Hushbird Halo · for Mac · accessibility
One key, and the window comes down to what matters.
Press Option Space in any app. The window dims, and the things you came to do light up as numbered halos. Press a number to use one. Ads, upsells and surveys are veiled, never removed: press A and everything is back.
macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon and Intel. Runs entirely on your Mac.
VPAT in progressWhat it does
Fewer steps to what you came for, and no choice taken away.
In any app
Numbered halos
Press Option Space. The front window dims and its important actions light up, each with a number. Press the number, or move with the arrows and press Return. Esc puts everything back.
On by default
Sidebar Streamline
The same actions, listed in a steady column down the edge of the screen under plain headings: what you came for, ways out, and what else is on the page. One line joins the row you are on to the control it will press. S switches between the column and the halos.
Pop-ups
The way out comes first
When a pop-up or cookie banner is in the way, its way out (Close, No thanks, Reject all) is halo number 1 and already selected, so Return alone gets rid of it. Declining is never veiled.
Nothing removed
Veiled, never hidden for good
Ads, upsells and surveys sit under a plain gray veil that says what Halo thinks they are, and says "probably" when it is guessing. Press A and every veil lifts.
Find
Type or say what you want
Press F or Command F and start typing. The list narrows with each letter, ignoring case and accents, and it searches veiled controls too. The Mac's own dictation, or Hushbird, can fill the field for you.
Scroll
More of the page, without leaving
When a page goes on, "More below" and "More above" appear as the last items. Press one and Halo scrolls and reads the page again. Page Down and Page Up work too.
Motor access
Single keys
After the shortcut, every step is one key: a number, Return, an arrow. Nothing to hold down together and nothing small to aim at.
Privacy
100% on your Mac
What is on your screen is read on your Mac and stays there. No account, no telemetry, no analytics. Halo's model is small and runs on the Mac itself: it is fetched once, from our own server, and after that Halo works without an internet connection.
English and Spanish
One model reads pages in English and in Spanish, so a Spanish page gets the same halos, veils and ways out as an English one. Halo's own menus and settings follow your Mac: in Spanish on a Mac set to Spanish, reviewed line by line by a native speaker.
Who it is for
Built for people the busy screen works against, and useful to anyone.
- Low visionThe rest of the window steps back, so what matters stands out, large and numbered, without zooming around to find it.
- Brain injury and cognitive fatigueFewer things competing for attention, interruptions veiled, and the same few keys every time.
- Motor impairmentOne key at a time, no precise pointing, no dragging, and a pop-up dismissed with Return.
- Anyone who wants fewer clicksThe shortest way to the button you were looking for, on any page and in any app.
How Halo is different
Your Mac comes with built-in accessibility tools. Halo adds what they don't: it suggests the actions you most likely came for and puts each one a single key away. You still choose, and nothing is hidden.
| Built into your Mac | What it does | What Halo adds |
|---|---|---|
| VoiceOver | Reads everything on the screen, in order, and lists items by type. | Suggests the few actions you most likely want and numbers them, so there is less to listen through. It never moves VoiceOver's cursor or talks over it. |
| Voice Control, Show numbers | Numbers every item you can click, and you say the number. | Numbers the actions you most likely want, with a pop-up's way out first, and takes one key press instead of speech. |
| Full Keyboard Access | Tab reaches every control, one at a time, in the window's order. | Goes straight to the one you want. On our test checkout page, Reject all cookies took 13 key presses with Tab and 3 with Halo (how we counted). |
| Zoom | Magnifies the screen, and you move around it to find things. | Shows where to look: the rest of the window dims and each action is ringed and numbered. |
Halo is made to work alongside these, not to replace any of them. So far we have tested it with VoiceOver; Voice Control, Full Keyboard Access, Switch Control and Zoom are next, and the conformance report will say what each test found.
Not a web overlay
Web accessibility overlays are scripts a website adds to change its own pages, and people who rely on assistive technology have criticized them for getting in the way (Overlay Fact Sheet). Halo is not one. You install it, it answers only to you, and it never changes the app or the page underneath: it draws on top, and Esc puts everything back. Halo does not repair an app that labels its buttons badly, and it does not make a website accessible.
What we have measured so far
Two early measurements, both on test pages rather than with people. Each says how it was taken, so it can be repeated.
| Control | Keyboard only | With Halo |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | 3 | 2 |
| Card number | 4 | 3 |
| Pre-ticked marketing opt-in | 5 | 3 |
| Place order, with a confirmation | 6 | 4 |
| Decline an offer ("No thanks" link) | 8 | 3 |
| Accept all cookies | 12 | 3 |
| Reject all cookies | 13 | 3 |
| All seven | 51 | 21 |
How this was counted. Key presses, in the style of the Keystroke-Level Model (Card, Moran and Newell, 1980), in Safari on 23 September 2026, on a small checkout page we built for testing. Keyboard only: Tab presses from the page's first control to the target, plus one press to use it. With Halo: the shortcut, a number, Return, and a confirming Return for actions like paying.
What it does not show. Tab order can differ from the order we counted in, and Safari only tabs to links and buttons with a setting turned on, so the keyboard count is a best case. It counts reaching and using a control, not reading or deciding, and it is not a measure of time or effort. Mouse, switch and voice users take other routes.
| Test pages | Ways out offered | Offered as number 1 | Needed controls wrongly veiled |
|---|---|---|---|
| 37 Spanish pages | 30 of 36 | 20 | 1 |
| 47 English pages | 13 of 15 | 9 | 0 |
How this was measured. 84 captured web pages, held out from training and never shown to the model, measured on 25 September 2026. Every control on them was labeled by AI agents following a written labeling guide, not by people. Halo's shipping model and its rules ran through Halo's own planner, as the app runs them. A "way out" is a control that closes or declines a pop-up, a banner or an offer.
What it does not show. With this few pages, one page can move a figure by several points. These are measurements of what Halo offers, not studies of people using it.
With Hushbird
Two apps that do different jobs, made to run side by side.
Hushbird
Dictation, reading aloud and translation. Talk and it types; select text and it reads it to you. About Hushbird
Hushbird Halo
What to press. The window comes down to its important actions, numbered, with the rest a key away.
Both run entirely on your Mac, and Halo's model is kept small on purpose so the two can run at once without slowing each other down. Halo's find field is an ordinary text field, so you can dictate into it with Hushbird instead of typing. They install separately, so each person gets only what they need.
System requirements
- macOS
- macOS 14 Sonoma or later
- Mac
- Apple silicon and Intel
- One-time download
- About 316 MB, Halo's model, on first launch. Checked before use. After that, Halo works offline.
- Permission
- Accessibility, in System Settings, Privacy and Security. Halo opens that pane for you.
- Pages understood in
- English and Spanish
- Data collected
- None. No account, no telemetry, no analytics.
Accessibility conformance
Hushbird Halo's Accessibility Conformance Report (VPAT 2.5 Rev, WCAG 2.1 A and AA) says criterion by criterion what was tested and how. Halo was tested with VoiceOver running, on macOS 26, and did not interrupt, talk over or trap it. Voice Control, Zoom, Full Keyboard Access and Switch Control have not yet been tested alongside it, and the report says so.
Hushbird, the dictation and reading app, has its own report. Questions about either: access@hushbird.app.
For institutions
Disability services offices, vocational rehabilitation agencies and assistive technology lending programs buy from PSYT LLC directly, with purchase orders, a W-9 and Net 30 terms. How that works, and the vendor details procurement asks for, are on the institutions page. For Halo licenses, write to access@hushbird.app and say how many Macs and what they are for.