Clarity comes first.

In short

Ownkin has no account and no cloud model. The assistant runs on your Mac, and your iPhone and iPad connect directly to that Mac. The apps contain no analytics, advertising or tracking code, and they never send us your conversations, usage statistics or crash reports. We don’t sell or share personal information.

A few things do leave your devices so the apps can work: the Mac downloads model files (and, if you turn on voice, speech files) from Hugging Face and GitHub; your devices use a public relay and discovery service run by n0 to find and reach each other; when Ownkin reads a web page for you, your Mac requests it from that website; if you add your own Exa key, web searches go to Exa; the Mac app downloaded from this website checks ownkin.ai for updates; and if you turn on iPhone alerts, your Mac sends short, fixed alerts through Apple’s push notification service, usually by way of a push relay we run. Each is described below.

Who operates Ownkin

Ownkin is operated by Tlon OU. Our website domain is ownkin.ai. For support or privacy questions, write to contact@ownkin.ai.

Your conversation stays on your devices

Your Mac keeps your conversation and generates every reply on the Mac itself, using a language model (Qwen 3.5 4B) that runs locally. There is no fallback to an online model service.

When you use an iPhone or iPad, it sends what you write to your paired Mac and keeps a copy of the conversation so you can read it there. Unsent drafts stay on the device where you wrote them. Replies can include what Ownkin looked up for you, such as calendar events, contact details, file text or web pages, so that information is stored with the conversation too.

Stored messages and drafts, and on the Mac what tools returned, research sources, remembered facts and schedule instructions, are encrypted with keys kept in your device’s Keychain. Those keys are limited to that device and are not synced through iCloud Keychain. The apps mark their conversation, draft, diagnostic and download folders as excluded from backups, and they don’t use iCloud.

Memory and schedules

Ownkin keeps the facts it remembers about you on your Mac. You can see them on your Mac, iPhone or iPad, and correct or forget each one. Forgetting a fact erases its text and stops Ownkin from learning it again from the same message. Learning from conversations is off until you turn on Learn from conversations on the Mac; when it is on, your Mac’s own model picks out facts from your conversation, on the Mac.

Schedules you create run on your Mac at the times you choose, and your Mac stores your time zone so they run at the right time. A scheduled run can use the same tools as a request you make, but it never shows a permission prompt while you’re away, and anything that needs your OK waits for you.

What Ownkin can use on your Mac

To answer a request, whether you ask on the Mac or from your iPhone or iPad, Ownkin can use a small set of tools. They run on your Mac, and what they return becomes part of your conversation.

Calendar and Reminders. The first time a request of yours needs them, the Mac app asks macOS for access. It then reads your calendars or reminder lists when you ask about them. It adds an event or a reminder only after you approve it.

Contacts. When you ask Ownkin to find someone, the Mac app asks for Contacts access the first time, then looks up names, phone numbers and email addresses only. It doesn’t read notes or other contact fields.

Files. Ownkin can read only folders you add in the Mac’s Settings, up to 16. It can list them and read text files inside them, and nothing else on your Mac. The Mac remembers the folders you added in the app’s preferences until you remove them.

Web pages. When a request needs a public web page, such as one you mention, a search result, or a page Ownkin chooses while researching, your Mac fetches it directly from that website. The website receives an ordinary web request: your Mac’s IP address, the page address and a standard header naming the app and macOS’s networking version. Ownkin sends no cookies, sign-ins or identifiers, keeps no web cache, and refuses addresses on your local network. Each read is limited in size and time. Ownkin reads web pages and plain text, not PDFs. The website’s own practices govern what it does with the request.

Web search. Search works only after you add your own Exa API key in the Mac’s Settings. The key is stored in your Mac’s Keychain and is not shown again. Each search sends Exa, from your Mac’s IP address, your key, the search words Ownkin writes for your request (which can include words from your request) and the number of results wanted. Exa handles these under its own terms and privacy policy and your Exa account. Remove the key in Settings to turn search off.

Research. Ownkin can prepare a research brief on your Mac, which starts only when you choose to start it. It reads the sources you selected, such as web pages or files in your chosen folders, follows further pages, and searches the web if you added an Exa key. The brief, its sources and citations are stored encrypted on your Mac with your conversation.

Connecting your iPhone or iPad to your Mac

To pair, the Mac shows an invitation that you copy to your iPhone or iPad. It contains a one-time secret, valid for five minutes, and the network addresses needed to reach your Mac. Because it uses the clipboard, Apple’s Universal Clipboard may carry it between your own devices.

Your devices connect using iroh, an open-source networking library, over an end-to-end encrypted connection. When they can’t reach each other directly, traffic passes through relay servers operated by n0 (number 0), the makers of iroh. To help your devices find each other, each app also publishes its device’s public connection key and chosen relay address to n0’s discovery service. By default it does not publish your IP addresses there.

n0’s relays and discovery service cannot read your messages. Like any network service, they can see your devices’ public connection keys, IP addresses, connection timing and the amount of data sent. The Mac app uses this connection whenever it is open. The iPhone and iPad apps use it while they are open, even before you pair. We don’t operate these servers or receive this information. n0’s own practices govern it.

Your Mac records each paired device by its public connection key, under the label “Paired device”. Ownkin does not record your device’s name or model.

Model downloads on your Mac

When you choose Download and set up this Mac, the Mac app downloads its language model files from Hugging Face. Voice is a separate, optional download of about 2.8 GB: the first time you use voice, Ownkin tells you the size and asks first, then downloads speech models from Hugging Face and two pronunciation dictionary files from GitHub. These servers, and the storage hosts they redirect to, receive a standard web request: your IP address, the files requested and your system’s default network information. The request includes no account, token or identifier from Ownkin, and none of your conversation or voice. Hugging Face handles this under its privacy policy, and GitHub under GitHub’s privacy statement.

Downloads use Wi-Fi or other non-metered networks only. Files are checked against fixed fingerprints before use and kept in the app’s storage on your Mac. The iPhone and iPad apps don’t download models.

Voice

iPhone and iPad. If you hold the microphone button, Ownkin asks for microphone access and listens only while you hold it. Speech is turned into text on the device using Apple’s on-device speech recognition. The audio is not saved and is not sent to us or to your Mac — only the resulting text is sent, like a typed message. The first time, iOS may download Apple’s speech recognition files for your language from Apple.

Mac. Voice input and Read aloud are optional and use speech models that run on your Mac, after the download described above. When you turn the microphone on, the Mac app asks for microphone access the first time. It keeps what it hears in memory only, for at most two minutes, turns it into text on the Mac and puts the text in the message box for you to check before sending. The audio is never saved or sent anywhere. Read aloud speaks a reply’s own text on the Mac, and nothing is sent.

Notifications

If you turn on reply alerts on iPhone or iPad, the app asks Apple’s push notification service for a device token, an identifier Apple uses to deliver alerts to that app on that device. The app sends this token only to your paired Mac, over your end-to-end encrypted connection. Your Mac stores it encrypted with the conversation and forgets it when you turn alerts off, when Apple reports it is no longer valid, or when you remove the device from your Mac.

Your Mac then sends alerts so they can arrive while the app is closed. Each alert reads only “Your reply is ready.”, “A scheduled result is ready.” or “Ownkin needs your OK to continue.” and carries a random identifier for that reply or request. It never includes your message, the reply, or what Ownkin wants to do. Opening an alert shows the current state from your Mac; an alert can’t approve anything. Apple receives the device token, the time of the alert and that fixed text to deliver it, under Apple’s privacy policy.

Our push relay. Unless you set up your own Apple push key (below), your Mac hands each alert to a push relay that Tlon OU runs on Cloudflare, and the relay passes it to Apple. For each alert the relay receives your iPhone’s or iPad’s device token, whether it is a development or a production token, which of the three fixed sentences to show, the random identifier, and a short-lived credential for your Mac. It does not receive your messages, replies, name, Apple ID or contacts. To check that requests come from a genuine Ownkin app, your Mac registers an Apple App Attest key, which Apple creates in the Mac’s secure hardware, once with the relay; we keep that key’s public part, a counter, the current credential in hashed form and counts of recent alerts so we can limit how many alerts a Mac sends. So that one Mac can’t send alerts to someone else’s phone, the relay also keeps a one-way hash of each device token with the Mac allowed to use it and when it last did; that record is deleted after 30 days without alerts or when Apple reports the token invalid. The relay doesn’t store the token itself, the random identifier or which sentence was sent, and it writes no logs of them. Your Mac reaches the relay at push.ownkin.ai, an address Cloudflare serves directly. Cloudflare processes the connection, including your Mac’s IP address, to deliver the request, under its own policy, and limits how many requests one IP address can make per minute. We have not enabled analytics, request logging or log export for it. We use this data only to deliver your alerts and protect the relay.

If you import your own Apple push key in your Mac’s Settings, your Mac sends alerts straight to Apple and the relay is not used; the key stays in your Mac’s Keychain. The relay needs a Mac that supports Apple’s App Attest: macOS 27 or later with full security settings, running a copy of the Mac app signed by Tlon OU, such as the one downloaded from this website or a TestFlight copy. Without either the relay or a key, the app shows the same local alert only when it receives a finished reply while it is open and connected. Turning off reply alerts in the app, or notifications in iOS Settings, stops alerts on that device.

Vault and AutoFill on your Mac

The Mac app has a vault for logins, payment cards, addresses, ID documents and a personal profile. Passwords, card numbers and other secret values are stored in your Mac’s Keychain, in a group that only Ownkin’s signed vault helper can open; they stay on that Mac and are not synced through iCloud Keychain. Labels and masked values are stored encrypted with your conversation on the Mac and are not sent to your iPhone or iPad. Showing a secret value asks you to confirm with Touch ID or your Mac password, and the window is hidden from screenshots and screen sharing while it is shown.

When a request needs them, Ownkin’s model can read the profile, address and document details you saved, but never passwords, card details or document numbers. If you turn on Ownkin under AutoFill in System Settings and allow a login to be filled, macOS keeps that login’s website, label and a reference to the item so it can offer it; the password is handed over only when you pick it and confirm. The vault helper runs in the background and is listed in Login Items.

Updates for the downloaded Mac app

The Mac app downloaded from this website uses Sparkle, an open-source updater. On its second launch, Sparkle asks whether to check for updates automatically. If you agree, it checks about once a day; you can also choose Check for Updates… in the app menu at any time. A check downloads the update feed at ownkin.ai/appcast.xml, which Cloudflare serves. The request carries your Mac’s IP address and a standard header naming the app, its version and Sparkle’s version. System profiling is off, so no hardware or system profile is sent, and the request includes no identifier from Ownkin.

An update is downloaded and installed only when you choose to install it. The new disk image then comes from ownkin.ai/download/, which Cloudflare serves from storage Tlon OU runs on Cloudflare R2, so Cloudflare processes your IP address and the request. Before installing, Sparkle checks that the feed and the update are signed with our key and refuses them otherwise. Sparkle keeps your choice and the time of its last check in the app’s preferences.

Diagnostics stay on your device

To help diagnose problems, the apps record technical events locally. These include which internal operation ran, how long it took, and fixed failure codes. They also note whether the app was in the foreground, the device’s thermal state, Low Power Mode, and Apple’s on-device performance reports. Those reports cover CPU, GPU, disk-write and network-byte counts, and the type of a crash or hang without its details. Diagnostics never include your messages or replies, your name, or your device’s model or system version.

Diagnostic records are encrypted, kept for about 24 hours, and capped in size. The apps never send them anywhere. Under Build and diagnostics, you can choose to share a summary of counts and measurements through the system share sheet. It goes only where you choose to send it.

Device access and settings

iPhone and iPad. The app asks for microphone access (for voice input) and notifications (only if you turn on reply alerts), and uses the clipboard when you copy or paste. It doesn’t access your contacts, calendars, reminders, photos, files or location.

Mac. The app asks for microphone access the first time you use voice, and for Calendars, Reminders or Contacts the first time a request of yours needs them. It reads files only in folders you choose, and uses the clipboard when you copy or paste. Start Ownkin at login and the vault helper appear in Login Items, and AutoFill is something you turn on in System Settings. You can withdraw any of these in System Settings. The Mac app doesn’t access your photos or location.

Small settings, like whether you’ve enabled alerts or approved a download, are stored in the app’s preferences on the device. Links in a reply open in your browser only when you tap them. The Mac app’s “Privacy and support” link opens this website.

Not available yet

These features are not available in the current builds and collect nothing today. We will describe exactly how each one handles your information here before it works.

Gmail and Outlook. The Mac’s Settings lists these mail connections as not available in this build. When they are available, they are intended to stay off until you connect an account, and to read mail only when you ask.

PDF reading. Ownkin doesn’t read PDF documents yet.

Keeping and deleting your information

Your conversation and settings stay on your devices until you delete them. You can forget a remembered fact in Memory, remove a folder or your search key in the Mac’s Settings, and delete vault items in the vault. Removing the app from iPhone or iPad deletes its stored data. iOS may keep its Keychain keys, which are random keys without conversation content.

On the Mac, moving the app to the Trash does not remove its data. To remove everything, first turn off Ownkin and its vault helper in Login Items, then delete these folders in your Library’s Application Support folder: OwnkinConnection, OwnkinOwnerWork, OwnkinDiagnostics, OwnkinResourceDownloads and Ownkin (model and voice files). Its encryption keys, your web search key, a push key you imported and your vault’s secret values remain in your Mac’s Keychain under names beginning “ai.ownkin” or “sh.tlon.ownkin” until you remove them, and its small settings, folder choices and update settings remain in the app’s preferences. An in-app control to erase everything is not available yet.

If your Mac used our push relay, the relay keeps that Mac’s installation record (the App Attest public key, its counter, the hashed current credential and recent alert counts) with no expiry yet, and each device-token record until 30 days after its last alert. These records carry no name, Apple ID or contact details, so we can’t look up which one is yours.

Visiting this website

This site serves static pages, images, bundled fonts, the Mac app download and the Mac app’s update feed. We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to measure aggregate page visits and loading performance. It uses no cookies or browser storage and does not track people across websites. Our site has no advertising or account forms. It does not request microphone, camera, or location access.

Cloudflare hosts this website. Serving and protecting the site involves processing request information, including your IP address, requested URL, and browser information. Website analytics are separate from the Ownkin apps and never receive your conversations or app diagnostics. We do not use advertising trackers. See Cloudflare’s analytics description. Cloudflare describes its own processing, retention, international transfers, and privacy contacts in its privacy policy.

When you download the Mac app, Cloudflare serves it from storage Tlon OU runs on Cloudflare R2 and processes your IP address and the request to deliver the file, under its own policies. We have not enabled analytics or request logging for that storage or the website’s download service.

Contacting us

The contact link opens your email application. Sending an email shares your address, message, and any attachments with us and the email services involved. We use that correspondence to respond to your request. Please share only what is needed, and do not send passwords, access tokens, or private app data. If you send a diagnostic summary, we use it only to help with your request.

Because your app data stays on your devices, we can’t view, export or delete it for you. To ask about access, correction, or deletion of information you have sent us, write to contact@ownkin.ai. Please identify the earlier correspondence so we can locate it. You may also contact your local data protection authority.

Changes

We will update this policy when the apps’ or website’s data handling changes, including before any feature listed under “Not available yet” works, and show the update date at the top. Our terms of use cover use of the apps and website.

Font notice

This website bundles Inter by the Inter Project Authors under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.