Privacy and safety
Saiki has no account and no server of its own: what you search, copy and say stays on your Mac, and anything that deletes or changes things asks you first and can be undone.
This page is the detail for the app. The short version, which also covers the website, is Saiki's privacy policy.
What stays on your Mac
- Search. Saiki builds its own file index on your Mac, and reads your Chrome history and bookmarks from Chrome's files on your Mac. Nothing you type in the bar is sent anywhere, except in the cases listed below.
- Clipboard History. Everything you copy is kept in a database on your Mac. Text in copied images is read on your Mac too.
- Dictation. Your voice is transcribed and cleaned up on your Mac. See Dictation.
- Bluetooth. Your paired devices and their batteries are read from macOS only while the Bluetooth Devices view is open, or for a moment when you connect a favourite from search or its hotkey. Your favourite devices' names and addresses are kept in your settings. Nothing about them leaves your Mac.
- Your settings, rankings and recent searches are files in Saiki's own folder.
What goes over the network
Only these, and each belongs to a feature you can turn off:
| What | When, and where it goes |
|---|---|
| Web search suggestions | Only in web search mode (search then ⇥): what you type goes to your search engine for suggestions. Turn off Settings → Search → Web search suggestions to stop it. |
| Exchange rates | With the Calculator on, Saiki downloads current rates about every 6 hours from Coinbase and checks them against the European Central Bank. Nothing you type is sent. |
| Site icons | For a site search shortcut whose icon Chrome doesn't have, Saiki fetches the icon once from that site itself, never from an icon service. |
| Dictation models | Downloaded once, the first time you dictate or when you pick a model in Settings → Dictation. Each download is checked against a fixed fingerprint before it's used. |
| AI | Your questions go through your own claude or codex tool to Anthropic or OpenAI, under your own plan. With AI on, Saiki also checks whether a newer Claude Code is out. See Set up AI. |
| Saiki updates | Once a day Saiki asks GitHub, where its releases are, whether there's a new version. Nothing installs until you choose to. Turn off Settings → About → Check for updates automatically to stop it. See Updates. |
| App Updates | Homebrew apps are checked with Homebrew on your Mac. Only if you turn them on: App Store apps are checked against Apple's lookup, which sends Apple the ids of those apps, and other apps against their developers' own update feeds and then Homebrew's public catalog (formulae.brew.sh), so each developer learns you have their app. See App Updates. |
| Homebrew | The commands you run (search, install, update) reach Homebrew's servers, as they do in Terminal. Search results are sorted by Homebrew's public install counts from formulae.brew.sh; turn off Show how popular search results are to stop that. Nothing about you is sent. See Homebrew. |
| Network Speed Test | Only when you run it: macOS's own networkQuality test against Apple's servers. See Monitors. |
Turning a feature off in Settings stops all of its work, network included.
Clipboard History
Clipboard History is built to keep passwords and secrets out. See Clipboard History for the rest of it.
- Marked copies are skipped. Password managers, browsers and macOS mark some copies as secret or temporary (a password you copy, a one-time code). Those are never recorded.
- Password managers are always ignored. Nothing copied in Passwords, Keychain Access, 1Password, Bitwarden, LastPass, Dashlane or Enpass is recorded. The ones you have installed are listed under Settings → Clipboard → Ignored Apps, and can't be removed.
- Ignore any app. Choose Add App… under Ignored Apps to stop recording copies made in another app. ⌘⌫ removes one you added.
- Secrets are hidden. With Hide keys, tokens and card numbers on (the default), a copied API key, token, private key or card number is kept as
[redacted: kind], and pasting it from the history pastes that. The copy you just made still pastes normally. - You choose how long. Keep history for goes from 1 week to Forever; it starts at 3 months. Older copies are deleted, except pinned ones.
- Clear it any time. Clear History… deletes everything except pinned items, after you confirm with ⌘↵.
When Saiki pastes something of its own into another app (an emoji, an AI answer, a calculator result), it puts your own clipboard back right after, unless you've copied something new in the meantime. What you type for the developer text tools is never stored.
Nothing changes without you
- Confirm cards. Commands that can't be taken back ask on a card in the bar first: Restart, Shut Down, Log Out, Empty Trash, Eject All, Quit All Apps, stopping a process in the Port Manager, ending or force quitting an app in the Task Manager, restarting Bluetooth, quitting a quit group, uninstalling an app, cleaning up files, every change in Homebrew, and updating apps in App Updates. ⌘↵ goes ahead; esc cancels.
- To the Trash, with Undo. The Uninstaller, the Cleaner and Convert files move things to the Trash, and an Undo command (Undo Uninstall, Undo Clean, Undo Convert) puts them back.
- Some things are permanent. A few deletes don't go through the Trash and can't be undone, and each asks on a card first: the Cleaner's Unused simulators and its Trash group (which empties the Trash; the card says these can't be undone), Empty Trash itself, and Homebrew's Uninstall and Uninstall and Zap.
- A last check before anything moves. Saiki refuses to remove your home folder, a system folder, a whole disk or a Git repository's root, anything inside a linked folder, or anything that changed since you were shown it.
AI and agents
- Saiki doesn't run an AI of its own. It drives the
claudeandcodextools you already use, signed in with your own plan. - Each chat runs in the permission mode you chose, passed to the tool explicitly. Saiki never uses the switches that turn the tools' permission checks off entirely. Whatever your mode would ask about in the terminal appears on a card in the bar for you to answer. See Approvals and modes.
- Answer Claude Code from Saiki (Settings → AI & Agents) is off until you turn it on and confirm. It adds one entry to Claude Code's settings file so you can answer its prompts from the bar; Saiki saves a backup first, changes nothing else in the file, and removes exactly that entry when you turn it off. If Saiki isn't running, the terminal asks as usual.
- Know when Codex in a terminal needs you is off by default. When on, it reads only the titles of terminal windows where Codex runs, never what's on screen.
Your Mac's settings
- Saiki asks for each macOS permission only when a feature first needs it, through macOS's own prompts and System Settings. See Install and permissions.
- Keep Awake works with the lid closed needs your administrator password once. What it installs allows only turning sleep and Low Power Mode on and off, nothing else. To remove it, select Keep Awake in the bar and choose Remove Closed-Lid Permission… in ⌘K. See Keep Awake.
- A settings file you edit or import can turn Dictation, Keep Awake's closed-lid setting and the Codex terminal check off, but never on. Those only turn on in Settings, by you.
Dictation
- Dictated text goes only into the app you started dictating in. If you've switched to another app by the time it's ready, the text is copied instead, and the pill says so.
- Dictation never presses ↵ for you, and in a terminal it always types one line.
- To help with spelling, it may read the text around your cursor, but never in password fields.