Privacy Policy

At a glance

• No accountYou never sign up or sign in to use WhereIs.
• Nothing collected by usWe don’t receive your files, your shelves, analytics or tracking data.
• Files stay putShelves store references. WhereIs doesn’t upload the contents of your files.
• Your own iCloudSync uses the private database in your iCloud account, which we can’t access.
• AI is your choiceClaude Code or Codex get access only if you connect them (WhereIs Pro).

1. Information stored on your Mac

WhereIs keeps its library on your Mac, inside the app’s sandboxed container. It includes:

• Shelves and their settings: names, colors, order, sort mode, pins, archive state and related dates.
• File references: each item’s name, a path hint to where it lives, the name of the Mac it was added on, an iCloud Drive–relative path when available, when it was added and last opened, and whether it’s pinned.
• Access permissions: the macOS security-scoped bookmarks created when you choose files or folders, so WhereIs can open, preview and organize them. Bookmarks never leave the Mac they were created on.
• AI provenance (WhereIs Pro): which connected AI client created or edited an item, with details the client reports, such as a session ID, model, tool and a one-line summary.
• Move records: what’s needed to undo or finish a whole-shelf move, kept only on the Mac that performed it.
• Preferences: such as appearance, language and the location of your AI workspace.

WhereIs reads file metadata (such as names, dates and sizes) and shows Quick Look previews on your Mac. It changes files only when you ask it to: for example, when you copy or move a shelf to a new folder, compress or extract a ZIP archive, or confirm moving an item to the Trash.

2. iCloud sync

If you’re signed in to iCloud, WhereIs syncs your shelves, file references (including the path hints and Mac names described above) and AI provenance through Apple’s CloudKit, in the private database of your own iCloud account. This information is stored in encrypted CloudKit fields. Preferences such as appearance sync through iCloud key-value storage.

WhereIs doesn’t upload the contents of your files and never copies your files to iCloud Drive on its own. As the developer, we can’t access your private iCloud data; Apple stores and processes it under the Apple Privacy Policy. iCloud uses Apple’s push notification service to let your Macs know about changes.

You can use WhereIs without iCloud. Your library then stays on your Mac.

3. AI integrations (WhereIs Pro)

WhereIs doesn’t include an AI model and doesn’t send anything to AI services itself. If you choose an AI workspace location and use a shelf with Claude Code, Codex or another client:

• WhereIs creates a folder for each shelf in the location you chose, containing links to the original files and configuration files that the clients read.
• A helper built into WhereIs answers requests from clients over a local connection on your Mac that’s limited to your macOS user account. Through MCP, a connected client can search, read and organize items across your whole WhereIs library, not only the shelf you opened. It can read supported file contents, such as plain text and text-based PDFs, of items you’ve added to WhereIs.
• Hooks tell WhereIs which files a client wrote or edited, so they can be marked with that client’s badge. If WhereIs isn’t running, these events wait in a local file on your Mac.

Whatever a client reads may be sent to that client’s own service, under the provider’s terms and privacy policy and the settings you’ve chosen in that client. WhereIs doesn’t control that processing. You can stop at any time: remove WhereIs from the client’s MCP or project settings, and in WhereIs Settings › AI Agents, stop using the workspace folder (its files stay on disk).

4. Purchases

WhereIs Pro is sold through the App Store. Apple processes your payment, and we never see your payment details. WhereIs checks your purchases with StoreKit on your Mac and doesn’t send purchase information to us. Apple’s terms and privacy policy apply to App Store purchases.

5. What we don’t do

• No account, sign-in or WhereIs server for the app.
• No analytics, advertising, tracking, or third-party SDKs in the app.
• We don’t sell, rent or share personal information.

6. Keeping and deleting your data

Your data stays until you remove it. Removing an item or a shelf from WhereIs removes its reference; it doesn’t delete the original file.

• On a Mac: delete WhereIs, then its data in ~/Library/Containers and ~/Library/Group Containers.
• In iCloud: delete WhereIs’s data from your Apple Account’s iCloud storage settings.
• AI workspace: it’s an ordinary folder you can delete. Files that AI clients created there are yours. Data kept by AI clients is managed in those clients.

7. This website

This website doesn’t use cookies, analytics or third-party scripts, and it doesn’t load resources from other sites. It remembers your language choice in your browser’s local storage. The server that hosts the site may keep standard access logs, such as IP address, browser type and time of request, to operate and protect the site.

8. Children

WhereIs isn’t directed at children. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from anyone, including children.

9. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete or export your personal information. Because the app keeps your data on your devices and in your own iCloud, you can do this directly in WhereIs, in macOS and in your Apple Account. For questions or requests, contact us.

10. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we’ll update this page and the “Last updated” date above.