The short version
SiloVault collects no data. None.
No analytics. No telemetry. No account. No personal data. No usage metrics. No error beacons. No advertising IDs. No fingerprinting. No crash reports. No data of any kind is collected, stored, transmitted, or shared by SiloVault about you, your device, or your content.
Everything SiloVault does runs entirely on your Mac, on-device, using a bundled local runtime and locally-stored open-weights models. There is no cloud component. There is no server. There is no SiloVault account.
What we don't have, and therefore never see
Because SiloVault 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 content and anything derived from it; session timing, feature usage, or behavioural data; crash reports. The app does not phone home, ever.
The local backend is not a network service
SiloVault runs a small local process to perform its on-device work. It binds strictly to the loopback interface (127.0.0.1:8765), never to a public or network-facing address. The SwiftUI host renders the UI in a WKWebViewloaded from that same loopback origin. This is on-device inter-process communication only — it accepts no external connections and is not reachable from your network or the internet.
Workspace recall (opt-in)
SiloVault includes an optional, opt-in feature: an opt-in feature that builds a private, searchable timeline of your work from periodic on-device screen OCR and optional audio transcription. It isoff by default and never runs until you explicitly enable it. Everything about it stays on your Mac:
- On-device only. All recognition and processing run locally on your Apple Silicon Mac. Nothing captured is ever transmitted anywhere.
- A visible indicator is shown the entire time capture is active.
- App and secure-field exclusions. You can exclude specific apps, and secure-field contexts (such as password fields) are excluded.
- Retention you control. You set a retention window; older entries expire automatically and you can clear the history at any time.
- Encrypted at restinside the app's on-device container, never in any cloud.
If you never enable it, none of this runs and nothing is captured.
Outbound traffic you initiate
The only outbound network traffic, all user-initiated, and none of it to SiloVault:
- Model weight downloads. After explicit consent, SiloVault downloads revision-pinned model weights from the disclosed Hugging Face hosts and verifies them before use. No Silo account is required. Once the weights are on disk, SiloVault works fully offline.
- App Store updates.When Apple ships a SiloVault update, the App Store delivers it. This traffic is between your Mac and Apple's servers. SiloVault is not involved.
- Links you click. If you click an external link inside the app, your default browser handles the request. SiloVault is not involved.
Permissions we request, and why
- Folders you choose. Read only the folders you explicitly select through the macOS file picker, remembered across launches with security-scoped bookmarks.
- Screen Recording. (optional) Used only by the optional workspace-recall feature for on-device screen OCR. Requested only when you enable recall.
- Microphone. (optional) Used only by optional workspace-recall audio capture for on-device transcription. Requested only when you enable it.
SiloVault does not request Camera, Contacts, Location, or Full Disk Access beyond what is listed above. If you grant nothing, it can read nothing.
On-device data you create
Your content and everything derived from it live on your disk under ~/Library/Containers/com.silovault.app/Data/Library/Application Support/SiloVault/ (plus any folder you explicitly choose to export to). They are yours. We do not have access to them. Deleting SiloVault removes the app; your work remains under its container until you delete it manually.
Version 1.8.0 portable export is in preparation. A .silovault archive is written only to the destination you choose, uses authenticated AES-256-GCM encryption, and is never uploaded by SiloVault. Import verifies integrity and previews conflicts before creating a separate local copy.
Third-party components
SiloVault uses these open-source components and public services. None of them receive any data about you from SiloVault:
- mlx-lm — runs locally on-device.
- gemma-4-e2b-it-4bit — runs locally on-device.
- embeddinggemma-300m — runs locally on-device.
- Apple Vision OCR — runs locally on-device.
- Gemma 4 E2B, Gemma 4 E4B, Gemma 4 12B, Gemma 4 26B MoE, and Gemma 4 31B chat models (Hugging Face) — downloaded on demand, run locally.
- EmbeddingGemma 300M embedding model (Hugging Face) — downloaded on demand, run locally.
- FastAPI — the bundled local backend, bound to loopback only.
- Hugging Face Hub — contacted only when you choose to download model weights.
Children's privacy
SiloVault is rated 4+. Because no personal data is collected from any user, no special treatment is required for users under 13. Same policy applies regardless of age: nothing collected.
Changes
If we ever materially change how SiloVault 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: nothing is collected.
Contact
Questions about this policy: admin@ohmslaw.net
For non-private inquiries you can also open an issue at github.com/flowmar47/silovault/issues.