Coding Agents Are Reshaping the App Store→

While I think it’s fair to take reports from Appfigures and its cohorts with a large grain of salt, its latest report that the App Store is booming rings true to me. As Sarah Perez reports for TechCrunch, first quarter 2026 app releases were up 60% year-over-year. That’s in line with a surge that occurred at the end of last year and just so happened to coincide with the release of Claude Opus 4.5, the model that ignited a coding boom.

Another interesting tidbit from Appfigures is that the Utilities app category moved up the top five chart and Productivity apps, which were missing from the Q1 2024 and Q1 2025 top fives, made it into this past quarter’s top five.

As Perez reports:

The working hypothesis here is that AI-powered tools, like Claude Code or Replit, could be behind the surge of new launches. It also seems possible that we’re hitting some sort of tipping point in terms of AI usability, where it’s easy enough for people to leverage these tools to build their own desired mobile apps more quickly — or even build their first apps ever.

That hypothesis lines up well with the deluge of app pitches we’ve received at MacStories since the end of last year. At first, 2025 just seemed like an unusually busy fall. We always see lots of new apps when Apple refreshes its OSes after all. However, this year, the pace never let up. In fact, the pace accelerated into 2026.

From the view on the ground, this is absolutely the result of AI coding tools. Seasoned developers are releasing new apps more often and updating existing ones faster, and there are more new developers releasing their first apps than ever. Lower barriers to entry and tighter development cycles juiced by coding agents are clearly major factors.

What’s most interesting to me, though, is that the mix of quality apps hasn’t suffered meaningfully. We’ve always been sent a healthy portion of poor quality apps. But from where I sit today, the tidal wave we’ve seen so far isn’t slop. Maybe that will change, and perhaps we’re insulated from it to some degree, but I would have thought that at the pace App Store submissions have increased that there would have been a big difference in the pitches we receive. So far, not so much. Weird, right?

Permalink

Apple’s Executive Leadership Transition Announced

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple today announced major changes to its executive leadership team. In short, John Ternus will become CEO, Tim Cook will become the Executive Chairman of the company’s board of directors, and Johny Srouji is chief hardware officer effective immediately.

Ternus, who is Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, will fill the CEO role beginning on September 1, 2026. Between now and then, Cook will remain CEO and work with Ternus on his transition to CEO. As expected, Cook’s duties as Executive Chairman will include working with policymakers worldwide on behalf of the company. For his part, Srouji will become chief hardware officer effective immediately, taking on Ternus’ previous role with Hardware Engineering, as well as leading the hardware technologies organization.

Tim Cook had this to say of his time as CEO and Ternus’ appointment:

It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple and to have been trusted to lead such an extraordinary company. I love Apple with all of my being, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with a team of such ingenious, innovative, creative, and deeply caring people who have been unwavering in their dedication to enriching the lives of our customers and creating the best products and services in the world. John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor. He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future. I could not be more confident in his abilities and his character, and I look forward to working closely with him on this transition and in my new role as executive chairman.

And, from John Ternus:

I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward. Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor. It has been a privilege to help shape the products and experiences that have changed so much of how we interact with the world and with one another. I am filled with optimism about what we can achieve in the years to come, and I am so happy to know that the most talented people on earth are here at Apple, determined to be part of something bigger than any one of us. I am humbled to step into this role, and I promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Although Ternus will no longer be running Hardware Engineering, it’s in good hands with Srouji, a pivotal figure in the transition to Apple silicon. As Tim Cook noted:

Johny is one of the most talented people I have ever had the privilege to work with. He has played a singular role in driving Apple’s silicon strategy, and his influence has been felt deeply not just inside the company, but across the industry. He has always led his organization with remarkable deftness and judgment, and time and again, his team has delivered breakthrough innovations that have transformed our products. We are incredibly fortunate to have him as Apple’s chief hardware officer.

Finally, be sure to read Tim Cook’s personal note to the Apple community. Cook is the CEO of one of the largest corporations in world history, but he’s also an individual, and it’s notes like this from Tim Cook the person that make Apple a special company:

This is not goodbye. But at this moment of transition, I wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you. Not on behalf of the company, this time, though there is a wellspring of gratitude for you that overflows inside our walls. But simply on behalf of me. Tim. A person who grew up in a rural place in a different time and, for these magical moments, got to be the CEO of the greatest company in the world. Thank you for the confidence and kindness you’ve shown me. Thank you for saying hi to me on the street and in our stores. Thank you for cheering alongside me when we unveiled a new product or service. Thank you, most of all, for believing in me to lead the company that has always put you at the center of our work. Every day we get up and think about what we can do to make your life a little bit better. And every day, you’ve made mine the best I could have asked for.

2026 is shaping up to be a very big year for Apple and we’re just four months in. Hang on everyone.

Hands-On with Anthropic Labs’ Claude Design Preview

Last week, Anthropic introduced Claude Design, a new research preview product from the equally new Anthropic Labs. Claude Design, which is currently available to Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise subscribers through the Claude web app, can prototype apps and websites, design presentation materials, generate marketing materials, and more. As someone who has felt as though Claude’s design skills noticeably lagged behind its coding, I was eager to give it a try. So, over the weekend, I tasked Claude Design with coming up with a brand new progressive web app and helping me design a new feature for an existing project.

I’m always looking for a way to resurface articles, apps, products, and other links I save in a variety of places, so my first test of Claude Design was to build an iPad-first web app that would deliver those things to me automatically using a magazine-style design. Claude Design is organized into a sidebar and canvas with tabs in the sidebar for creating prototypes, slide decks, template-based designs, and blank designs. To get started, I named my project and picked a “high fidelity” prototype. Then, I dragged some screenshots of a similar AI assisted reading app I’d seen on social media into Claude Design and described what I wanted, answered some follow-up questions, and let Claude get at it.

Read more

Podcast Rewind: Everything Apps, the RG Rotate, Pet Tech, TV Heists, and an Interview with Simon Pittman

Enjoy the latest episodes from MacStories’ family of podcasts:

AppStories

This week, we return to a topic that’s an old favorite: the Everything App in honor of OpenAI’s announcement that they are building a Super App.

On AppStories+, Federico consolidates the tools and services he uses.

NPC: Next Portable Console

This week, the SN Operator is delayed, an Ayn Odin non-drama, a new contender for weirdest handheld of 2026, even more on the RG Rotate, and how we find retro game shops.

On NPC XL, John and Brendon revisit the Ayn Thor six months later to check on how it’s going.

First, Last, Everything

Jonathan is joined by Simon Pittman, the tech and productivity creator behind ‘Better Creating’, known for teaching practical systems, thoughtful workflows, and how best to use tools like Notion and AI.

Comfort Zone

Matt has a new writing app, Niléane is becoming a true audiophile, and everyone tries to find Chris the best pet tech for his soon-to-be new puppy.

On Cozy Zone, the gang tier lists macOS default wallpapers, and you just know someone’s going to have some very wrong opinions.

MacStories Unwind

This week, pets, pints, Hue smart plugs, and a heist TV show.

Read more

OpenAI’s New Codex App Has the Best ‘Computer Use’ Feature I’ve Ever Tested

Computer use in Codex.

Computer use in Codex.

OpenAI rolled out their updated Codex app for Mac yesterday and, among other things, they shipped a native computer use tool for macOS that lets Codex interact with multiple Mac apps in the background using parallel cursors that do not bring apps to the foreground when agents are interacting with them. The feature that OpenAI rolled out in Codex is literally based on the Sky app that I exclusively previewed last year, and which was later acquired by OpenAI along with the team that built it.1

I feel like I’m in a pretty unique position to comment on all this since, as MacStories readers will recall, I was able to test Sky for several months last year before the team went radio-silent and joined OpenAI. Here’s the thing: I’m not exaggerating when I say that Codex now features the best computer use feature I have ever tested in any LLM or desktop agent. In fact, it’s even better than the computer use feature I used in Sky last year: Sky’s computer use was great, but it was considerably slower than Codex’s current one because it was running on Anthropic’s Claude models. With Codex for Mac today, even the (kind of slow) GPT 5.4 is faster than Sky ever was. But, using Codex with fast mode or – for simpler tasks – the Cerebras-hosted GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark model yields dramatically faster performance than Sky for Mac delivered in 2025.

But why is that? Allow me to explain. Most computer use models (such as the one in the Claude app, or even the just-released Personal Computer by Perplexity) rely on a combination of screen-recording capabilities and some AppleScript to either simulate virtual clicks on-screen and perform basic actions inside apps by calling osascript in a virtual shell. Sky was different, and Codex is different, and I can share more details today that I did not elaborate on when I wrote about Sky last year.

We all have Apple’s Accessibility team to thank for the technology that allows Codex’s computer use tool to exist. To build it, the Codex team took advantage of an advanced accessibility feature that allows third-party apps to read the “accessibility hierarchy” (also known as “AX Tree”) of any app open on macOS. My understanding is that this technology was primarily created to allow screen-readers and other assistive tools to work with Mac apps regardless of their automation/scripting features. In this case, it’s been repurposed as a way for Codex to ingest the full contents and hierarchy of any window and, essentially, load it as context for the LLM.

When I was told last year that this was how Sky worked behind the scenes, I instantly knew it reminded me of something, and I was right. We’ve seen the same technology being used before in UI Browser, the excellent (and sadly discontinued) app to inspect the visual hierarchy of any app that’s also powered by screen-reader APIs on macOS. All of this still applies to Codex’s computer use plugin today: pay attention to any chat where you’re using the plugin, and you’ll see 5.4 reason about the “accessibility tree” it wants to parse from any given application.

As someone who’s played around with GUI scripting and UI Browser many times over the years, let me tell you: this is not easy, and these frameworks were not meant for automation. For starters, they return a lot of text about any possible UI element, text field, or button inside a window. That text can be formatted in a variety of ways; it can be so deeply nested inside the XML-like structure returned by the AX framework, you often need to navigate 20 levels deep into a structure to find what you want. But this is what makes Codex’s computer use model different, why the Sky acquisition was a very clever move from OpenAI, and also why the reactions online seem overwhelmingly positive: Codex can “see” more inside apps and can control them more precisely than other models based solely on capturing screenshots, simulating clicks on certain coordinates, and running the occasional AppleScript. Codex can also do those things as fallback measures, but they’re not the primary drivers of its computer use plugin.

It also helps that computer use in Codex is exquisitely designed – not a surprise given OpenAI’s design team and the pedigree of the team behind this feature. The flow for granting permissions to the plugin is the best I’ve ever seen in a third-party Mac app – and it comes directly from Sky, which had the same onboarding experience. What Sky didn’t have is the new virtual cursor: the Codex team designed an entire system for it where the cursor can wiggle to show when the model is thinking, takes playful paths, and derives its color from the system’s wallpaper. I can only think of another company that sweats these kinds of UI details as much as the Codex team did here…and I’ll let you guess where several of Codex’s engineers and designers are, in fact, coming from.

I’ve been working with computer use in Codex all day, and while it is not as fast as a skilled human who knows a particular macOS interface well, it is very good at understanding and controlling any Mac app in the background a bit more slowly, with greater precision than competing features from Anthropic and Perplexity. That makes it ideal to automate busywork in Mac apps that do not offer an API or CLI, or which can’t be fully controlled with AppleScript. Let me give you some practical examples.

Earlier today, I asked both Perplexity’s Personal Computer and Codex to “play the latest album from the weird masked band from Quebec, I don’t remember their name”. I was referring to the exceptional Angine de Poitrine, of course. Both agents searched the web upfront and pinpointed my request, but when it came to actually controlling the Music app, Personal Computer stopped short of hitting the ‘Play’ button because its AppleScript integration couldn’t do it; Codex went ahead, opened the album with its virtual cursor, and started playing music.

Personal Computer couldn’t hit Play.

Personal Computer couldn’t hit Play.

Codex had no issues playing music in the Music app.

Codex had no issues playing music in the Music app.

I also tested Codex by asking it to look at specific channels on Slack, my Ivory timeline, and the Unread app and give me a summary of interesting updates I should know about. Codex successfully deployed parallel cursors, started scrolling and clicking around all three apps, and produced a report that included updates gathered from those apps. Could I have scrolled the apps myself, one after the other, the old fashioned way? Sure. But as an “automation” that happened in the background while I was doing my email, it was pretty good.

Codex’s report from three separate apps.

Codex’s report from three separate apps.

The other task I attempted today – which is still running, after 6 hours – was using Codex’s computer use to improve the Shortcuts Playground skill I’ve been building to create shortcuts in the Shortcuts app using coding agents in natural language. With Codex, I figured I could now ask the agent to run the skill, create shortcuts for me, but also click the resulting .shortcut files in Finder, install them, and test them for me in the Shortcuts app to spot any errors and further improve the skill. Not only was Codex’s computer use plugin able to successfully install dozens of shortcuts, but it also opened each, verified its output, and is currently evaluating what went wrong to improve some of the skill’s guidance and instructions.

Codex installed all these shortcuts via computer use.

Codex installed all these shortcuts via computer use.

The Codex cursor debugging a shortcut for me.

The Codex cursor debugging a shortcut for me.

So, long story short: Codex’s computer use plugin is the state of the art at the moment, and it’s the evolution of a strong foundation that I was able to test last year, which has been further refined and expanded by OpenAI. I’d like to see the company expand this plugin to the main ChatGPT for Mac experience (which is still stuck on the old Work with Apps integration), but, for now, I’ll take this feature inside Codex rather than the slower, and less capable, computer use models from other chatbots. More importantly, I’m happy to see that Sky ended up in good hands who can now deliver this product to the masses.

  1. I don’t use the term “literally” in a liberal sense here. When you enable the Computer Use plugin in Codex, you can head over to the app’s config.toml configuration file, open it in a text editor, and you’ll spot this line:
    /Users/username/.codex/plugins/cache/openai-bundled/computer-use/1.0.750/Codex Computer Use.app/Contents/SharedSupport/SkyComputerUseClient.app/Contents/MacOS/SkyComputerUseClient

    Open that folder and, sure enough, there’s an executable for the former Sky “app”, now loaded as a first-party 2plugin that handles the virtual computer interactions for Codex. ↩

OpenAI Unveils Codex “Superapp” Update with Computer Use, Automations, Built-In Browser, and More

Source: OpenAI.

Source: OpenAI.

Today, OpenAI introduced a long list of productivity and coding updates to Codex. I haven’t had a chance to try the new features myself yet, but the demo OpenAI gave me was as impressive as the company’s message was clear: Codex isn’t just for coders anymore.

It was just over a week ago that OpenAI raised $122 billion in financing and announced it was shifting its focus to building a superapp that brings the capabilities of its models into a unified experience. It turns out that app is Codex, OpenAI’s app that, until today, was focused primarily on developing software.

However, according to OpenAI, 50% of Codex’s users were already giving it non-coding tasks to complete. Combined with the OS flexibility of a desktop environment, that made Codex the natural place to bring together a wide range of new productivity and coding features.

On the productivity side of things, the update allows Codex to operate your desktop apps, interacting with interface elements and inputting text, for example. We’ve seen computer use from other AI companies before, but one thing that sets Codex apart is its ability to work in your apps in the background so they don’t steal the focus from whatever app you’re already using.

Codex's built-in browser. Source: OpenAI

Codex’s built-in browser. Source: OpenAI

OpenAI has drawn aspects of its Atlas browser into Codex, too. This allows Codex to prototype websites and apps that users can comment on in-line, creating a tight feedback loop for refining designs. Currently, this feature is limited to running sites and apps via a local server setup, but OpenAI says it will be extended to incorporate actions like interacting with the greater Internet, taking screenshots, and stepping through user flows in the future.

Plugins are taking a big leap forward as well, with over 100 being added to the mix. Like the Claude plugins that Anthropic offers, Codex plugins are composed of a bundle of skills, app integrations, and MCP servers. According to OpenAI, the list includes many popular third-party tools and services like the Microsoft suite, Atlassian Rovo, CodeRabbit, Render, and Superpowers. One of my favorite moments in the Codex demo I saw was a prompt that simply asked, “Can you check Slack, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Notion and tell me what needs my attention?” It’s the sort of query that I think a lot of people can relate to as they start a busy day, and it’s all driven by stacking multiple plugins.

Plugins in action. Source: OpenAI.

Plugins in action. Source: OpenAI.

OpenAI is also testing an enhancement of Codex’s memory feature as a preview that learns from you as you work. Codex will pick up on your preferences, corrections you make, and context from the tasks you give it. This is the sort of feature that is hard to demo, so I don’t have a good sense for it yet, but I expect that over time, its practical utility will become more clear.

One place OpenAI says Codex’s enhanced memory system will help is with new proactive suggestions. As the app learns your preferences and work patterns, it will offer suggestions on what to do next or where to pick up where you left off. Again, how well this will work in practice remains to be seen, but this is exactly the sort of thing that has made OpenClaw so popular. Having an agent that understands your preferences and accesses your messages, files, and other data in a proactive way can be incredibly useful if done well.

Automations. Source: OpenAI.

Automations. Source: OpenAI.

Automations have been expanded, too, allowing Codex to use past threads and schedule tasks over days or weeks. These heartbeat automations stay in the same Codex thread and can be modified by the model itself, allowing it to schedule its own follow-ups – again, very much like OpenClaw.

Also new to Codex is support for gpt-image-1.5 for creating image assets as part of workflows like creating presentations, website mockups, and product concepts.

Developers get new sidebar tools and more. Source: OpenAI

Developers get new sidebar tools and more. Source: OpenAI

Although the focus of today’s update is on productivity, developers haven’t been forgotten. New development features include:

  • Fast frontend iteration using a combination of the in-app browser, computer use, and image generation tools;
  • Multiple terminal tabs;
  • A file sidebar for previewing PDFs, spreadsheets, slides, and other formats;
  • GitHub PR review support, allowing for review of comments inside Codex;
  • A summary pane that tracks plans, sources, and artifacts in a single view; and
  • Remote devbox SSH, an alpha feature for connecting to remote development environments.

That’s a lot, but with more than three million users per week, Codex has proven its popularity well beyond its core coding audience. I’m still skeptical about how much functionality a single app can support, especially when OpenAI addresses the mobile market. I also wonder whether Codex’s productivity and developer tools can coexist without alienating some segment of the app’s users. However, proactive automation of busy work and sifting through mountains of messages and other data is precisely what I’ve wanted from Codex from the start. I’ve seen what it can do when I’m working on a script or app and can’t wait to apply that to my everyday work, too.

Today’s Codex update is available in the desktop app to users with a signed-in ChatGPT account. Computer use is a Mac-only feature at launch (undoubtedly thanks to macOS’s deep accessibility support that was the basis of the same sort of computer use magic we saw in Sky, which was acquired by OpenAI last year), and a rollout of the new features will happen in the EU later. Personalization features like proactive suggestions and the memory enhancements will be coming to Enterprise, Edu, and EU users soon, too.

Google Releases Gemini for Mac

Google released a native Mac app for its Gemini chatbot today.

The app, which can be launched from your Applications folder, Dock, the menu bar, or a global hotkey, will be familiar to anyone who has used Gemini in a browser. The chatbot supports Gemini 3 in Fast and Thinking modes, as well as Pro mode, which uses Gemini 3.1 Pro. Gemini can also interact with files, the contents of a window, Google Drive, Photos, and NotebookLM. It’s multimodal, too, with support for the generation of text, images, video, and music. Dig a little deeper into Gemini’s menus and you’ll find support for Canvas, Deep Research, Guided Learning, and Personalized Intelligence.

A Gemini mini window is available from the menu bar and a global hotkey.

A Gemini mini window is available from the menu bar and a global hotkey.

Even though I just downloaded the app a short time ago, my Gemini chat history was immediately available in the app. The history appears in the app’s sidebar along with a search field, My Stuff, which includes things like images and video generated in the past, and access to your account. The app is written in Swift which was a pleasant surprise.

All my past prompts were immediately available in the new Gemini Mac app.

All my past prompts were immediately available in the new Gemini Mac app.

I’ve only just begun testing Gemini for Mac, but I can already tell that it’s a cut above my hand-crafted single-purpose Safari web app solution. All the same tools found on the web are here, but in a native wrapper, which I appreciate. If you use a Mac and Gemini, the new app is well worth giving a try.

Gemini for Mac is available as a free download from Google.

Introducing Apple Frames 4: A Revamped Shortcut, Support for Frame Colors, Proportional Scaling, and the Apple Frames CLI for Developers

Apple Frames 4.

Apple Frames 4.

Well, it’s been a minute.

Today, I’m very happy to introduce Apple Frames 4, a major update to my shortcut for framing screenshots taken on Apple devices with official Apple product bezels. Apple Frames 4 is a complete rethinking of the shortcut that is noticeably faster, updated to support all the latest Apple devices, and designed to support even more personalization options. For the first time ever, Apple Frames supports multiple colors for each device, allowing you to mix and match different colored bezels for each framed screenshot; it also supports proportional scaling when merging screenshots from different Apple devices.

But that’s not all. In addition to an updated shortcut, I’m also releasing the Apple Frames CLI, an open source command-line utility that lets developers and tinkerers automate the process of framing screenshots directly from the Mac’s Terminal. And there’s more: the Apple Frames CLI is also designed to work with AI agents, and it comes with a Claude Code/Codex skill that lets coding agents take care of framing dozens or even hundreds of screenshots in just a few seconds, from any folder on your Mac.

Apple Frames 4 is the result of an idea I had months ago that enabled me to remove more than 500 actions from the shortcut, going from over 800 steps down to ~300. I did all that work manually, but it was worth it; the improved shortcut is faster and vastly more reliable than before thanks to a more intelligent logic that adapts to the growing ecosystem of Apple screen sizes and display resolutions.

Apple Frames 4 and the Apple Frames CLI represent a substantial step forward for screenshot automation, and I’ve been using both extensively for the past few weeks.

Let’s dive in.

Read more