How to Get Step-by-Step Help on Your Mac Screen

To get step-by-step help on your Mac screen, use an AI guide that reads what is on your display and points at the next thing to click. In ahsk for Mac (6.15 and later), hold fn and Option, ask "how do I…", and Alan circles the right control, explains the step out loud and moves on when you do it. macOS's own Help menu can also highlight menu items.

By Jithin Kumar Palepu, founder of ahsk. Published October 18, 2026. Last updated October 18, 2026.

Key takeaways

• macOS has a built-in option: the Help menu search finds and highlights menu commands in most apps, for free.
• An AI on-screen guide goes further: it reads the whole screen, so it can point at buttons, panels and settings that are not in a menu.
• In ahsk, a guide is Alan pointing, outlining the control, and speaking each step, for up to 15 steps per task.
• In our tests, giving the model the app's menu commands took a lookalike-icon case from 0 of 5 correct to 10 of 10.
• Free accounts get 20 guides a month; Pro gets 150.

What does an on-screen guide actually do?

An on-screen guide is an assistant that looks at your screen and tells you the next action, in place, instead of sending you to a help article. You say the goal ("export this at full size"). It finds the control that gets you there, marks it on the screen, and explains it. When you click, it looks again and gives the next step. You do the clicking, so nothing happens without you.

This is different from a screen recorder that turns your clicks into a written tutorial. Those tools help you make guides for other people. An on-screen guide helps you, right now, in the app you are stuck in.

Does the Mac have a built-in way to do this?

Yes, partly. Every Mac app has a Help menu with a search field. Type what you want, such as "export", and macOS lists matching menu commands. Hover over one and it opens the menu and points an arrow at the item. Apple documents this in the Mac User Guide.

It is free and works offline. Its limit: it only knows the menu bar. Toolbar buttons, side panels, settings sheets and web apps are invisible to it, and many modern apps keep their most-used actions there.

	Help menu search	AI on-screen guide (ahsk)
Cost	Free	20 guides a month free, 150 on Pro
Finds menu commands	Yes	Yes
Finds toolbar buttons and panels	No	Yes
Multi-step tasks	One command at a time	Up to 15 steps, in order
Explains why	No	Yes, spoken and written
Works in web apps	No	Yes
Needs a connection	No	Yes

How do I use Alan's guides in ahsk?

Alan is the assistant built into ahsk for Mac. Guides arrived in version 6.15 on October 18, 2026.

1. Install or update ahsk for Mac from ahsk.app and grant the permissions it asks for during setup.
2. Open the app you need help with and leave the relevant window on screen.
3. Hold fn + Option and ask your question out loud, for example "how do I turn on dark mode for this app?".
4. Watch the pointer. Alan outlines the control and a caption beside it says what to do, while his voice explains it.
5. Do the step. Any click moves the guide on; ⌘ Return skips ahead when a step does not need a click.
6. Press Esc when you are done. Until then the guide stays open, so you can ask a follow-up about the same task.

The full list of shortcuts is in the ahsk docs.

Why do AI guides sometimes point at the wrong button?

AI guides point at the wrong button when two controls look the same and nothing in the picture tells them apart. A model judging a screenshot only sees pixels. If an app shows two identical "+" icons, one for a new tab and one for a new message, the picture alone cannot say which is which.

We hit exactly this. Asked to open a new tab in the Warp terminal, Alan pointed at the message composer's "+" in 5 out of 5 runs, because the real tab button was hidden.

The fix was more context, not a bigger model. Each screenshot now goes out with the front app's menu commands, read through macOS Accessibility. "File › New Terminal Tab ⌘T" settles what the image cannot. When an icon's purpose is not certain from where it sits, the step becomes a keyboard shortcut shown as keycaps by your cursor. After the change: 10 out of 10 on that case, and plainly labelled buttons were still found 10 out of 10 times.

How accurate are on-screen guides?

Accuracy depends mostly on how sharp the screenshot is and how much the guide knows about the app, not on picking the biggest model. These are our own measurements from building Alan's guides in October 2026:

What we measured	Result
Screenshot of a 2,880-point-wide display shrunk to 1,600 pixels	18 of 24 targets hit; worst miss 744 points off
Same screenshots at full point size (up to 3,200 pixels)	Every unambiguous target hit; median error 1 point
Lookalike "+" icon, screenshot only	0 of 5 correct
Same case with the app's menu commands added	10 of 10 correct
Right first step on our 16-task test set	13 of 16 tasks

Two practical rules come out of this. First, ahsk sends the screen at full size, so small icons stay readable. Second, the guide waits for the screen to settle before it looks: if a panel is still loading, it checks again after 1.5 seconds, up to 4 times, instead of pointing at a half-drawn window.

What happens to my screen when I use a guide?

When you ask for a guide, ahsk captures the screen you are working on and sends it to our server, which asks a vision model for the next step. That is how the guide can see buttons and panels. It is also why guides need a connection and why they are metered. The guide only looks while you have one running, and Esc ends it.

Read exactly what we store and what we do not in our privacy policy.

How long does a guide take?

A typical guide is a handful of steps, and each one is a single round trip: capture the screen, ask the model, draw the pointer. Alan's voice starts streaming about 0.5 seconds after a step's text arrives, so you hear the instruction while the caption is still writing itself out. A guide is capped at 15 steps. If a task needs more, ask for the first half, finish it, then ask for the rest.

When is an on-screen guide the wrong tool?

Use something else in three cases:

• You are offline. The Help menu search works without a connection; AI guides do not.
• You need a document for a team. A guide helps you once, in the moment. If you want a written how-to with screenshots for colleagues, a step recorder fits better.
• The task is one menu command. If you already know the word ("Export", "Duplicate"), Help menu search is faster.

For everything else (settings you cannot find, unfamiliar apps, multi-step tasks), a guide that points at the screen saves the trip to a search engine.

What else does ahsk do?

Guides are one part of ahsk, which we call a new way to use your computer: you say what you want and it gets done. The same app writes dictated text that fits the app you are in (an email in Mail, @file names in Cursor), opens any app, file or command from one shortcut, records meeting notes without a bot, and lets Alan move meetings, set reminders and send messages, with Undo. It runs on Mac, Windows and iPhone, and the free plan includes 10,000 dictated words. See pricing.

FAQ

Is there a free way to get step-by-step help on a Mac? Yes. Use the Help menu's search field in any app. It finds menu commands and points at them. It cannot see toolbar buttons or panels.

Does Alan click for me? No. He points, outlines and explains; you do the clicking. That keeps every change in your hands.

Which Macs does it work on? Any Mac that runs ahsk 6.15 or later with an internet connection. Guides are not available on Windows or iPhone yet.

How many guides can I use? Free accounts get 20 guides a month and Pro accounts get 150. A guide counts once, when its first step appears.

Can I stop a guide halfway? Yes. Press Esc at any time. Anything you say to Alan during a guide also interrupts the current step.

Next step

Open the app you got stuck in most recently, hold fn + Option, and ask Alan how to do the thing you gave up on.