Put your Mac to work while you sleep.
Acorn pays your Mac to run audio transcription jobs during the hours you're away from it. Image generation and scientific research are planned.
Example activity. The job IDs, earnings, timestamps, temperatures, and counts in that panel are made up — your own numbers appear in the app.
Apple Silicon earns money in idle time.
Acorn connects your Mac with the highest-paying jobs it can do — audio transcription today, with image generation, scientific research, and more planned as the network grows.
Jobs that fit your chip.
Your Mac runs the work it does well, and you opt in or out of each category. You get paid per completed job; the businesses sending the work pay a fraction of what the big clouds charge them.
You decide when it runs.
Run Acorn overnight, or anytime you're not using full compute. Touch the keyboard and it pauses. Unplug the laptop and it stops.
Cash, not points.
Every completed job adds to your balance. After earnings clear their hold, Friday automation creates a payout request from your eligible balance for operator review. An operator settles approved requests externally through PayPal or Venmo. New hosts start with a short holding period that shrinks as your machine builds a track record. No tokens, no points, no platform credit — just money.
What your Mac could earn.
Estimated from your hardware, idle hours, and measured fleet demand. Actual earnings vary with demand and your local power rate.
Loading measured fleet demand…
Planning sensitivity only: a $10–$50 per Mac per month retention band is unvalidated arithmetic (the $30 midpoint is not measured retention). Monthly figures still scale with measured fleet fill when available.
Your Mac
Pick your model and chip, how many hours it sits idle, and your local power rate. The estimate updates live.
Loading measured fleet demand…
- Apple Silicon — M1 or newer
- macOS 14+ Sonoma or later
- Plugged in
What Acorn can and can't reach.
You don't have to configure any of this. It's how the app is built.
It never asked macOS for your files.
Acorn never requested access to your files, screen, camera, or microphone — so macOS keeps it out of all of them. Audio is encrypted in transit, and the piece is wiped when the job finishes.
It steps aside when you come back.
It stops when you touch the keyboard, when the Mac comes off wall power, and when it runs hot. Other Macs pick the work up.
You pick what runs on your Mac.
Opt out of any model or category you would rather not serve. When planned work like image generation ships, you can leave it off. Uploads are checked for safety before they reach you.
A job's input lives on your Mac only while it is being worked on.
The Mac app downloads one small piece of the customer's job into your Mac's temporary folder while it works on it. The command-line version keeps its pieces in Acorn's local cache instead.
What hosts ask first.
What happens when you sit back down.
Acorn works after you step away and stops the moment you touch the keyboard. You choose how long the Mac should sit before work starts, and video calls count as you using it. If you'd rather it keep working while you work, you set the most it can use — it takes less whenever you or your apps need the room.
What about my electricity bill?
The estimate above already subtracts power cost using the kWh rate you enter. Apple Silicon is efficient under AI load, but electricity still matters, so the number we show is net of estimated power instead of a gross payout number.
What Acorn can reach on your Mac.
One piece of a customer's recording, and nothing else. Acorn never asked macOS for your files, screen, camera, or microphone, so macOS keeps it out of all of them. The audio belongs to the customer — nothing is ever recorded on, or taken from, your Mac, and the piece is wiped when the job finishes.
What kinds of jobs run on my machine?
Today your Mac earns on audio transcription. Image generation, scientific research, and more are planned as the network grows. You choose which categories your Mac will serve, and Acorn matches it with the best-paying eligible job for its hardware.
How do I get paid?
Your completed jobs add to your Acorn balance. To protect the network while a machine is new, earnings become eligible after a short hold: 14 days for new hosts, dropping to 7 and then to as little as a day as your machine builds a track record. Friday automation creates a payout request from your eligible balance for operator review when PayPal or Venmo is on file. An operator settles approved requests externally. Payouts are income, so you're responsible for any taxes — we'll provide the right tax forms if the law requires them.
Is there a minimum commitment?
No. You can pause Acorn, stop hosting, or uninstall whenever you want. Any unpaid balance that has reached the $10 cash-out minimum is still yours to withdraw.
What about Intel Macs, iPads, or battery mode?
Acorn is focused on plugged-in Apple Silicon Macs, meaning M1 or newer. Intel Macs, iPads, and battery-powered hosting are not on the near-term roadmap because the performance, reliability, and economics are best on plugged-in M-series hardware.
What "alpha" means for you.
There isn't much work in the network yet, so real earnings can come in under what the calculator suggests, and the app will keep changing as we learn from hosts and customers. The upside is direct access to the team — if something is confusing or broken, you reach a person quickly.
Get paid for the cycles your Mac isn't using.
Three minutes to install. Once your machine is idle, Acorn looks for eligible jobs it can run.