Little Overlay ⌃ A

A floating pill that answers in place.

Hit ⌃ A anywhere on your Mac. A liquid-glass pill drops down. It already knows what you highlighted and what was on screen. Type or speak; the answer comes back in the same pill, in place. On-device, free.

Download for Mac
How it works

Three keystrokes, no setup.

  1. 01

    Summon with ⌃ A.

    A glass pill slides down from the top of your screen, over whatever window you were in. It carries the selection (if any) and a reference to the active window. Same shortcut closes it. Esc also closes it.

  2. 02

    Feed it: selection, screenshot, or just type.

    Selection: highlight any text in any app, ⌃ A, ask about it. Screenshot: tap the camera chip, drag a region, ask about it (Vision OCR runs locally in ~200 ms). Freeform: nothing selected — just type or speak. The three compose; ask about a chart next to a paragraph and the answer threads both.

  3. 03

    The answer streams back in the same pill.

    No new window. No tab switch. The pill grows to fit the answer, sources its inputs as small chips (Selection · Screen · Mic), and parks an input field for a follow-up. Hit esc and everything is gone — no chat log, no panel, just back to what you were doing.

Where it shows up

Built for the way specific people work.

Feature-by-feature

Versus the obvious alternatives.

FeatureLittle OverlaySpotlightRaycast AIChatGPT desktopApple Writing Tools
On-device (no upload)●●○○◐
Knows your selection●○◐○●
Screen-aware (OCR)●○○◐○
Voice input●○○●○
Single-hotkey · no chat window●●●○◐
Follow-up in the same pill●○◐●○
Free●●○◐●
Resident RAM0 GBOS~120 MB + cloud~150 MB0 GB

● Yes · ◐ Partial · ○ No. Verified May 10, 2026.

Asked & answered

Questions, answered.

How is Little Overlay different from AI Chat? +
Same model, different surface. AI Chat (⌃ S) is a full chat window with history, multi-turn threads, and a sidebar. Little Overlay (⌃ A) is a single pill optimized for the one-shot question that doesn't need a thread. After you dismiss the pill, nothing about the interaction is saved. Use Little Overlay for "what does this mean / fix this / what year was X." Use AI Chat for "let's think this through together."
Does it really read the screen? +
Only if you opt in. When you tap the camera chip and drag a region, Apple's Vision framework runs OCR on that region locally (Neural Engine, ~200 ms). The text is fed to the model as context; the image itself is discarded after the response. Nothing leaves your Mac. Off-by-default; you trigger it per-pill.
How fast is it? +
End-to-end (key-press to first token) averages ~380 ms on a base M1 Air. The screen-OCR path adds 120–180 ms. No cloud round-trip; everything runs on Apple Foundation Models on your machine.
Why "Little Overlay"? +
Dollop is the full app — four surfaces under one mark. Little Overlay is the smallest of them: one pill, one question, one answer in place. The name is what it does: a small, attentive surface that listens for the thing you need right now and gets out of the way.
Can I use it without the keyboard? +
The hotkey is the entry point, but the pill itself supports voice — there's a mic chip you can tap to speak the question instead of type. Useful when your hands are on a coffee cup or you're reading something with both hands.
Where does it live in the app? +
Little Overlay ships in Dollop starting May 10, 2026. Free, no upgrade, no tier. If you already have Dollop, update to the latest version. The pill is part of the same app and uses the same Apple Foundation Model + Dollop adapter as the rest of the features.
Hardware requirements? +
Apple Silicon (M1+) on macOS 26 (Tahoe) with Apple Intelligence enabled. Same as the rest of Dollop.

All the convenience of an AI overlay, in the smallest possible surface. None of the cloud routing. None of the chat-app overhead. Free.

Download for Mac
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© Dollop 2026