---
title: Privacy
description: What Goldfish captures, what it masks, and what leaves your device.
---

Goldfish reads the text of the foreground window through the operating
system's accessibility layer. No screenshots, no screen recordings, text
only.

## Your memory stays on your device

Everything Goldfish captures, and the summaries, wiki pages and profile it
builds from it, is stored in a local database on your computer. Goldfish
keeps no copy. It is not synced, backed up, or uploaded anywhere.

## What leaves your device

Your memory database never leaves your device. Text does leave it in two
cases:

- When you ask Goldfish to do something, like draft a reply, answer a
  question, or take dictation.
- When background features organize and personalize your local memory.

In both cases Goldfish sends only the context the task needs, never your
whole history. Requests pass through Cloudflare, which does not store or log
their contents, to a private Azure OpenAI deployment with zero data
retention. Microsoft processes the request and does not store it or train on
it. Voice dictation goes through the same deployment.

Goldfish does not sell your data, and nothing you do in Goldfish is used to
train AI models.

If you sign in, your account details (name, email, plan) are stored with
our account provider, and billing is handled by Stripe. Product analytics are
limited to usage events and never include captured text. The full list of
providers is in the [Privacy Policy](https://goldfish.sh/privacy).

![How data flows: the Goldfish app and its database live on your computer, and only encrypted LLM calls leave it, to a zero-retention Azure deployment](/blume-assets/content/docs-site/privacy/privacy-diagram.png)

## Pause capture

Capture can be paused any time, from chat, Settings, or the tray icon, for
a set duration or indefinitely.

## The blacklist

The blacklist excludes apps or browser domains from capture entirely. Manage
it in Settings under Privacy, or just ask in chat: "never capture my banking
site".

If your organization manages your Mac, it can add exclusions too. They show
in Settings on the Ignore list page, under "Set by your organization". See
[Configure Goldfish with MDM](/get-started/configure-with-mdm).

## Masking at capture time

Before anything is saved, Goldfish masks passwords, API keys, access tokens,
private keys, card numbers and security codes, IBANs, and US Social Security
numbers. It never reads password fields, and by default it skips banking
sites, password managers, and private browsing windows.

Masking uses pattern detection and cannot catch everything. It does not
remove names, email addresses, or phone numbers, and text you type into
Goldfish yourself (a chat message, a rewrite request) is sent as written. To
keep an app or site out entirely, add it to the blacklist.

## Local connections only

The local service that powers chat and the [MCP server](/guides/ai-clients)
accepts connections only from your own machine, protected by a per-install
token.

## Deleting your data

Settings under Privacy has a delete-all-data option that wipes the local
database. This cannot be undone. Your memory is not stored anywhere else, so
nothing else needs deleting. For account or billing data, contact
support@goldfish.sh.