Privacy Principles
This page explains what Fluent keeps on your Mac, what leaves it and where it goes, and the controls you have.
No Account
Fluent has no account and no sign-in. It never asks for your email or any similar identifier.
The sign-ins you do see belong to other services: a subscription provider such as Claude Code, or an integration you connect.
No Telemetry
Fluent doesn't track what you do in it, and sends no analytics or crash reports.
Keys And Sign-Ins
API keys for providers, and keys, tokens and sign-ins for integrations, are kept in the macOS Keychain.
When you connect something from a chat ("set up Groq", "connect my Notion"), the key goes from the field under the reply straight to the Keychain. No model ever sees it.
Model Traffic
What goes with a request: your message, the context and files you attach, the memories it needs, and the results of the tools it uses.
| You use | Where the request goes |
|---|---|
| A cloud provider with your API key | Straight from your Mac to that provider, encrypted, under your account. Fluent has no server in between. |
| A subscription provider (Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, GitHub Copilot) | Through that company's own app on your Mac, under your plan. Fluent never sees your sign-in, and the company's own terms apply. |
| A local model, a provider running on your Mac, or Apple Intelligence | Nowhere: it stays on your Mac. |
Integrations reach out on their own:
- Web Search sends your search words to DuckDuckGo, Bing, Brave Search and Mojeek. It and Web Fetch read pages straight from their websites.
- Maps searches Apple Maps.
- An external integration receives what the model sends it, on that integration's server.
- Code runs its scripts inside Fluent, with no network or file access of their own: they reach your data only through the integrations you've turned on.
Voice
Dictation turns your speech into text and polishes it on your Mac. Your audio never leaves it. An Ask Fluent question is sent as text to your default model, like any request. See Voice.
History
History is stored on your Mac and encrypted, with its key in the Keychain.
In Settings → History you can:
- Turn History off
- Clean it up automatically by age
- Clean it on demand
- Export and import it
Turning History off stops saving chats; Memory keeps working. Name chats automatically sends a short extra request to the chat's model now and then; turn it off there too.
Memory
Memory is stored on your Mac, in a database Fluent doesn't encrypt. Don't keep secrets in it, and turn on FileVault to encrypt your whole disk.
- Files and folders you add stay where they are. Fluent reads them and keeps what it learns. A web page, a downloaded document or an app's content you add is kept as a copy on your Mac.
- Fluent learns with Apple Intelligence, on your Mac, when your Mac has it, and otherwise with your default model. Choose another under Learning model, the gear in Settings → Memory. A cloud model there receives the text of what it learns.
- The memories a request needs go with it to the model. Automatic retrieval and Context budget in the gear in Settings → Memory control this.
- Passwords, PINs, keys, tokens, card and bank account numbers and one-time codes are never saved, even when you ask.
- The optional On-device relevance models run on your Mac and send nothing.
Files And Images
- Attached files aren't copied: Fluent keeps their location. What you paste or drag in without a file, like a screenshot, is kept in Fluent's cache for up to 60 days.
- Images generated with Google's image models are saved on your Mac in Fluent's folder, not encrypted.
- Pictures in replies load by themselves only when Fluent's own search found them, when they're the main picture of a page Fluent read, or when they're files on your Mac. A picture at any other address waits for Load Image. They're kept on your Mac for the chats that show them, and deleted with the chat.
Keep Apps Out
Add apps such as a password manager or a banking app to the Blacklist. While one of them is in front, Fluent's shortcuts, dictation included, do nothing.