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What stays on your Mac

Your audio, transcripts and notes live on your Mac. This article says where, what leaves it, and when. It describes what the app does, not what it promises.

What is stored, and where

KeptNote keeps your library in a folder called KeptNote inside Library / Application Support in your home folder. Each meeting has its own folder. KeptNote creates the library so that only your user account can open it. A meeting folder holds these files.

  • The audio: one file for your microphone, and one for the call audio when it was a call. The files are 16 kHz mono WAV.
  • The notes you typed during the meeting.
  • The transcript, as a data file.
  • The local note KeptNote wrote on your Mac, and the AI note if you made one.
  • The prompt used for the AI note, so you can copy it.

Beside the meetings, KeptNote keeps a search index of your library, your folders, your own templates and playbooks, your logo if you set one, and short diagnostic logs. Your settings, including your profile text, are in KeptNote’s preferences. Your AI keys are in the macOS Keychain, and nothing else. Your license is kept in the Keychain too.

The desktop widgets read one more small file that KeptNote keeps for them: whether you are recording, and the titles and times of your latest meetings. It holds no transcript and no note. See Desktop widgets on your Mac. The Reef screen saver shows nothing from your library.

To see the files, choose Show KeptNote Files in Finder in the File menu.

Your audio

KeptNote records to your Mac. It transcribes on your Mac. After the transcript is saved and checked, KeptNote moves the raw audio to the macOS Trash, so it does not fill your disk. You can take it back from the Trash until you empty it. To keep the audio, turn on Keep raw microphone and system audio forever in Settings, on the Transcription tab.

The tab also has Delete transcripts, with Never, After 7 days, After 30 days and After 90 days. KeptNote then removes old transcripts and their audio, and keeps the notes. Details are in Transcription engines, models and languages.

What can leave your Mac

These are the only things KeptNote sends over the internet.

  • Text to your AI provider, if you added a key and used a feature that needs it. This covers improving a note, Ask, and applying a playbook. Without a key, none of it happens. KeptNote never sends audio. See the next section.
  • Your license. KeptNote contacts keptnote.com to start your trial, to activate your key, to renew it and to deactivate it. It sends these things: the key (when you activate), a code made from your Mac’s hardware ID, the word Mac as the platform, the name of your Mac, and the app version. The hardware ID itself never leaves your Mac. KeptNote sends no meeting data.
  • Update checks. KeptNote asks keptnote.com once a day whether a new version exists. Updates are signed, and KeptNote waits until a recording or a note is finished before it installs. Check for Updates… in the KeptNote menu asks at once.
  • Speech models from Apple. With Apple’s built-in transcription, macOS may download speech models the first time you need a language. macOS does this, not KeptNote.

KeptNote’s code has no analytics, no tracking and no crash reporting. Opening a link, such as KeptNote Guide, only opens your browser.

Some actions hand a note to another app on your Mac, because you chose them: Email draft hands it to Mail, and Send to Apple Notes hands it to Notes, which may sync it with iCloud. See Export and share.

What your AI provider receives

This holds only when you add your own key. KeptNote sends to the company you chose, over HTTPS, using your key.

Improve or rewrite a note
Title, date, typed notes, transcript, template, profile
Title for a note
The first 4,000 characters of the finished note
Ask about one meeting
Question, note, whole transcript, profile, earlier turns
Ask across meetings
Question, matching transcript lines from up to 6 meetings, profile, earlier turns
What did I miss, during a meeting
Transcript so far, typed notes, profile
Test, and model lists
A one-word test, or your key only

Copying a prompt, with Copy prompt, sends nothing. If you set On this Mac or Neither and do not use Ask, nothing goes to a provider. Your provider has its own terms for what it does with what it receives.

Ask threads stay in memory. KeptNote does not write them to disk.

Feedback and diagnostics

Send feedback opens an empty draft to hello@keptnote.com in your mail app. It has a short form and one line with your KeptNote and macOS versions. Nothing is sent until you press Send. In Settings, on the General tab, Diagnostics has a Copy button. It copies six lines: the versions, how notes are written, your provider name, your transcription language, how many meetings you keep, and when transcripts are deleted. It holds no notes, no transcripts and no keys. It goes only to your clipboard.

KeptNote also keeps short logs on your Mac, in its diagnostics folder. They note events such as call detection and licensing, and never hold meeting content. KeptNote does not upload them.

Delete your data

  • One meeting. Press the … button in a note and choose Move to Trash. The recording, transcript and notes move to Recently deleted in Settings, on the General tab, under Your data. They stay there for 90 days and you can press Restore. Then KeptNote deletes them for good. Empty now… there deletes them at once. They do not go to the macOS Trash.
  • Transcripts. Use Delete transcripts to remove them after a set time.
  • Your AI key. Press Remove next to the key on the Writing tab.
  • Everything. KeptNote has no button that erases it all. Quit KeptNote, and delete its folder in Library / Application Support. Your license and your AI keys are in the Keychain, and you can remove them in the Keychain Access app.

Was something unclear? Write to hello@keptnote.com.