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Getting started

The Knowledge Press app searches a library of 253 public-domain books on your iPhone, iPad or Mac and writes an answer to your question from the passages it finds. Everything it needs is inside the app: the books, the search index, and the language model. It works in airplane mode.

Get the app

The Mac app is on the Mac App Store. The iPhone and iPad app is in App Review.

What you need

Device Requirement
iPhone or iPad iOS or iPadOS 26. Apple Intelligence must be on for on-device answers.
Mac macOS 26 on Apple silicon. Apple Intelligence must be on for on-device answers.
Private Cloud answers iOS, iPadOS or macOS 27, and a network connection. See Answer engines.

Without Apple Intelligence, everything else still works: you can search, read the passages, and browse and read the books. The answer area says why the on-device engine is off.

Ask your first question

  1. Open the app. The Chat screen shows a line saying where answers come from and five suggested questions.
  2. Tap a suggestion, or type your own in the box at the bottom, and tap Send.
  3. The app searches the corpus, then writes an answer from what it found. The passages it used are listed under the answer.

For example, the suggestion "pillar of salt" searches the sacred texts for that exact phrase. See Asking a question.

Find your way around

The app has two parts: Chat, where you ask questions, and Browse, where you read the books. Where they sit depends on the device.

Two tabs at the bottom: Chat and Browse.

In Chat, the toolbar has buttons for Chats (your past conversations), Settings, Delete, and Export as Markdown.

A sidebar on the left holds New chat, Browse the corpus, the answer engine and corpus scope, and your past chats. Settings is at the bottom of the sidebar and opens as a popover. The toolbar has New chat, Delete and Export as Markdown.

The same sidebar as the iPad. Settings opens the standard Settings window (Cmd+,). The toolbar has Export as Markdown and Delete. The sidebar can be hidden with the toolbar's sidebar button.

Ask from Siri and Shortcuts

The app adds one Shortcut, Ask a Question. Say "Ask The Knowledge Press" to Siri, or add the shortcut to the Shortcuts app. It opens the app and asks your question the same way the Chat screen does.

Where to go next