you would like a suggestion there anyway — for example while writing a comment or documentation — you can use the force-activate completions shortcut (see Shortcuts) to request one manually. Also, if you'd like to try an experimental feature that automatically activates completions in the main editor, please contact us.

Code editors are disabled in Cotypist by default. To enable sidebar chat completions, add the editor in Cotypist's settings or via the Cotypist icon in your menu bar.

Zed

Zed does not yet provide the support that Cotypist needs to show suggestions — its custom-built interface is not visible to other apps on your Mac, so Cotypist cannot read text or cursor positions from it.

The Zed team has recently laid the groundwork for this (you can follow the progress in zed-industries/zed#6576), but it is not yet enabled in released versions. Once Zed ships it, we will re-evaluate Zed support.

Cotypist works in Terminal.app and iTerm, making it particularly useful when interacting with AI coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, or similar tools where you type natural language in a terminal.

Cotypist automatically activates in these terminal apps when it detects you are typing in an AI agent's prompt. For regular command-line usage, completions are not shown by default (to avoid interfering with shell autocompletion). If you want completions while typing regular commands, you can use the force-activate completions shortcut (see Shortcuts) to temporarily enable them.

Ghostty & cmux

Ghostty does not yet provide the support that Cotypist needs to show suggestions. Since cmux is based on Ghostty, it has the same limitation.

We've submitted improvements to Ghostty — you can follow the progress in ghostty-org/ghostty#9932. Once these changes are merged and released, Cotypist will be able to support Ghostty and cmux.

In the meantime, Terminal.app and iTerm are the recommended terminals for use with Cotypist.

Warp

Warp doesn't provide the access Cotypist needs to read or insert text. Warp support is unlikely in the near future.