Privacy policy.

The short version

Silo Systems collects no data from Ohms Explain and operates no Ohms Explain server.

No analytics. No telemetry. No account. No usage metrics. No error beacons. No advertising IDs. No fingerprinting. No crash reports. No third-party SDKs. Silo Systems runs no server for Ohms Explain and receives nothing about you, your device, or what you capture.

Images are read on your Mac, iPhone or iPad with Apple's on-device frameworks, and by default they stay on the device. The one exception is a provider you connect yourself with your own key, which is off until you turn it on and is described in full below.

What we don't have, and therefore never see

Because Ohms Explain has no server-side component, none of the following exists anywhere in our infrastructure (which consists of: nothing): your name, email, phone, or address; your IP address, device identifier, or any hardware fingerprint; your images, questions or answers; session timing, feature usage, or behavioural data; crash reports. The app never contacts Silo Systems. The only request the app itself sends off your device goes to an AI provider you set up yourself with your own key, as described below.

Images you capture

• Held in memory only. A capture is kept for the questions you ask about it and discarded when you close it or start a new one. The app never writes an image to disk.
• Screen regions (Mac). Captured only when you press Option-X or choose the menu item, and only inside the rectangle you drag.
• Camera. A photo is taken only when you press the shutter on the Mac or use Take Photo on iPhone and iPad. The Mac preview is never recorded.
• Image files and photos. Read only when you pick them, drop them onto the panel, or choose them from your photo library.
• On-device reading makes no network requests. Text recognition, image classification, barcode and QR decoding, and Apple Intelligence answers all run on the device. The Apple Intelligence model receives only the text, labels and codes read from the image plus your question, never the image itself.

A provider you connect: the only way an image leaves

Off by default. If you choose a hosted provider in Settings and enter your own API key, each analysis you run with it sends that provider the image as a JPEG downscaled to at most 1568 pixels on its longest side, the preset's instructions, and your question (or the preset's default question if you leave it blank), over HTTPS under your key. The provider also receives ordinary request metadata such as your IP address. Settings labels these providers SENDS IMAGE. The request goes directly from your device to that provider; Silo Systems is not a party to it, operates no proxy, and receives no copy. What the provider does with the image is governed by its own terms.

On a Mac you can instead point Ohms Explain at a model server running on that same Mac. It receives the same request over the loopback address and nothing goes to the internet. Settings may also check whether a server is answering at 127.0.0.1:11434 each time it opens, whether or not you use this option; that check stays on the Mac. iPhone and iPad do not offer this option. Once you choose On-device again, nothing further is sent to the provider.

API keys are stored in the Keychain under the app's bundle identifier. They are never written to preferences, the history file, or any log, and never sent to Silo Systems. Remove Key deletes the Keychain item and, if that provider was active, switches back to On-device.

Other outbound traffic you initiate

None of it goes to Ohms Explain:

1. App Store updates. When Apple ships an Ohms Explain update, the App Store delivers it. This traffic is between your device and Apple's servers. Ohms Explain is not involved.
2. Links you click. If you click an external link inside the app, your default browser handles the request. Ohms Explain is not involved.

Permissions we request, and why

• Screen Recording (Mac). Requested only by screen region capture. Camera, file and sample input work without it.
• Camera. Requested only by camera capture on Mac, iPhone and iPad.
• Files and photos you choose. The app opens only the images you pick or drop. The system photo picker on iPhone and iPad hands over only the photo you select. Save writes one plain-text answer to the location you choose.

The bundled sample label needs none of these. Ohms Explain does not request protected resources beyond those listed above. System permission controls remain in effect at all times.

On-device data you create

History is one plain-text file, history.json, inside the app's own storage. On a Mac that is the app container at ~/Library/Containers/com.silosystems.ohmsexplain/Data/Library/Application Support/com.silosystems.ohmsexplain/. Each entry holds the date, your question, the preset name, the answer text, and its source. No image or thumbnail is ever stored. The latest 200 entries are kept and older ones are dropped automatically.

The answer text can contain what was in your capture: without Apple Intelligence, the answer is the recognised text itself, so words read off a label or an invoice end up in that file. Delete any entry, or all of them, from History at any time. Removing the app may leave its sandbox data in place on a Mac; clear History first, then use macOS storage controls for anything that remains. Files you saved to a location you chose stay there until you delete them.

Third-party components

Ohms Explain includes no third-party SDKs and downloads no model weights. The only party outside your device that Ohms Explain can send your content to is the optional AI provider you connect with your own API key, described above; Silo Systems receives nothing. It uses Apple system frameworks that run locally on your device, and none of them receive any data about you from Ohms Explain:

• Apple Vision for text recognition, image classification, and barcode and QR decoding.
• Apple Foundation Models for written answers where Apple Intelligence is available (macOS 26 or iOS 26 and later).

Children's privacy

Because Silo Systems collects no personal data from any user, no special treatment is required for users under 13. The same policy applies regardless of age: Silo Systems collects nothing.

Changes

If we ever materially change how Ohms Explain handles data, we will publish an updated version of this page, announce the change prominently in the release notes, and require explicit consent in-app before any new collection begins. The current policy is: Silo Systems collects nothing.

Contact

Questions about this policy: admin@ohmslaw.net