Privacy

What leaves your Mac,
and what doesn't

Transcription runs on your Mac. We never send your transcripts to AI models unless you switch that on yourself.

Cloud sync puts your transcripts on our servers so your other devices can read them. The table below lists every kind of data North Star handles and where each one goes.

On your Mac by default

Recording, transcription, annotation, OCR, snippets, clipboard, window moves. A free account is all it takes, and none of it needs the network.

On our servers when you sign in

Sync is a Pro feature, and turning it on is what puts your transcripts, notes and files on our servers, so every device you sign in on sees the same library. Those servers are ours. No AI vendor is involved. An account on its own uploads nothing: on the free plan there is no sync to turn on.

At Anthropic only if you ask

Cloud AI is off by default, Pro-only, and shows you a plain-language disclosure before it turns on for the first time. Turn it off again whenever you like.

What goes where

Every kind of data,
one row each

Read down the second column for the free plan. Read the third for what reaches our servers, and when. The fourth is the only one an AI vendor ever sees, and it is empty until you opt in.

  • Meeting audio (your mic and your Mac's system audio)

    On your Mac

    Recorded and stored in ~/Documents/NorthStar.

    On North Star's servers With Pro sync

    Uploaded to private storage only with Pro sync on. On the free plan, never.

    Sent to Anthropic No

    Never. Audio is never sent to an AI vendor.

  • Meeting transcripts

    On your Mac

    Produced on your Mac by WhisperKit. The model downloads once, then transcription needs no network.

    On North Star's servers With Pro sync

    Stored on our servers only with Pro sync on, so your other devices can read them.

    Sent to Anthropic Opt-in only

    Only if you turn on cloud AI.

  • Titles, summaries, key points

    On your Mac

    Generated on your Mac by Apple's on-device model, on macOS 26 and later only. Below that a recording gets a timestamp for a title and no summary.

    On North Star's servers With Pro sync

    The summary is written into the recording's note, which syncs only with Pro sync on.

    Sent to Anthropic Opt-in only

    Only if you turn on cloud AI.

  • Dictation audio

    On your Mac

    Recorded and kept on your Mac.

    On North Star's servers No

    Not uploaded. Only the text it produced is.

    Sent to Anthropic No

    Never.

  • Dictated text

    On your Mac

    Transcribed on your Mac, then pasted into whatever app you were in.

    On North Star's servers With Pro sync

    Stored only with Pro sync on.

    Sent to Anthropic No

    Never.

  • Screenshots, GIFs, screen recordings

    On your Mac

    Saved in ~/Documents/NorthStar. Annotation and redaction happen before the file is written.

    On North Star's servers Pro sync, plus public links

    Uploaded to private storage only with Pro sync on. A capture you explicitly share (Pro) gets a public link. Anyone with the URL can open it, so only share what you mean to.

    Sent to Anthropic No

    Never. Images and video are never sent to an AI vendor.

  • Text pulled out of a screenshot (OCR)

    On your Mac

    Recognised on your Mac by Apple's Vision framework, then handed to your clipboard.

    On North Star's servers No

    Not stored. The same is true of a screen recording's audio transcript.

    Sent to Anthropic No

    Never.

  • Clipboard history

    On your Mac

    Stays on your Mac, text and images alike.

    On North Star's servers No

    Never. There is no clipboard table on our servers and no code that would fill one.

    Sent to Anthropic No

    Never.

  • Snippets

    On your Mac

    Stored on your Mac.

    On North Star's servers With Pro sync

    Stored only with Pro sync on.

    Sent to Anthropic Opt-in only

    Only if you use one to ask a question with cloud AI on. Then it is part of the question.

  • Notes

    On your Mac

    Written and stored on your Mac.

    On North Star's servers With Pro sync

    Stored only with Pro sync on.

    Sent to Anthropic Opt-in only

    Only if you ask AI about the note, with cloud AI on.

  • Window layouts and shortcut bindings

    On your Mac

    Local settings. Nothing about a window move goes anywhere.

    On North Star's servers No

    Never.

    Sent to Anthropic No

    Never.

  • What you type into ⌘K search

    On your Mac

    On the free plan the search runs against your local library and the query stays put.

    On North Star's servers With Pro sync

    With Pro sync on, the query string is sent to our server so it can also find items recorded on another device.

    Sent to Anthropic No

    Never.

  • Product analytics

    On your Mac

    Buffered locally, then sent in batches. Off is a single switch in Settings.

    On North Star's servers No content, can be off

    Event names and counts (for example a transcription's word count and the word “whisperkit”), plus app version, macOS version, a device id, and your account id once you sign in. No transcript text, no file contents, no clipboard.

    Sent to Anthropic No

    Never.

  • Crash reports

    On your Mac

    Read from the crash log macOS already wrote.

    On North Star's servers No content, can be off

    Sent after a crash: what kind of crash it was and the error message macOS recorded (with your home folder taken out of any file path), up to forty stack frames, app and macOS version, and a hashed device id. No content of any kind. A switch in Settings turns it off.

    Sent to Anthropic No

    Never.

  • Feedback you send us

    On your Mac

    Composed in the app.

    On North Star's servers Only what you send

    The text you wrote is sent to our servers. That is what feedback is for.

    Sent to Anthropic No

    Never.

“With Pro sync” means a Pro account with sync on. Signing in on the free plan uploads none of these, and signing out leaves everything where it is. Deleting a recording, capture or note in the app deletes the row and the stored file on our side too.

Cloud AI

Off until you
turn it on

North Star works without cloud AI. Titles and summaries are generated on your Mac, on macOS 26 and later; below that a recording keeps a timestamp for a title, and nothing is sent anywhere to make up for it.

Cloud AI is a Pro feature, it is off on a fresh install, and a free account cannot switch it on. The first time you do switch it on, the app shows you the same three facts, in the same order:

What is sent

The text of your transcripts, and the notes or questions you ask about. Only for the recording or note you are acting on. It never includes your whole library, your audio, your screenshots, or your clipboard.

Who receives it

Anthropic, the maker of Claude. It travels through North Star's API proxy, which holds the key, so requests are made on North Star's account.

What it is used for

Deeper meeting summaries, extracting insights and action items, and answering the questions you type into Ask AI. Nothing is sent unless one of those features runs.

And separately, about sync

If you use cloud sync, your transcripts are stored on North Star's servers so they reach your other devices. Those servers are ours, and this setting does not change them. Turning cloud AI off does not take your transcripts off our servers, and turning sync off does not send anything to a model.

You can turn cloud AI off again at any time in Settings, and doing so stops every path that would have used it.

Cloud AI is still being finished. Nobody is opted in today. When it arrives it will work exactly as described above, and you will see that disclosure before anything is sent.

On a free account

What still goes out
with none of your content

You need an account to use North Star, and on the free plan it carries none of your content off the machine. Recording and transcribing a meeting uploads nothing. Four things still talk to the network, and none of them touch a transcript, a file, or your clipboard.

The transcription model

WhisperKit downloads its model from Hugging Face the first time you transcribe something, and caches it. After that, transcription runs with no network at all.

Update checks

The app asks GitHub whether a newer release exists. The request says nothing about you beyond which version you are running.

Brand icons

Only if you use the brand-icon search in the snippets palette. The app fetches the brand list from GitHub, then asks public icon services (Simple Icons, Google, DuckDuckGo, unavatar.io) for the logo of the brand you picked. Those requests carry the brand's name or web domain, nothing else.

Analytics and crash reports

Counts of which features get used, tied to your account once you sign in, and a stack trace when the app crashes. Each is a switch in Settings, and a company account can turn both off for everyone it covers.

Where analytics stops

Analytics records that a transcription finished and how many words it produced. It does not record the words. No transcript text, no note text, no clipboard contents, no screenshots, no audio. Not even truncated, hashed or sampled. What it does carry is an anonymous device id, your app and macOS version, and, once you sign in, your account id, so we can tell one person's twenty recordings from twenty people's one.

One promise we don't make

“Your data never
leaves your Mac”

You will not find that sentence on this site or in the app, because it would be false: with sync on, your transcripts are on our servers.

The app's test suite fails the build if any string a user can read claims data never leaves their Mac, and the wording of the cloud-AI disclosure is itself asserted by tests. It has to keep naming what is sent, who receives it, and why. Making it vaguer later breaks the build.

What we do promise: transcription happens on your Mac, and we never send your transcripts to AI models unless you turn that on.

Last reviewed 6 October 2026. Every row on this page maps to a specific service in the app. When the code changes, this page changes with it.