Back to Blog

The Best Free macOS Automation Tool Nobody Talks About - Accessibility Inspector

Fazm Team··2 min read
accessibility-inspectorxcodemacosautomationfree-tools

The Best Free macOS Automation Tool Nobody Talks About

Open Xcode. Go to Open Developer Tool. Click Accessibility Inspector.

You now have a tool that lets you see the complete UI hierarchy of any application on your Mac. Every button, every text field, every menu item - with its role, label, value, and available actions.

Most people do not know this exists. It is the single most powerful free tool for macOS automation.

What It Shows You

Point the Accessibility Inspector at any app and you see:

  • Element hierarchy - the tree structure of every UI component
  • Roles - button, text field, menu, checkbox, slider
  • Labels - what the element is called (the text a screen reader would announce)
  • Values - current state (text content, checkbox state, slider position)
  • Actions - what you can do with it (press, set value, select)

This is the same interface that VoiceOver uses for screen reading. It is stable across visual changes, app updates, and theme modifications.

Why It Matters for Automation

If you are building any kind of macOS automation - AppleScript, Python with pyobjc, or an AI desktop agent - the Accessibility Inspector is how you figure out what to target.

Instead of guessing coordinates or trying to match pixels, you find the element by its role and label. A "Save" button is always AXButton with AXTitle: "Save". It does not matter where it is on screen or what color it is.

Quick Start

  1. Open Xcode (install from App Store if you do not have it)
  2. Menu bar: Xcode > Open Developer Tool > Accessibility Inspector
  3. Click the target button (crosshair icon) in the Inspector
  4. Click on any element in any app
  5. The Inspector shows the full element details

Try it on your email client, your browser, your file manager. You will be surprised how much of each app's UI is accessible through this interface.


Fazm is built on top of macOS accessibility APIs. The Accessibility Inspector is how we develop and debug UI interactions. Open source on GitHub. Discussed in r/AI_Agents.

Related Posts