Privacy
Privacy policy
Last updated 2026-10-13.
The short version
Fileknife runs on your Mac. Your files are never uploaded. The only personal data involved is the email on your purchase and an anonymous ID that activates your licence.
What we collect
- Your licence email. When you buy Fileknife, our payment provider, Dodo Payments, collects your email and payment details to process the purchase and send your licence. Your card details go to Dodo, never to us.
- An anonymous per-Mac activation ID. To check a licence is valid and count how many Macs it's used on, the app sends an anonymous identifier derived for that Mac. It is not linked to your files and does not identify you personally.
- Nothing from your files. The contents of the files you process — videos, photos, PDFs, audio — are never sent anywhere. All processing happens on your Mac.
When the app uses the network
The app connects to the internet only to:
- check and activate your licence;
- check for app updates;
- download a small speech model once, for Subtitles on macOS 14 and 15. After that, Subtitles works offline.
- download Apple's on-device language packs for Translate — macOS downloads each one once, the first time you use it. After that, Translate works offline.
- Meeting Notes, Video Chapters and Summarize (for recordings) use Apple's on-device speech recognition. macOS downloads its speech files once, the first time you use it. Your audio never leaves your Mac.
This website
The site uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is cookieless and does not fingerprint or track you across sites — so there's no cookie banner to click. The waitlist form, if you use it, stores only the email you give us and the date you signed up, through our own subscriber service. We use it once — to tell you when the app ships — and you can have it removed at any time.
Your data rights
You can ask us to delete your waitlist email or your purchase record at any time. Email [email protected].
Contact
Questions about privacy? Email [email protected].