The launcher

Pictures on your screen

When a picture explains it better than words, Jev draws one beside the answer as it is said: the parts of a machine, the steps in order, where to click.

FreeMacAccessibility

Choose an example to copy it, then try it in Jevie.

Use itHow it worksLimitsWhere it's kept

Use it

• how does a jet engine workThe answer, and a card with the fan, compressor, combustor and turbine joined by arrows
• explain how a heat pump moves heatThe two coils and the heat between them, drawn in order
• how do I export this as a PDF over KeynoteDo it leads the answer; press it or say yes; Show me where points at each step instead
• make the compressor redremove the valveadd the fanundoWhile a picture is on show
• draw it differentlyredraw itshow it another wayThe same answer drawn again another way: a flow becomes a cycle, then a whole and its parts, then numbered steps; a 3D figure is pulled apart, then seen from above. Each new picture is told what was already drawn, so it never repeats one
• what are the layers of the Earth, show it in 3DA figure cut away to show the inside: drag to turn it, two fingers to move it, pinch to zoom, double-click to frame it again
• click a box on a pictureIt says what that part does; click it again to let go
• what's the difference between TCP and UDPThe two side by side

How it works

Jevie answers first, as always. While the answer is shown, Jev decides whether a picture would help, in the same quick look it already takes at every request; a plain fact or a list gets no picture.

When one helps, a fast model writes a short drawing program from the answer you just got, never from what it knows. Each line of it is drawn the moment it is written, so the first stroke comes in about a second. Before anything is drawn, Jevie checks it: every figure on the card must be one the answer gives, and everything must sit inside the card.

Asked how to do something in the app in front, Jevie does not draw it: it answers, and offers to do it for you (press Do it or say yes). For anything it should not do on its own, like deleting or paying, it points at each step instead, starting at once, while you click.

Two writers work at once: a fast one, so the first stroke comes in about a second, and the coding agent you chose (Claude or Codex), whose better picture, when it is better, takes the first one's place on the same card. The drawing keeps pace with the voice, and waits while you talk.

The card docks beside the palette, on its own surface, and never covers it. Drag it anywhere; it stays where you put it. Close it with its ×. A new picture replaces it.

While Jev draws on the screen itself (label the parts, circle the error, what is this?), the palette steps aside so it never covers what is being drawn on: Jev stays as a small pill with only the line being said, beside the thing drawn (to its right, else its left, else below or above it), facing it and clear of what else is drawn. Hover the pill for the lines so far and a × to stop; click it, or type, and the palette comes back. When the drawing is done, the palette returns with the whole answer.

A walkthrough's pill sits beside the control to click in the same way.

Things in the app in front are ringed only where the app itself says they are. When the answer is about one thing on screen, the rest of the screen dims around it. When you switch to another app, those rings go, because they would point at nothing; the card stays, because it means the same over any screen.

Limits

• A figure in 3D is built from simple solids (boxes, cylinders, cones, spheres, rings), not a detailed model.
• Edits work for five minutes after the picture last changed, and not after you close it.
• Only answers written in the palette get one; answers from a background errand do not.
• A ring needs the app's accessibility tree. An app that draws its own interface has nothing to ring, and gets only the card.
• On Windows and Linux the card is the shell's own window beside the palette, placed, drawn and closed as on a Mac; a figure in 3D is drawn as the outlines of its solids, turned by dragging, rather than lit solids, and the card does not yet move with the palette or wait while you talk over it.
• Set JEVIE_DRAW=0 to turn pictures off, JEVIE_DRAW_CAREFUL=0 to keep only the fast writer.

Where it's kept

jevie/kernel/picture/ (the drawing language, the sandbox and the check), jevie/macos/CardBoard.swift (the card) and jevie/macos/Marks.swift (the rings). See docs/pictures.md.

In Jevie, help picture answers from this page as you type.

Related

Updated 5 November 2026 · Something wrong or missing? Tell us