tau

DownloadFreeRuns on your own machine

Get tau.

The Mac app puts tau in your menu bar, runs it in the background and sets everything up the first time you open it. On Linux and the Raspberry Pi, one command in a terminal does the same.

tau for Mac

macOS 13 or later · Apple silicon and Intel

Download tau.dmg

A menu bar app, chat windows and a setup wizard, in one download. Apple has not notarised it yet, so macOS asks once before it opens: how to open it.

One command

macOS · Linux · Raspberry Pi

curl -fsSL https://tau.getporti.com/install.sh | sh

It installs tau in your home folder and asks which features you want. It never runs sudo. What it does.

Opening it the first time.

tau is signed, but Apple has not notarised it yet, so macOS stops it the first time and says it cannot check it for malicious software. That is expected. You allow it once, and from then on tau opens like any other app.

  1. Drag tau to Applications.

    Open tau.dmg and drag tau onto the Applications folder.

  2. Open it once.

    Open tau from Applications. When macOS says it cannot check tau, close the message. Do not move tau to the Trash.

  3. Choose Open Anyway.

    Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to the line about tau and choose Open Anyway. Confirm with your password or Touch ID.

  4. Or right-click → Open.

    On macOS 13 and 14 there is a shorter way: right-click tau in Applications, choose Open, then Open again. macOS 15 and later only offer the way above.

What the first launch does.

The first time tau opens, a setup wizard walks you through eight steps. You can skip any of them, and Set up tau… in the menu opens the wizard again to add or remove features later.

  1. Language

    English or Turkish, for the wizard and everything tau says.

  2. Install tau

    The wizard finds tau, or installs it with uv in your home folder. No administrator password.

  3. Model key

    Your provider and its key, checked with one small request and kept on your Mac, readable only by you.

  4. About you

    Optional: your name, how tau should address you and your languages. It stays on your Mac.

  5. Features

    Choose what tau should do: Telegram, remote access, the owner guard, the tau network and more.

  6. Permissions

    Only what your features need, the camera for the guard and notifications for the app. macOS asks you in tau’s name.

  7. Feature steps

    Each feature is set up live: pairing your Telegram bot, enrolling your face, your tau’s address. A command that needs sudo is shown for you to run; tau never runs it.

  8. Summary

    What is on and what was skipped, then a chat window or the hub, one click away.

The terminal way.

On macOS, Linux and the Raspberry Pi (a 64-bit system), one command installs tau and starts the same setup, as questions in the terminal.

curl -fsSL https://tau.getporti.com/install.sh | sh

It is a short shell script, and you can read it before you run it:

curl -fsSL https://tau.getporti.com/install.sh | less

To install tau without the questions, and run tau setup yourself later:

curl -fsSL https://tau.getporti.com/install.sh | TAU_INSTALL_NO_SETUP=1 sh

Run tau setup again whenever you want another feature. What is set up already is never asked again.

By hand.

With uv installed, every part of tau is a package on PyPI. Pick them yourself, then let tau setup do the rest.

uv tool install tau-core --with tau-tui --with tau-net --with tau-sub
tau setup

tau-core is the agent and the tau command, tau-tui the full-screen terminal interface, tau-net the tau network and tau-sub sub-taus. The install guide also covers installing from the source.

What you can set up.

The wizard, in the app or in the terminal, offers the same features. Nothing that reaches outside your machine is on unless you choose it.

  • Terminal UI

    The full-screen interface, tau tui.

    macOS · Linux · on by default

  • The tau app

    The menu bar, chat windows and the hub’s supervisor.

    macOS

  • Sub-taus

    Named specialists of your tau: a coach, a chef, a tutor.

    macOS · Linux · on by default

  • Telegram

    Talk to tau from your phone through your own bot, paired with a one-time code.

    macOS · Linux

  • Remote access

    Reach your machine from your phone over Tailscale and SSH.

    macOS · Linux

  • Owner guard

    tau answers only while you are at the Mac: a face check, Touch ID as the fallback.

    macOS · camera

  • The tau network

    An address for your tau, contacts with other taus and the universe.

    macOS · Linux · free Cloudflare account

  • Start at login

    The hub starts when you log in and keeps running.

    macOS · Linux · on by default on macOS

  • Cloud mode

    Advanced: run tau in your own Cloudflare account instead.

    macOS · Linux

Every feature, step by step The install guide