Maya on Mac — a short guide

Maya (माया) is a caring companion who lives at the top of your screen — a little heart with a face. Maya reminds you to eat, drink water, stretch, rest your eyes and call home.

Maya is free. There is no account, no subscription and no locked features. Maya works with the internet switched off, and nothing you do in Maya leaves your Mac.

1. Install

1. Download Maya.dmg from the website.
2. Open the file you downloaded and drag Maya into your Applications folder.
3. Open your Applications folder and right-click Maya → Open, then click Open again.

That right-click step matters. Maya is not yet signed with an Apple certificate, so if you double-click the first time, macOS says "Maya cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer" or "Maya is damaged". Right-click → Open tells macOS you trust it. You only do this once; after that, Maya opens normally.

If macOS still refuses, open Terminal and run: xattr -cr /Applications/Maya.app then try right-click → Open again.

2. What you will see

Maya has no Dock icon and no window in the background. Maya lives in the menu bar at the top right of your screen, as a small heart.

Click the heart to:

When Maya is asleep or you are in a focus session, the menu says so, with the time it ends.

Closing the main window does not quit Maya. Maya keeps running in the menu bar. Use Quit Maya to stop Maya.

3. When Maya visits

A check-in slides down from the top of your screen (or appears in the corner you chose) with one line and a few buttons:

• Done ✓ — you did it. It counts towards today's summary.
• 15 min — Maya comes back in 15 minutes.
• More… — 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, or Skip today (that reminder stays quiet until tomorrow).
• × — close it.

When water, a stretch and eye rest are all due at once, Maya puts them on one card ("Time for a little reset") and your answer counts for all of them.

If you ignore it, it disappears on its own (after 60 seconds by default) and is not saved up for later. A missed check-in is simply skipped. That is deliberate: Maya should never become a pile of guilt waiting for you.

Maya will not interrupt you:

• during quiet hours (10pm–8am by default),
• while you are in a focus session,
• while a video, slideshow or game is playing full screen,
• when you are away from the computer — and the water and stretch timers reset when you come back,
• more than 5 times a day or twice in an hour, with at least 30 minutes between check-ins.

Meals, bedtime and battery warnings have their own timing and are not counted against that limit. A nearly empty battery (5%) will reach you even during a presentation, because by then it matters more.

4. Making Maya yours

Open Maya → Today to see what is up next, what Maya said earlier and how you answered, your focus sessions, and a short summary of your day. In the evening it says good night and tells you the first reminder tomorrow. There are no scores.

On Today (or from the menu bar), How are you? lets you tell Maya how the day is going. Tired keeps Maya's words gentle for the rest of the day; Busy spaces check-ins further apart for three hours. It changes nothing else.

Open Maya → Personalize:

• Language — English, नेपाली, or Roman Nepali (Nepali written in English letters).
• Tone — Gentle, Playful, Extra dramatic, or Minimal (just the word: "Water.").
• What Maya calls you — babu, nani, your own name, or nothing.
• तिमी or तँ — how close Maya speaks to you (Nepali only).
• Maya's colour — the heart comes in six colours, from the classic tika red to brass, sunrise, pote green, silver and night.
• Maya's sound and volume — a steel glass, a knock, a temple bell, a water drop, or silence.

Open Maya → Reminders to turn each reminder on or off, change its time, or write your own words for it. Built-in ones can be switched off but not deleted. Add reminder makes your own:

• Kind — water, meal, walk, focus and so on, so Maya has words for it; or Just its name.
• Repeat — once on a date, every day, weekdays, weekends, chosen days, every few minutes or every few hours. "Every few" counts only the time you are at the computer.
• Only between — hours outside which it stays quiet.
• How Maya tells you — card and sound, card without sound, or just a glance.
• Important — may show during quiet hours.

Open Maya → Focus for 25, 50 or 90 minutes, or your own length. If you stop early, only the minutes you worked are counted.

Open Maya → Settings:

• General — open at login, home time zone and call window (so "call home" never suggests 3am in Nepal).
• Check-ins — daily limit, limit in any hour, time between check-ins, quiet hours, presenting mode, backup notification.
• Appearance — where Maya appears (top, or a corner), look (Notch, Floating pill, Automatic), size, which screen, how long a check-in stays, and animation (follow your Mac, full, or reduced).
• Data — save a backup, restore one, or start over.
• Privacy and About.

5. The notch

On a MacBook with a notch, Maya emerges from around the notch, as though leaning over it.

Macs with a notch: MacBook Pro 14" and 16" (2021 and later), MacBook Air 13" and 15" (M2, 2022 and later), and the MacBook Pro models after them.

On any other Mac — an iMac, a Mac mini with an external screen, a MacBook Air M1, an older MacBook Pro — there is no notch, so Maya appears as a floating pill just under the menu bar instead.

If you prefer the notch look anyway, choose Settings → Appearance → Look → Notch and Maya will draw one. The notch look is only used when Maya appears at the top; in a corner Maya is always a card. Automatic uses the real notch when your Mac has one and the pill when it does not.

6. Notifications — please read

Maya's normal way of reaching you is the check-in card at the top of the screen.

There is also a Backup notification setting. If the card cannot be put on screen for any reason, Maya sends a normal Mac notification instead, so a check-in is never lost in silence.

On current macOS, this backup does not work yet in this build. macOS only allows notifications from apps signed with an Apple Developer certificate, and Maya is not signed yet. If you press Send a test notification in Settings, it will tell you it was blocked. That is expected and nothing is broken — the check-in card itself works normally.

This will start working, with no change from you, in the first signed release.

7. Start Maya with your Mac

Settings → General → Open at login. Maya then appears in the menu bar every time you log in.

If you move Maya.app to a different folder after switching this on, turn it off and on again so macOS learns the new location.

8. Where your things are kept

Everything stays on your Mac, in this folder:

~/Library/Application Support/np.maya.app/

To open that folder: in Finder press ⇧⌘G and paste the path above.

Maya makes no network connections. Maya never reads your keystrokes, your screen, your microphone, or the titles of your windows. To know whether you are at the computer Maya asks macOS one question — how long since the last key or mouse movement — and to stay quiet during videos Maya asks whether a window is filling the screen. Nothing is recorded about what that window is.

Settings → Data → Save a backup… writes everything to one file you can keep anywhere, and Restore from a backup… brings it back (on this Mac or another one, or on Windows). Maya shows you what the backup holds before changing anything. Start over resets settings, history or everything, after asking.

To remove Maya completely: quit Maya, drag Maya.app to the Bin, then delete the folder above.

9. When something is wrong

Maya never appears. Check the menu bar for the मा. If it is missing, Maya is not running — open Maya from Applications. If Maya is running, click the heart → Send a test check-in. If the preview appears but real check-ins never do, you may be paused, in quiet hours, or at the daily limit — open Maya and look at Today.

Maya appeared once and never again. There is a minimum gap between check-ins (30 minutes by default) and a daily limit (5). Both are in Settings.

Maya interrupts at bad times. Turn on Presenting mode, widen quiet hours, or lower the daily limit. For one-off cases, use Put Maya to sleep in the menu.

Nothing works and you want to report it. Open the folder in section 8 and send maya.log. It contains only timestamps, which reminder fired and window positions — never what you typed or what was on screen.

10. Which Macs are fully supported