Privacy
What PLACE keeps, and what leaves your Mac.
PLACE is local-first: there is no PLACE account, no PLACE server and no sync. Text goes to an AI provider only for the jobs below, and only after you allow it.
What is stored, and where
Everything is in ~/Library/Application Support/PLACE on this Mac. Saved items are in board.json. Memory (videos, articles and screen text) is in Memory.sqlite. Visual mode pictures are in the Visual folder. What assistants may see, and the list of their reads, are in assistant-access.json and assistant-access-log.jsonl. API keys are in your macOS Keychain. Nothing is synced.
Memory is off until you turn it on. Memory older than your setting (7, 30 or 90 days) is deleted automatically.
What leaves this Mac, and when
Only three things. Text sent to a cloud AI provider: a quote you explain, after you press Send; Ask, suggestions and summaries, after you allow your provider. What an assistant reads through AI connections, which then goes to that assistant's provider. And video thumbnails, which are loaded from YouTube. With Apple Intelligence, AI runs on this Mac and sends nothing.
Items you hide from AI assistants (right-click → Hide from AI Assistants) are never sent to a model and never shown to an assistant.
AI providers: what is sent, for which job
You pick one provider in Settings → AI: Claude Code on your own subscription (the default), the Claude API or OpenAI with your key, Apple Intelligence on this Mac, or Off. With Apple Intelligence nothing is sent anywhere.
| Job | What is sent | When |
|---|---|---|
| Explain a quote | The quote only: never the page address, title or your note | After you press Explain… and then Send, on a screen that shows the exact text and where it goes |
| Ask (Return) | Your question and the best matching passages | When you press Return. Typing alone searches on this Mac and sends nothing |
| Suggestions in a place | At most 12 short excerpts and the place's current task | Only after you allow your provider to find connections |
| Screen summaries and groups, Catch Me Up | The text of the windows screen memory saw | Run on Apple's on-device model when the Mac has it. Otherwise only after you allow your provider |
With Claude Code, PLACE runs the claude command with every tool turned off, in an empty temporary folder, so the model can only read what PLACE sends and answer. API keys are kept in your macOS Keychain.
AI assistants
Sharing with assistants is off until you turn on Let AI assistants read my PLACE in Sources & Privacy → AI connections, and you choose what is shared. Access is read-only, and every read is listed there.
- Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Codex and Gemini CLI connect through a connector that runs on this Mac. What they read then goes to that assistant's provider.
- ChatGPT and Grok can't reach apps on your Mac. They see only a brief you copy and paste yourself.
- Visual mode pictures are shared only if you turn on Share visual sessions.
- Text from screen memory is shared only if you turn on Share screen activity. Mail and chat windows are never shared, and page addresses are given without their query strings.
The Chrome extension
The PLACE Memory extension talks only to PLACE on this Mac. It records:
- On YouTube (after you click Allow on YouTube): the parts of a video you played while its tab was visible and in front, its title and its transcript when YouTube has one.
- On article sites you approve: how long you read, which headings and paragraphs were in view, and optionally the public article text. Login, account, checkout, message and editor pages, password fields and forms are skipped.
It does not record your screen, microphone, keystrokes, clipboard, browsing history or incognito windows.
Screen memory and Visual mode
Screen memory is optional and off by default. It reads the text of the window in front about every 10 seconds on this Mac and keeps only the text.
Password managers (1Password, Bitwarden, LastPass, Dashlane), Keychain Access, Passwords, PLACE itself, the login window and the screen saver; private windows in Chrome-family browsers; and any time the screen is locked or you've been away for 5 minutes. It keeps only the text: the picture is thrown away right after reading.
Visual mode is the only time PLACE keeps pictures, and only because you started it with ⌃⌥⌘V: one picture per second of the window in front, until the countdown in the menu bar ends.
Pausing and deleting
Pause
Click Recording at the bottom of the sidebar; it changes to Paused and nothing new is remembered until you click it again. Pause Memory is also in the PLACE menu in the menu bar. Saving with ⌃⌥⌘S still works while Memory is paused.
Delete
In Sources & Privacy → Privacy & data: Clear Screen Memory, Delete All Visual Sessions, or Clear All Memory. To remove one video, article, screen capture or visual session, open it in Activity and delete it there. Saved items are separate: delete one from its inspector, or all of them in Settings → Privacy & Data. Memory older than your setting (7, 30 or 90 days) is deleted automatically.
This website
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