Install Circa.

Requirements

• macOS 26 or later. Circa uses SwiftUI and AppKit APIs that ship with macOS 26; it will refuse to launch on older releases.
• Apple Silicon or Intel — both architectures ship in the same universal binary.
• Roughly 60 MB of free disk space.

Download and install

1. Open the purchase page and complete checkout. Paddle emails the download link and your license key within a minute.
2. Open Circa.dmg.
3. Drag Circa.app into /Applications. Eject the disk image.

First launch

Open Circa from Applications. A small icon appears in the menu bar — that is the only persistent UI Circa has. There is no Dock icon.

A short onboarding window walks you through granting permissions and picking an activation binding. macOS surfaces each permission prompt at the moment Circa first needs that capability, so you may see them spread across the next few minutes.

Permissions

Each permission is scoped to one capability Circa uses. None of them allow Circa to send data off your Mac. You can revoke any of them in System Settings → Privacy & Security; the corresponding feature stops working but the app does not otherwise break.

Accessibility

Required for sending keystrokes and synthesizing interactions on your behalf — the mechanism behind Keystroke and Snippet slots, as well as a handful of system actions that fall back to AppleScript. Grant it in Privacy & Security → Accessibility.

Input Monitoring

Required when the activation binding is a mouse button or a Logitech HID++ button — Circa needs to see the raw events to know when you pressed it. Not required for a pure keyboard hotkey. The HID listener filters strictly to the device and button you assigned and discards everything else.

Automation

Granted on demand. The first time a Script slot or an AppleScript-backed system action targets a specific app, macOS asks once. After that, the permission is remembered per target app.

Setting the activation

Open Circa → Settings → General. The activation row has two parts: a Tap / Hold toggle and a binding recorder.

• Tap opens the menu on click and leaves it open until you pick a slot or press Esc. This is the default.
• Hold keeps the menu open only while the binding is pressed; releasing fires the highlighted slot.

The binding can be a keyboard chord, any mouse button (middle, side, anything the OS reports), or a Logitech HID++ button on a supported mouse. The keyboard default is ⌥ Space.

Pick something easy to reach and unlikely to collide with a system shortcut. Cmd-modified keys usually have something assigned by macOS; Option- and Control-modified keys are typically free. Mouse side buttons are a great fit if your mouse has them.

Verify the install

Trigger your activation binding on the desktop. The menu should fade in under the cursor with an empty ring. If it does: installation is complete and you can move on to Your first slot.

If nothing happens, open Settings (click the tray icon → Settings…) and re-check the onboarding permission status. Any missing permission has a button that jumps to the right System Settings pane.