A little light at the edge of your Mac that glows when an AI coding agent needs you.
Read what it said, send a reply, and get back to what you were doing.
macOS 14+ · Apple silicon & Intel · Free forever · No account needed
Website & live demo · Release notes · Get help
Claude is working in one window. Codex is waiting in another. October finished ten minutes ago.
Lantern watches tools like Claude Code, Codex, October, and Cursor, and brings them together in one quiet place. Keep your favorite agents and terminals, and start them exactly as you do today. Lantern finds supported sessions automatically.
| When this happens… | Lantern helps you… |
|---|---|
| An agent finishes or needs a reply | See the lantern glow, with a count of new things waiting for you. |
| You want to know what happened | Open the conversation, including messages and summaries of tool activity. |
| You have an answer | Type or dictate it, then send it to a supported terminal without hunting for the window. |
| Claude asks for permission | Inspect the request and choose Allow or Deny with optional hooks in supported terminals. |
| You want to start something new | Pick an installed agent and a folder, then open a terminal or background session. |
| Something on screen puzzles you | Point & Ask: drag a box around it, ask, and get an answer, or send it to an agent. |
| You have a quick question | Click the lantern to ask, like "which agent needs me first?", or describe a task to start. |
Collapsed, it's one small lantern. It stays beside you across desktop Spaces and full-screen apps. Optional notifications let you step away from the bar, too.
- Download Lantern for Mac and open the disk image.
- Drag October Lantern into Applications and open it.
- Keep working with your agents. Lantern finds supported sessions already running on your Mac. The welcome guide walks you through optional notifications and hooks.
Prefer Terminal? One command downloads, installs, and opens the latest release:
curl -fsSL https://lantern.october.dev/install.sh | shPress Control + Option + Space whenever you want to write a reply, and Control + Option + P for Point & Ask. Use the mic button to dictate instead. Both shortcuts are customizable in Settings.
| Agents | What you can see |
|---|---|
| Claude Code, Codex, October Harness, OpenCode, Pi, Gemini CLI | Working / your-turn status, the last message, and conversation history. |
| Grok, Cursor Agent, Qwen Code, Goose, Aider, Amp, GitHub Copilot CLI, Kimi, Droid, Crush, Auggie | Running sessions, with replies and navigation where the terminal supports them. Detailed status and chat aren't available yet. |
Optional hooks add prompt completion updates for Codex and permission requests for Claude Code. When Lantern can't confidently match a conversation to a session, it says so.
| Where your agent runs | Reply from Lantern |
|---|---|
| cmux, Terminal, iTerm2, tmux | Send directly to the agent's tab or pane. |
| Background sessions started by Lantern | Send directly; these sessions use tmux. |
| Ghostty, VS Code, Cursor, Warp, and other terminals | Copy your reply and bring the terminal app forward, ready for you to paste. |
Allow / Deny works with Claude Code's optional hooks in cmux, iTerm2, and tmux. Terminal supports text replies, but not these permission buttons. See the full compatibility guide for details.
Your code and conversations stay on your Mac when you use Lantern on its own. No account is needed. On its own, Lantern connects to the internet for two things: its update check, and anonymous usage counts, which you can turn off in Settings.
- On-device dictation. Audio stays on your Mac. If your language doesn't support on-device recognition, Lantern tells you.
- No screen recording. Lantern reads supported agents' local session files. It captures your screen only when you ask it to: the area you select in Point & Ask, or a screenshot for a new session when you turn that on.
- Asking October's AI is optional. Point & Ask's Ask and the assistant's Ask send your question (and, for Point & Ask, the selected area) to October only when you press Ask, and need an October sign-in. Nothing is stored there; the privacy guide lists exactly what's sent.
- You're in control. Replies are sent when you choose. Optional hooks can be removed in Settings.
- Anonymous usage counts. How often Lantern and its features are used (e.g. "a reply was sent through tmux"), never content. The privacy guide lists exactly what's sent. Off with one switch in Settings; builds from source send nothing.
- Optional October connections. Signing in and connecting other devices introduces network connections; the privacy guide explains each one.
Lantern is useful on its own. When your work grows into teams of agents, people, repositories, or computers, October Desktop gives them a shared workspace.
Connecting Lantern to October Desktop is optional. Phone pairing is experimental and still awaiting end-to-end verification; see current capabilities.
Do I have to change how I start my agents?
No. Keep opening your agents in your usual terminals. Lantern discovers supported interactive sessions on your Mac. You can also start a session from Lantern.
Is Lantern free? Does it work on Windows or Linux?
The core Mac app is free, and it stays free forever. The source code is licensed under Apache 2.0. If you have a paid October plan, sign in and your plan's extras, like cloud agents, are available in Lantern automatically. Lantern currently runs on macOS 14 or later, on Apple silicon and Intel. Windows and Linux apps aren't available yet.
Why does macOS ask to control my terminal?
Lantern uses macOS Automation to send your reply to the right Terminal or iTerm2 tab. Permission is requested the first time you reply through that app. Lantern doesn't require Full Disk Access. Screen Recording is asked for only if you turn on screenshots, and Accessibility only if you let a Task see which document you have open.
How do I update or uninstall it?
Lantern checks for updates automatically and asks before installing. You can also use Check for Updates in the menu bar.
To uninstall, open Settings → About → Uninstall October Lantern. This removes Lantern's optional hooks and support files. Your agents keep running.
Want to improve Lantern or add support for your favorite agent? The app uses Swift / AppKit / SwiftUI, with a Rust engine for agent discovery and terminal integration.
With Xcode 26 and a current stable Rust toolchain installed, run these commands from the repository root:
scripts/build-app.sh
open "build/October Lantern.app"Run scripts/check.sh before submitting changes. It checks the engine, builds and tests the Mac app, and validates the shell scripts.
See the product and development guide, engine protocol, and known limitations. For help or feedback, write to hey@october.dev.
Licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Third-party components and assets retain their own licenses and notices; see NOTICE.
Made by October, for people with a few agents on the go.