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Moving from Orca
Pod and Orca run side by side. What Pod keeps apart, what it shares with Orca, what its importer brings over and what you set up again.
Pod is in preparation. The importer below is coming with the first release.
Pod and Orca side by side
Pod is a separate app with an identity of its own, so it never shares a profile with Orca and both can stay installed:
| Orca | Pod | |
|---|---|---|
| App | /Applications/Orca.app | /Applications/Pod.app |
| Profile | ~/Library/Application Support/orca | ~/Library/Application Support/Pod |
| Command | orca | podx |
| Link scheme | orca:// | pod:// |
Pod keeps Orca's home folder, ~/.orca, and the ORCA_* environment variable names, so agent hooks, scripts and agents that read them keep working in both apps.
What the importer brings over coming
On its first launch Pod offers to import from your Orca profile:
- your settings and workspace state;
- your repositories, worktrees and terminal history;
- the key Orca encrypts its saved data with, copied from Orca's Keychain item into Pod's own, so what Orca kept encrypted opens in Pod too.
It copies, it never moves: the files are cloned on APFS, so the copy takes no extra space until one side changes, and Orca keeps working as it was.
Claude accounts you added in Orca are not copied: both apps read the same Keychain entry, because a copied sign-in would stop working the next time its token rotates.
What you set up again
- macOS permissions. Accessibility, Screen Recording, Automation and Full Disk Access belong to an app's identity, so macOS asks for them again for Pod.
- Stably's services. Pod switches off Orca's telemetry, relay, push, share and feedback services. Anything you used through them stays in Orca.
Back to Orca
Nothing in Orca's profile changes, so going back is opening Orca. To remove Pod, drag it to the Trash and delete ~/Library/Application Support/Pod. Leave ~/.orca in place: Orca uses it too.