Selection Assistant

The Selection Assistant reads text you select in another app and sends it to SpotAsk for an action such as Translate, Explain, Summarize, Polish, or a custom prompt.

Enable it

1. Open Settings > Selection Assistant.
2. Enable Selection Assistant.
3. Authorize Cross-app text access when prompted.
4. Choose a Trigger mode.

SpotAsk requests this permission only when you enable the feature. It uses the permission to read text you select; it does not monitor your whole screen.

flowchart TD
  A{Cross-app text access?}
  A -->|Denied| B[Open System Settings from the recovery message]
  A -->|Granted| C{Trigger mode}
  C -->|Run default action| D[The default prompt runs on the selection]
  C -->|Show quick actions| E[Use the action bar or the selection shortcut]
  class A entry
  class C decision
  class B,D,E outcome

Open Settings in SpotAsk

Opens the Selection Assistant page in SpotAsk. If SpotAsk is not installed this link does nothing — open it by hand instead: SpotAsk menu bar icon → Settings... → Selection Assistant, or press ⌘ + , to open Settings. Direct link: spotask://settings/selection-assistant

Trigger modes

Run default action sends the selected text directly to the default prompt you choose.

Show quick actions displays the action bar next to the selection. You can also enable labels beside the action icons.

• Ask in Chat icon: A dedicated speech bubble icon appears at the start of the action bar. Clicking it opens the question window with the selected text filled in and a blank line ready for your follow-up question. This can be toggled in Settings > Selection Assistant (enabled by default).
• Built-in prompts, custom prompts, and enabled External Ask targets follow in the bar.

Automatic display

In Show quick actions mode, turn on Show quick actions after selecting text to avoid pressing the shortcut each time.

Use Auto-show apps to control where it appears:

• All apps: show in every app that exposes selected text.
• Whitelist: show only in selected apps.
• Blacklist: hide in selected apps.

The default delay is 0.8 seconds. Set Wait from 0 to 3 seconds so the actions do not appear while you are still selecting.

Clipboard-assisted selection

Some apps (such as Zotero's PDF reader) report selected text to macOS Accessibility with missing spaces or shifted boundaries. For these apps, enable Clipboard-assisted selection in Settings > Selection Assistant and choose which apps it applies to.

Selections in those apps are still detected the usual way, and nothing is copied while the action bar waits for you. The copy happens when you use an action: SpotAsk copies the selection with the app's standard Copy command, reads the accurate text from the clipboard, and immediately restores your previous clipboard content.

This feature is off by default. It never copies when nothing is selected, and apps not on your list continue using normal Accessibility reading.

Manual trigger

The selection shortcut works even when automatic display is off. The default is ⌥ + ⇧ + Space.

What can go wrong

• Empty selections do not trigger SpotAsk.
• Secure input fields cannot be read.
• Some apps do not expose selected text to macOS Accessibility; SpotAsk will tell you when that happens.
• If permission is denied, the app shows a recovery message with a link to System Settings.

Related: Prompts, Troubleshooting