I Tried the Microsoft Copilot App for Mac, but You Probably Shouldn’t.
There is a lot of talk on the Internet these days about hiding Copilot in Windows and tools that can remove it completely . There’s a reason for this: some people are annoyed by AI and would rather not deal with it.
Despite this trend, Microsoft recently released Copilot for Mac for some reason. While Windows users are keen to remove Microsoft’s artificial intelligence tool from their computers, Mac users are being encouraged to actively install it on their machines. So, in the interest of fairness, I’m going to take the complete opposite approach to hiding Copilot on Windows: setting up Copilot on your Mac. The point is, unless you really love Copilot, you probably shouldn’t use this app.
Copilot for Mac is what you expect
Copilot for Mac is essentially a web version of Copilot in a dedicated Mac window. You can sign in to your Microsoft account and start chatting with your virtual assistant right away. There are a few Mac-specific features here: the first is a system-wide Option-Space shortcut for quickly sending a message to Copilot in a small pop-up window. (You can change the keyboard shortcut if you wish.) This is not much different from how the ChatGPT launcher works in the desktop application .
There is also an icon in the menu bar that you can click to open the same pop-up window. The app takes your Mac’s appearance settings into account, meaning if you switch to dark mode, Copilot will do the same.
And that’s honestly the majority of the Mac integration features offered. Unlike the ChatGPT Mac app , there’s no screenshot button, which is a bit disappointing – this feature allows you to ask ChatGPT what’s currently on your screen. With Copilot, you’ll have to take a screenshot and upload it yourself. If you’re not interested in this keyboard shortcut, you can easily use the web version of Copilot and not notice the difference.
You can use Copilot to do almost all the common tasks you associate with other large language model chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude —everything from coding to research to copying homework assignments. In particular, the free version of Copilot has access to current information from the Internet, meaning you can ask it questions about current events and sports. But there aren’t many Mac-specific reasons to install an app.
For comparison, here’s the Mac version (containing widespread misinformation about the NHL trade deadline):
And here’s the Windows version (which seems to have a decent taste for Game Boy Advance games):
Yes, they are the same. If you like Copilot on Windows, you’ll love it on Mac. If you haven’t tried Copilot yet and are interested, perhaps try the web version first. It’s essentially the same thing and won’t take up any hard drive space.