Asked by people who read the fine print.

The Mac

Which Macs can run Cove?

macOS 15 or later on an Apple Silicon Mac. Cove does not run on Intel Macs, and there is no iPhone or iPad app.

Is Cove really Mac-only?

Yes. One platform, done properly. If you mostly read on your phone, Cove isn’t for you yet; the comparison pages name good options.

What about sync?

There’s nothing to sync to: Cove has no cloud service and no second platform. Your library lives on one Mac.

How do updates arrive?

Inside the app. When a new version is available, Cove offers it to you. Release notes are on the changelog.

Your library

Where does my data live, and what happens if I stop using Cove?

In ordinary files on your Mac. If you ever leave, one click exports your subscriptions and folders as OPML, and your saved articles stay where they are.

How do I bring my feeds from another reader?

Export an OPML file from your current reader and import it into Cove. OPML carries subscriptions and folders, not articles or read state.

Does Cove fetch the full article for every feed?

When a feed sends only a preview, Cove fetches the rest when it can. Paywalls and broken pages get the preview and a link to the original instead.

How does search work?

Search covers the text of every article Cove kept, plus titles, authors, and feed names, and it works offline. Results rank by relevance, and words in double quotes match as a phrase. Clips has its own search over saved passages and notes.

Can I read offline?

Yes. Your feeds, your articles, and your place in them live on your Mac. Images stay available while they’re in the image cache.

Won’t keeping everything fill up my disk?

No. Text is tiny: Cove compresses every saved article, and a decade of heavy reading costs less space than two minutes of iPhone video. Images live in a separate cache, capped at 1 GB, that you can empty with one click.

Privacy

Does Cove know what I read?

No. There’s no account, no cloud service, and no analytics in the app. Articles are fetched and read on your Mac. Optional crash reports are anonymized before they leave your Mac, with one switch to turn them off. The privacy page has the details, including what this website collects.

Reading

Does Cove read articles aloud?

Yes, with voices that run on your Mac. Optional voices download once and run offline. The paragraph being read is highlighted, and you can pause and skip from the player, your media keys, or your headphones.

What does setting older unread aside do?

It keeps older unread articles from counting against you. They stay unread and in place, marked so you can see why, and a right-click brings one back.

What are Clips?

Saved passages. Select a passage, save it, and it joins a library of clips, each a click from the spot it came from. Each clip takes one note and copies out with its citation.

Agents

Can my agent read my library?

Yes, if you turn it on. Cove’s built-in MCP server is off by default and answers only on this Mac. Any agent that speaks MCP can connect: copy one configuration block from Settings. An agent can search your archive, read your feeds and articles, and manage subscriptions; your clips are not on the menu.

Beta and price

What does “beta” mean here?

The heart of it is complete and stable for daily reading. Beta means the 1.0 feature set is still landing and some edges are rough. The download is notarized by Apple, and updates arrive inside the app.

What will 1.0 cost?

Not decided yet. Cove is free during beta. Join the release list and you’ll hear the terms when they’re real.

Is Cove open source?

No. Cove’s source is private; its public repository holds the releases. Every download is signed by us and notarized by Apple.

Still wondering?

The quickest answer is the app itself: the beta is free, and leaving is one OPML export away.