Getting Started with Omna

This guide takes you from zero to your first slice in under five minutes.

What you need

• A Mac running macOS Sequoia or later
• One of these AI apps installed: Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor, or VS Code
• Google Chrome (for the browser extension — optional but recommended)

Step 1 — Download and install

1. Go to omna.dev and click Download for Mac.
2. Open the downloaded Omna.pkg file.
3. The installer will ask you to choose folders for Omna to pre-index. Desktop, Documents, and Downloads are pre-selected. Add any folder that contains files you regularly send to AI. Click Start Omna.
4. macOS may show "Installer would like to modify apps on your Mac" — click Allow. This is standard for any .pkg installer.

Omna lands in /Applications and starts running in your menu bar immediately.

Step 2 — Grant Accessibility permission

Omna reads your typed question from the AI app's chat box so it knows what to search for. macOS requires you to grant this permission manually.

1. Open Claude Desktop, ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor, or VS Code.
2. A card appears in the center of your screen asking for Accessibility permission.
3. Click Open Accessibility Settings → toggle Omna ON.
4. The card dismisses automatically within about a second.

If the card doesn't appear: Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility → add Omna manually.

Step 3 — Let indexing run

Omna immediately starts building a search index of every file in your chosen folders. For a few hundred files this takes minutes. For millions of rows (like a year of transaction data) it runs overnight.

You can watch progress in the menu bar: click the O icon → you'll see the current file and how many rows have been processed.

Omna runs indexing at low priority — by default it caps itself at half your Mac's cores and lowers its scheduler priority so macOS steers the work onto the efficiency cores. Foreground apps stay snappy; fanless MacBooks don't run hot. Switch on Low-power mode (menu bar → Low-power) if you want it to use even fewer cores while you're on a Zoom call or a heavy compile.

Step 4 — Drop your first file

Once Accessibility is granted, the capsule — a small floating bar at the bottom of your screen — appears whenever you open a supported AI app.

The fastest flow:

1. Type your question in the AI chat box. Example: "which customers spent over $10,000 last quarter?"
2. Drag your CSV (or Excel, PDF, Word doc, etc.) from Finder and drop it onto the capsule.
3. Omna finds the relevant rows — usually in under a second for indexed files.
4. The sliced file attaches itself to the chat. Hit Send.

You'll see a result card showing how many tokens were cut and roughly how much that saves in API cost.

Step 5 — Install the Chrome extension (optional but recommended)

The Chrome extension adds Omna directly to your browser — useful when using AI on the web (claude.ai, chatgpt.com, Gemini, Perplexity, DeepSeek).

1. Visit the Chrome Web Store and search for Omna.
2. Click Add to Chrome.
3. The Omna icon appears in your Chrome toolbar.

With the extension:

• PII (names, emails, IDs) is masked before it leaves your browser — on every AI site automatically.
• Dropping a file on the AI site's attachment button triggers the same slicing as the desktop capsule, silently, with no extra steps.

The extension requires the Mac app to be running for file slicing. PII masking works independently.

What's next