Overview
- Perplexity launched the fully local Computer mode on Tuesday, October 20, and made it available to Pro, Max, and Enterprise subscribers.
- The on-device option runs Qwen 3.6 or Perplexity’s PPLX Pro model and executes the agent that plans and coordinates tasks without default cloud calls.
- Perplexity recommends about 36 GB of unified memory for the best local performance, a requirement that rules out many recent Mac configurations and limits adoption.
- Hybrid Compute remains available as a fallback that splits work between a local model and cloud 'frontier' models for Macs with about 24 GB of memory or for tasks needing live web access.
- Perplexity says code and tool runs use isolated sandboxes and that files go to the cloud only with user permission, but the company has not clarified whether the agent needs Full Disk Access and how upcoming Apple privacy controls will affect those permissions.