A Demonstration and Walkthrough of Be My Eyes for Mac

In this episode, Tyler demonstrates the Be My Eyes app for Mac. (Editor's Note: Be My Eyes is the parent company of AppleVis.)

With Be My Eyes for Mac, you can use Be My AI to generate high-quality descriptions of visual content, such as screenshots, images stored on your Mac or its clipboard, and pictures taken using your Mac's camera. Topics covered in this demonstration include:

• Getting started
• App layout
• App keyboard shortcuts
• Describing visual content and chatting with Be My AI
• Chat history
• Enabling and using the Be My Eyes Sharing extension
• App settings

Be My Eyes for Mac is free for personal use and can be downloaded from https://www.bemyeyes.com/be-my-eyes-for-desktop/.

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by ‎Whisper Notes - Speech to Text, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

Tyler: Hey AppleVissors, Tyler here, with a demonstration and walkthrough of BMIEyes4Mac. With BeMyEyes for Mac, you can use BMAI to receive high-quality descriptions of visual content right on your Mac. Like other BeMyEyes products, it’s free to the consumer and can be downloaded from BMIES.com, link in the description. When you open it for the first time, you’ll be prompted to sign in with your account e,ither with your email address or an SSO option like Apple, Facebook, or Google. After which you’ll be asked to grant a few permissions needed for the app to function, and then you’ll be presented with the interface, which in my opinion is slick and easy to use. And I’m demonstrate that now by opening BMIs on my Mac.

VoiceOver: Applications window. BMI’s application. Open. BMII quick actions selected tab.

Tyler: Okay, so here we are in the Be My Eyes app. It landed on the Quick Actions tab, which appears to be selected. Five or left to orient to the window here.

VoiceOver: Be my eyes.

Tyler: Be my eyes and then full

VoiceOver: screen button.. Actions available And full screen,

Tyler: minimize, close for just the windows control window controls and then just VO right.

VoiceOver: Quick actions, selected tab.

Tyler: Quick actions.

VoiceOver: History tab.

Tyler: History.

VoiceOver: Tip. Get started with the my eyes button.

Tyler: We have a tip and then if I want to dismiss that because I already know what I’m doing here, I’m gonna be right.

VoiceOver: Dismiss tip button.

Tyler: Dismiss screenshot command option s button. And here I am and a it has apparently interacted me with the describe with be my AI group. So if I press VOShift up arrow, VL left, we have the history tab, VO right, describe with my yacht group. Describe with be my AI.

VoiceOver: Describe with my yacht group.

Tyler: And that’s the only thing in this interface. At least the top level of it. So I’m going to interact now with the OSH down arrow.

VoiceOver: In described my AI group. Five items described with my AI. Command option S button.

Tyler: Okay, that’s screenshot, command option S.

VoiceOver: Image. Command option I button.

Tyler: Image, command option I.

VoiceOver: Clipboard, command option C button.

Tyler: Clipboard, command option C.

VoiceOver: Take picture, command option W button.

Tyler: Take picture command option W. Now these screenshots are these keyboard shortcuts are global, meaning as long as the app is opened, the shortcuts will be intercepted by Beam Eyes to perform that action. So I could be in another app and if I want to take a screenshot, I just press Command Option S and B My Eyes will intercept that shortcut and take the screenshot. Which is what I’m going to demonstrate now by opening, say pages, and I’m going to perform a command that I’ve assigned to open pages.

VoiceOver: Pages, open window, list view.

Tyler: And VR right to new document.

VoiceOver: Untitle window body edit text. Actions available.

Tyler: Okay, so here we are in a blank pages document. I want to take a screenshot of it. When you press command option S it takes a picture of the entire screen. So whatever’s on that screen, whatever apps, windows will be included as part of that screenshot, except for the Be My Eyes window. My understanding is that that is automatically excluded from the screenshot. So I only want the pages app to be displayed. I don’t know what else is on the screen visually, and I don’t want anything else as part of the screenshot but pages. So I’m gonna hide others. You can do this from any app in Mac OS, just go to that apps menu, choose hide others or press command option H, which is what I’m gonna do now.

VoiceOver: Hide others.

Tyler: Now I’m gonna press Command Option S to take a screenshot.

VoiceOver: Message input edit text waiting for response.

Tyler: Now at the time of recording, July twenty twenty six, VoiceOver doesn’t speak the response as it comes in. The only way to really know is when the music stops. So now that the music has stopped, I’m gonna press VL left to get out of the chat box.

VoiceOver: pages document window with a blank white page is open in the center of the screen. At the top of the screen is the pages menu bar with these visible items. Pages, file, edit, insert, format, arrange, view, window, help. On the right side of the pages window, the format sidebar is open under the text tab. In the font section, Elveticanoia is selected style, regular, size, Bold italic underline and stripe through buttons are present as well as alignment and spacing controls. Near the upper right area, overlapping the sidebar, there is a dark gray notification style box that says, High Others with an X close button on slapside. At the bottom of the document window, centered, there is a status indic There are no error messages on the screen. If the goal is to get rid of the high others message using the keyboard and Mac OS, press command key and the period key together, command plus period to dismiss many transient dialogues. If that does not work, press command plus half to switch to a different app then command plus tab Okay,

Tyler: so that’s the message generated by BeamAI. If I VOF’d again. That’s the message, the image I sent. For some reason my messages seem to be displayed as sent from UTC time rather than my time, which is Eastern. Not sure why that is, if that’s a bug, I’ve not found any settings for why that would be. But in any case, if I VL left again, delete chat button. You have delete chat, which deletes it from your history. My understanding is that B My Eyes and OpenAI do not train on this data. But if you no longer want it in your history, you can just hit delete chat.

VoiceOver: Share chat button.

Tyler: You can share chat, share chat, chat button, keep chat if you want it to stay, longer than 30 days, hit that. Otherwise, it’ll be deleted from your history after 30 days. Back button. Back, which you can also do by pressing command left bracket.

VoiceOver: Response received. Chat now has two messages.

Tyler: Okay response received chat now has two messages. That’s like a status message.

VoiceOver: B my eyes.

Tyler: And then B my Eyes and then of course if you view left some more you’d have the window controls so I’m gonna view right now Responders back button keep chat share chat delete chat one of two from me two of two from B my AI so here I am on the message from B my AI if I want to copy that message hit, Command C. If I want to open what’s called a message preview, which is basically where the message is contained in a web content group, useful if I wanted to, for example, use the arrow keys to navigate the message or select part of the text. I’d hit the spacebar and I would learn these shortcuts by pressing VOShift M on this message to access the context menu, which is what I’m gonna do now.

VoiceOver: Message actions dialogue, copy message, command C button, copy message,

Tyler: copy message,

VoiceOver: and open message preview space button.

Tyler: Open message preview. So that’s what I’m gonna hit. Okay, so now it opened a message preview window. this is a web content group, which I’m gonna interact with now. And arrow keys are not doing anything. So this is interesting because when I opened these previews at the time of recording, July 2026, multiple instances of be my eyes will open when you open a message preview. It’s separate from the main B My Eyes app for whatever reason. So if I command tab B My Eyes,

VoiceOver: B My Eyes, B My Eyes, window two of two from you.

Tyler: We have my chat. If I command tab again, we’re back in the message preview.

VoiceOver: At the top of the screen is the pages menu bar with these visible items, pages.

Tyler: Hold the shift key.

VoiceOver: Edit insert format arrange view window help on selected.

Tyler: And of course I could navigate and select with the arrows and the shift arrows and copy with command C, etc. I think in the future an improvement would be if this was just a pop-out window as part of the Be My Eyes app. That way it’s more consistent with the behavior of other Mac OS apps. But in any case, I’m gonna close it now with command W.

VoiceOver: B myIs, B my I’s window, two of two from B my AI.

Tyler: Okay, so two of two from B my AI, if you are right.

VoiceOver: Message input edit text.

Tyler: Message input, I’m gonna ask a follow-up. I’m gonna say W A A T space does E space

VoiceOver: quotation mark. A D space of T A P R S quotation mark space and E N. Question: What does high others mean? Delete what does high others mean? Waiting for response.

Tyler: Okay, the music stopped.

VoiceOver: 404 from EI. 10. 58 p.m. Hide others is a Mac OS command behind every other open app’s windows and leaves only the current app. In this case, pages visible. It doesn’t close anything. The other apps keep running in the background. You can bring them back by pressing command plus have to switch to them or by clicking their icons in the dock.

Tyler: Okay, so that’s a demonstration of screenshots and how to interact with BMI’s BMIAI output. So I’m gonna go back now with command left bracket to get to the main screen.

VoiceOver: Quick actions, selected tab.

Tyler: So here I am back in quick actions. So now I want to just demonstrate describing an image on my computer. I’m gonna do that by pressing command option i for image. I could click the image button or I could press command option i from anywhere in macOS if the page is or if the B My Eyes app is opened. So I’m gonna do that now.

VoiceOver: Quick actions, selected tab.

Tyler: Command option I. And I’m going to, because this image is in my downloads folder, I’m going to press command option L to jump there. And VRE.

VoiceOver: Back button for list change the downloads vertical. Search text field blank list view table. And the image test dot jpggjpg

Tyler: image today I press return.

VoiceOver: BYIS window. Message input edit text. Waiting for response.

Tyler: Okay, the music stopped. I’m VO left.

VoiceOver: 202 from EI, 10, 59 p.m. Two men wearing tandem sky guide harnesses in the open doorway of a small airplane. They are close together, with the man in back appearing to be the instructor wearing dark sunglasses and a dark shirt. The man in front is wearing clear goggles, a light-color t-shirt, and red patterned shorts, leading forward toward the open door. The interior of the plane is light-colored with Okay,

Tyler: so that’s the image. So with any image on your Mac, if it’s in the Finder, just press Command Option I, locate it with the open dialog, and you get an output with BMIAI, which you can ask a follow-up question if you want, same as a screenshot or any other BMIAI image content. So that’s demonstrating an image. So if I command left bracket to go back, click options, selected tab. We have clipboard, which basically if you find an image somewhere, you can copy it to the clipboard and press command option C from anywhere in Mac OS to have the clip the contents of the clipboard described. And then we have take picture, which allows you to use your Mac’s camera or presumably an external camera if you have one or your iPhone’s camera to take a picture of whatever is in view. I’ve not tested external cameras but I’m gonna press command option W to take a picture using my max camera.

VoiceOver: Message input at the text, waiting for response.

Tyler: Okay. Left two of two from

VoiceOver: UI eleven oh one PM a dimly light indoor room with a person in the lower center of the frame. The camera is angled upward, so most of what is visible is the ceiling, a bright round ceiling light near the top right, and the closed white door behind you. Your face is in shadow because the main light source is above and slightly behind you, which makes it harder to see your facial features clearly. Your skin tone appears light, and only the upper part of your shoulders and head are visible. If you are trying to get a clear picture of yourself, try turning on a light in front of you, for example, a desk lamp behind your monitor, or rotate so that the ceiling light is in front of you instead of above and behind. This will brighten your face and produce shadows.

Tyler: Okay, so say if I was, for example, preparing for an on-camera call. I take in a picture and it said I’m not totally in frame, but I’m gonna adjust now the lighting in this room is only so well and I cannot see it, but then again, this is just a demo, so I’m gonna try to arrange to the camera, orient to it, and press command option W again.

VoiceOver: Waiting for s waiting for spark message input edit.

Tyler: Okay, the music stopped. Let’s see how we did this time.

VoiceOver: 404 from my AI. Eleven. Oh two PM. This one is better centered. Your head and upper chest are fully in frame with a bit of space above your head. Your face is still quite dark, though. The main light is still above and behind you, so your features are mostly in shadow. To improve it further on your map with a webcam, move a lamp or bright screen in front of you, just behind or beside the Mac, so the light shines toward your face. If possible, reduce the ceiling light behind you or turn it off, leaving the front light on. Raise the webcam to about eye level so it points straight at your face, not up from below. If you try another photo after adjusting the front light, I can tell you how it looks.

Tyler: So because I took another picture directly in the chat, it remembered the context. So I took one picture, the first one, it said I wasn’t in frame, the second one, it had enough contextual understanding to know that it was basically the same or similar picture and told me what I was looking to hear. Now of course if I was doing this for you know any practical reason I might ask a follow-up question or you know get some other verification outside of AI because of course AI is not perfect. But that’s how I take a picture using BMI AI. So I’m gonna go back with command left bracket.

VoiceOver: Quick actions, selected tab.

Tyler: And so that’s those are the quick actions. I’m gonna demonstrate history now. And what’s interesting is at the time of recording, I discovered this when I was just kind of doing different keyboard shortcuts to see what common macOS keyboard shortcuts work and what don’t what doesn’t work currently. Command one, if you’re in focused in B My Eyes, will take you to quick actions. Command two will take you to the groups feature, which my understanding is a w if you are a BMI’s workplace user, which is like an enterprise service for collaborative assistance or work,, you can use groups to collaborate and communicate with others. That is not shown in the tab group, but if you press command two, it will bring you to groups, even if you can’t use it. Command three will bring you to history. I don’t know if that will change. I assume the ability to access groups, even if you’re not a B MyIs workplace user, is a bug. I’m hoping that if they fix that so that you can users who are not beam ice workplace users can’t access groups that history will be command two because having quick actions as command one and history as command three with nothing at command 2 would be awkward. But I’m gonna go to history now and I’m just gonna press command three. It doesn’t indicate it, but if I vo right history, it selected a tab. History. Filter a group. We have filter. So if we interact.

VoiceOver: And filter group. Three items all selected radio button.

Tyler: We have all kept radio button. Kept.

VoiceOver: Shared radio button.

Tyler: Shared.

VoiceOver: Shared radio.

Tyler: And if I stop interacting and VR right out of filter group.

VoiceOver: Today group.

Tyler: Today. And today group.

VoiceOver: Four items a dim letter room with a person in the lower center of the frame. The camera is angled upward, so most of what I buttoned.

Tyler: This is what I just took. If I hit it with VS space. I’m right back in the chat. Command left bracket. Takes me right back to the list. I’ll navigate with VO left and right, so if I view it right. Okay. And so you get the picture. If I view right I go through the history. I can it’s organized by day so if I stop interacting and VR right Tuesday group etc. interact and find the images for that day. Another feature of Be My Eyes for Mac, and it is there, but I don’t know if it maybe needs some work is a sharing extension. So one of the most common uses that I use Be My Eyes for particularly on my iPhone is I’ll get sent a picture you know from my family group chat and I’ll hit the share button on my iPhone and hit describe with Be MyAIs and then of course Be MyAI will generate a description. Recently, that capability was added to BeMIEy’s for Mac, so I could select an image, hit share, and then hit BMIEyes. Now when I do that, it will ask if I want to allow I’ll get a message like a TCC prompt asking if I want to allow sharing between apps. That’s unique to this app it seems. If I have other you know sharing extensions for other apps and it doesn’t ask that I don’t know if that’s a bug or what. But that’s the situation at the time of recording, July 2026. , I also noticed that this was at least for me turned off by default. So if you want to use the BMI’s sharing extension, you may need to turn it on in system settings. You go system settings, general, login items and extensions, and then find be my eyes, hit show detail and make sure it’s on. And I’m going to demonstrate that now because I know that was a little wordy, so I’m going to go into system settings.

VoiceOver: Menu bar app at system settings ellipsis. Tuesday, group, system, window, sidebar, table, row 12 of 39, general, selected.

Tyler: In general, VL Globe Right.

VoiceOver: Scroll area.

Tyler: Interact.

VoiceOver: 16 items general.

Tyler: Login items and extensions.

VoiceOver: Login items and extensions. Window, toolbar. Login items and extensions. Scroll area. And login items.

Tyler: I’m gonna jump to the extensions heading.

VoiceOver: Heading out, background, active heading, extensions.

Tyler: They are right.

VoiceOver: Extensions add extra functionality to your map and apps, and some may run in the background. My app selected radio button one of two. By category radio button two of two. Be my eyes. Show detail button. Five items. Sharing. Sharing on switch.

Tyler: Sharing on. If it’s off for you and you want it on, just hit Vio Space.

VoiceOver: Button.

Tyler: Done button. I’m just gonna hit done. Show V and that’s all there is to it. So if now I’m gonna find an image to demonstrate.

VoiceOver: Close. Close. Finder output. Dropbox down.jp.

Tyler: Go.

VoiceOver: Open open move get rename compress duplicate make alive quick look copy share ellipsis. List image P in pop over. Add it text copy button. Be my eyes button.

Tyler: We have be my eyes.

VoiceOver: List view table. Row. Downloads window. Be my eyes. Application. Alert system dialogue. BMIs would like to access data from other apps. Keeping up data separate makes it easier to manage your privacy and security. Don’t allow button.

Tyler: Okay, so that is just an message from Mac OS. again, this is appears to be unique to BMIs. I don’t know if if it’s a bug and how the sandbox is implemented, but either way you can just hit allow button. And whatever you share will be described. So for example, this was the image I just shared, but two of two from my I 11.

VoiceOver: Oh mine.

Tyler: And then so it did receive the image from the sharing extension and is now and did describe it. So I’m gonna go back now because that’s pretty much the extent of the image description features. I’m just gonna go briefly through the settings to give a sense of what you can do with it. Most of them are pretty self explanatory, but if I hit command comma to access settings. We have general account tab two account keyboard shortcuts tab keyboard shortcuts advanced tab 45 and permissions so if I go general general tab 1 to 5 and

VoiceOver: key advent permissions tab permissions tab out of general tab group enable sounds check checkbox enable sounds show the i eyes in the menu bar.

Tyler: Checkbox. Show me my eyes in the menu bar. That is basically if you have that, you’ll have in your status menu which a history of your chat. I think that would be more convenient if the status menu had things like you know take a screenshot or you know e clipboard so even if I didn’t remember a shortcut, I could just go into the status menu and choose a command from anywhere in Mac OS. But for now it’s just the the status menus just contains chat history. So I have that turned off. But. if I be a right Start

VoiceOver: my eyes when system starts. Uncheck checkbox.

Tyler: we have that. Start my eyes when we’re starting my eyes when system starts. if you’re a frequent be my eyes user and you always want the shortcuts to be intercepted so and you don’t have to think about opening be my eyes you can have that so you have just have beamai’s as a login item copy i response to clipboard check checkbox so if you copy response to clipboard, you don’t even have to press Command-C because anything that BMIAI generates will just be automatically copied to the clipboard. Some people might want that. I don’t I don’t like that, so I’m just going to uncheck that because I like to know what pasting and I might forget that I generated something with AI and then pasting it later. Um select language.

VoiceOver: Selected language, American English, change language button.ange

Tyler: Ch language Okay, so that’s general general inject account tab. Account. It’s just your account.

VoiceOver: Keyboard shortcuts tab three and five.

Tyler: Keyboard shortcuts, this is interesting because if there’s a certain shortcut that conflicts with something you already have or something you want to change, you can do that.

VoiceOver: Customize keyboard shortcuts. Press a button to change the associated keyboard shortcut. Screenshot. C and D plus L plus S button.

Tyler: Screenshot.

VoiceOver: Take picture. C and D plus R plus W button.

Tyler: Take picture image. C and D image.

VoiceOver: Clipboard. C and D plus.

Tyler: Clipboard. Clipboard. And those are the s the keyboard shortcuts. If you want to change, hit that and input your own keyboard shortcut, which should work as long as nothing else is assigned to it. Again, that’s useful if you wish a command had a different shortcut. It’s a nice touch there. If I’ll go back to the tab group.

VoiceOver: Keyboard and keyboard shortcuts. Tab group. Five items. Keyboard shortcuts. Tab. Advanced. Tab.

Tyler: Yep. Advanced.

VoiceOver: Out of BII’s desktop is built with QT slash Pi Side 6. QC is used under the new lesser general public license version.

Tyler: Okay, that’s just credits information.

VoiceOver: Open open source notices button.

Tyler: Okay.

VoiceOver: Extract logs button.

Tyler: Extract logs, which is useful for troubleshooting.

VoiceOver: Reset settings button.

Tyler: And reset.

VoiceOver: Reset settings.

Tyler: And permissions, which is another useful troubleshooting tool, is you can make sure that any permissions the app needs are granted. You can check the status. So if something’s not working as expected, some things you want you might want to check are you know make sure it has the necessary permissions. So you do that in this tab.

VoiceOver: Camera enabled opens macOS settings button.

Tyler: So if I wanted to change that I’d hit that button and it would take me into privacy and security settings for camera.

VoiceOver: Black circle, microphone, microphone enabled, opens Mac OS settings, button, black circle, screen recording, screen recording enabled, opens Mac OS settings, button, black circle, input monitoring, input monitoring enabled. Open SmacOS settings. Button. Black circle. Accessibility. Accessibility enabled. Open SmacOS settings. Button. Accessible.

Tyler: And those are the permissions that have been granted to be my eyes. And that s is BMI’s settings. So I’m gonna close out of that.

VoiceOver: Ability enabled. Opens macOS setting. Window quick actions selected.

Tyler: Okay, so now I’m here I am back in the main Beamy’s window. So that’s a demonstration and walkthrough of Be My Eyes for Mac. It can do a fair amount of things. There are just a few things that I think could make it feel a little more at home on Mac OS. I think like those message previews could be a little more refined so they open in a pop-out window rather than a separate instance of the app. the menu bar I think the menu bar currently is a bit sparse so for example we have we have be my eyes be my eyes help and help Apple B my in the B My Eyes menu we have menu preferences that it is about logout.

VoiceOver: Close command W services sub high high up show up quick my help menu check for a help center email support send feedback terms of service privacy policy

Tyler: search result enter I feel like if more commands and keyboard shortcuts were in the menu bar, they’d be a bit more discoverable. But I think it’s a good start and I look forward to seeing how it improves in the future. I hope you’ve enjoyed this demo. Peace.