Privacy · September 05, 2026
Everything SearchOnMac Sends Over the Network (and What It Never Sends)
Your searches never leave your Mac. Here is the complete list of what the app does send, and why.
SearchOnMac Team
Privacy & Security · 3 min read
A search tool sees everything on your Mac, so it should be clear about what leaves it. For SearchOnMac the answer is short: your searches, files and screen never do. This is the complete list of what does.
The Complete List
SearchOnMac goes online for three reasons, and no others:
- License activation and checks: license key, this Mac's name, and instance ID sent to Lemon Squeezy.
- Optional Local AI model: downloaded once from Hugging Face with checksum verification.
- Optional Python runtime: downloaded once from GitHub with explicit consent.
What Never Leaves Your Mac
Your searches, file names, file contents, extracted PDF text, clipboard history, browser tabs, mail details and screen text all stay strictly on your Mac. There are zero analytics or telemetry SDKs in the application.
{
"license_check": { "sends": ["license key", "Mac name", "instance id"] },
"never_sent": ["searches", "file names", "file contents", "screen text", "clipboard", "usage analytics"]
}Search works fully offline. If your Mac is offline when the license is due for a check, a grace period keeps SearchOnMac working until it can check again.