Your hands come first. Pause, take over, or stop.

You’re always in charge of your Mac. While Springle works, you can look around, pause it, take the rest of the task yourself, or end the conversation. Nothing it has already done is undone, and nothing more happens until you say so.

Using your Mac while Springle works

Moving the mouse, scrolling to have a look, and clicking don’t stop Springle. It waits for your hand to settle, then looks at the screen as you left it and carries on. If you did a step yourself while it waited, it won’t do it again.

Taking over

Springle pauses the moment you clearly start doing the job yourself with the keyboard:

• pressing esc while it works;
• typing while Springle is typing;
• typing a few keys in a row while it works.

Arrow keys, Page Up and Down, and shortcuts with ⌘ command count as looking around, so they don’t stop it.

What happens next depends on your mode:

If you’d said yes to Want me to do this bit?, taking over hands that one step back to you.

FinderFileEditViewWindowHelpSun 4 Oct  9:41

12

Walk through

1. 1The amber pause sign on the right of the island.
2. 2Springle says it has stopped and asks whether to carry on.

Pausing with words

You can also pause by saying or typing "wait", "hold on" or "cancel". Springle stops what it’s doing at once, without changing your mode. In Auto, the rest of the task is left to you, as above. esc in the typing box does the same, and hands the keyboard back to your app.

Carrying on

To pick up where Springle left off, say or type "carry on", "keep going" or "continue". Politeness is fine: "okay, carry on please" works too. In Do it for me you can also click the amber Carry on chip and choose Carry on.

When the card is folded, the island shows you’re paused:

FinderFileEditViewWindowHelpSun 4 Oct  9:41

12

Walk through

1. 1The pause sign stays on the right of the island until you carry on.
2. 2Paused, in amber, with a reminder of what to say.

"Carry on" only ever resumes what was paused. It never switches you from Guide me to Do it for me.

Stopping

Stopping ends the conversation. Any of these work:

• The round button at the far right, beside the notch, when the card is open. It’s a Stop square while Springle is busy or listening (red while it’s busy), and a × once a typed conversation is at rest. It’s the same action either way.
• ⌃ control ⌥ option Space stops any conversation, typed ones included.
• Stop Springle in the menu bar, under Springle’s face.
• Stop Springle or Close Springle in the card’s ⋯ menu.

Stop works on your Mac even if the internet connection drops. Anything Springle had queued up to do is thrown away, so a late reply can’t act on a screen that has moved on.

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1. 1After you stop, Springle says goodbye under the island, then the island goes back to rest.

When Springle stops by itself

• Your Mac locks or sleeps. Springle stops and doesn’t start again when you unlock. Call it again when you’re ready.
• A spoken conversation goes quiet for two minutes (four if Springle is pointing at something).
• A typed conversation is finished. It puts itself away a minute after the answer if nothing else is going on, and you can pick it up again within ten minutes.