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Privacy

Last updated October 27, 2026

Doe is a Mac app that explains text you highlight. It has no accounts. This page describes what the app reads, where that text goes, and what stays on your Mac.

What the app reads

Only when you click Doe, press ⇧⌘L, or choose Ask Doe from an app’s Services menu, the app reads your selection. With Accessibility permission it also reads the nearby paragraph, the window title, and the page address when the app you are using exposes them. If an app hides its selection, Doe briefly copies it and then restores your clipboard.

What is sent, and to whom

  • Your AI provider receives the selection, a capped window of nearby text, and any follow up questions, so it can write the explanation. The included Gemini option runs through a hosted relay that does not log or store request content. If you add your own key for OpenAI, Groq, Cerebras, or Inception, requests go directly to that provider.
  • Exa web search receives the term and a short hint, never the surrounding paragraph.
  • TypeSafe receives the term, nearby context, and retrieved passages to decide whether a search is needed, rank sources, and check specific details against them.

Network requests use a private session that does not write responses to a disk cache.

What stays on your Mac

  • Your learning history and follow up chats are saved in your user folder, not in the cloud.
  • The text around a selection is used for that session only and is never written to disk.
  • Optional API keys are stored in a settings file that only your user account can read.

Usage statistics

Usage sharing is off by default. If you turn on Settings, Privacy, Share usage statistics, the app sends a fixed set of feature events to PostHog with the app version, platform, event times, and a random installation ID. It never sends highlighted text, surrounding text, document titles or addresses, prompts, answers, chats, API keys, device serial numbers, or account names. PostHog still sees the connecting IP address at the network level. Turning sharing off cancels pending events and deletes the installation ID; events already delivered cannot be recalled.

Updates

The updater downloads public release information and signed archives from GitHub. It does not send system profiles, highlighted text, history, or chats.

This website

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