What DeskTrack sees, and where it goes.

Screenshots never leave your Mac. When DeskTrack analyzes your screen visually, it does so with Apple's on-device model — the image is held in memory, read, and dropped. It is never uploaded, and never written to disk.

If you use the OpenAI mode instead, DeskTrack doesn't take a screenshot at all. It tracks from the app name and window title, and sends only that text. There is no mode in which a picture of your screen is transmitted anywhere.

One more case to know about: the daily summary. When OpenAI writes it, the text of your day's timeline goes along — including the short notes the on-device model made from your screen (a document name, a ticket number, who you were messaging). The screenshots themselves never do. You can have the summary written on-device instead.

Meeting notes are separate, off by default, and are the one feature that can send audio off your Mac — see below.

DeskTrack checks for new versions a few hours apart, and when you launch it. That check is the only request the app makes on its own behalf — everything else happens because you asked for it.

The request carries the version you're running and a random install ID generated on your Mac. It isn't derived from your hardware, your name, your email, or anything else about you, and it isn't linked to any account. We use it to count how many people are running DeskTrack, and which versions are still in use — nothing more.

Your activity, screenshots, transcripts, tasks and summaries are never part of that request, or any other. Updates download in the background and install when you quit the app.

• On-device (Apple Intelligence): DeskTrack captures your screen periodically and analyzes it with Apple's built-in model, running locally. Perceptual hashing means an unchanged screen isn't re-analyzed. The image is discarded immediately; only a short text summary ("writing a PR description in VS Code") is saved to a local file.
• OpenAI: no screen capture happens, and DeskTrack doesn't request Screen Recording access for it. What's sent to OpenAI is text: the frontmost app name, the window title, your recent activity summaries, and the daily intention you set.
• Off: no AI at all — app-name tracking only, entirely local.

You choose during setup. On Macs that support Apple Intelligence, on-device is the recommended and pre-selected option.

DeskTrack can transcribe meetings. This is off by default and never turns itself on — you enable it, and you confirm consent before each recording starts.

• It records other people. Transcription works from your Mac's system audio, so it captures the voices of everyone on the call, plus your microphone. No bot joins the meeting, and participants aren't notified automatically — telling them is your responsibility, and in some places it's a legal requirement. DeskTrack gives you an announcement script, but can't verify you used it.
• Audio is never saved. It's held in memory, transcribed, and dropped. No audio file is ever written to disk or retained after transcription.
• Transcription is on-device where your Mac supports it. That needs a recent Apple-silicon Mac with Apple Intelligence. On Macs without it, transcription falls back to OpenAI, which means the meeting audio is uploaded for transcription. You can also choose OpenAI deliberately for AI summaries and action items.
• Transcripts are kept for 30 days, locally, then the words are deleted automatically. The summary, decisions, action items, and participant names are kept until you delete them. You can delete any meeting, or drop just its transcript, at any time.
• The live assist panel follows the same routing as your meeting notes: on a Mac with Apple Intelligence it runs on-device and the transcript never leaves your machine, and the running transcript is sent to OpenAI only if you chose cloud meeting notes or your Mac can’t run it locally.

OpenAI is the only third party DeskTrack talks to on its own, and only when you have supplied your own API key. (Connecting Claude is a separate, optional step — see the next section.) Depending on your settings, OpenAI may receive:

• App names, window titles, and activity summaries — in OpenAI screen mode.
• Your day's timeline text, to write the daily summary: each capture's one-line summary and the short notes the on-device model wrote from your screen (document names, ticket numbers, who you were messaging), plus your daily intention and open task titles. This runs when you ask for a summary and once a day, and it prefers OpenAI even when screen analysis stays on-device. You can point the summary back at your on-device model in Settings.
• Meeting audio, when on-device transcription isn't available or you chose OpenAI.
• Meeting transcripts, for summaries, action items, and live assist.

Never sent: images of your screen, audio recordings kept as files, or anything at all if you run in off mode without meeting notes.

The Claude tab can add DeskTrack to Claude Desktop or Claude Code on the same Mac. Once connected, Claude can read your DeskTrack data — your timeline, tasks, and meeting summaries, decisions and action items, and, when you ask for them, meeting transcripts. It reads over a local connection and only when you ask it a question; nothing is sent to Claude in the background.

What Claude reads becomes part of that conversation, the same as anything you paste into Claude, and is handled under Anthropic's terms. Screenshots are never stored, so they can never be read. Your settings and API keys are not exposed. You can disconnect from the same tab at any time.

Everything DeskTrack keeps lives in a folder in your Application Support directory, as plain files you can read or delete yourself: the activity log (swept after 30 days), tasks, daily digests, meeting transcripts and summaries, and your settings.

Your OpenAI API key is stored in that settings file in plain text, not in the macOS Keychain. Anyone with access to your user account could read it. You can remove it from Settings at any time.

DeskTrack has no server, no account, and no sign-up. It sends no analytics, no crash reports, and no usage data — the update check described above, carrying only a version and a random install ID, is the one request it makes on its own. We have no way to see your activity log, because it never reaches us.

• Choose on-device, OpenAI, or no AI at all — and switch whenever.
• Turn off screenshots entirely and track from window titles alone.
• Exclude apps and window titles by name or keyword (banking, passwords, incognito, and so on). This protection is off until you switch it on and add what you want skipped.
• Pause tracking at any time.
• Keep meeting notes off, or enable them per-recording with consent.
• Delete a single meeting, all meeting transcripts, or every piece of data DeskTrack holds, in one click.

If this policy changes in a way that affects what data is captured or where it goes, the "last updated" date above will change and, for material changes, the app will surface a notice on next launch.

Email founder@desktrack.io — a person reads and answers these, not a support queue.