Privacy settings
See your macOS permissions at a glance, where your data lives and how to delete your account.
Click your account chip at the bottom of the sidebar, choose Settings, then open the Privacy tab. It’s a status page more than a settings page: a short note about your data, then where each permission stands.
Permission status
Three rows show whether each macOS permission is granted:
| Row | Why Cluinn needs it |
|---|---|
| Accessibility | “Lets Cluinn type where your cursor is.” |
| Microphone | “Needed for dictation.” |
| Screen capture | “For call audio, speaker names and language detection.” |
The third one covers call audio; reading the meeting window to name who is speaking (a single window, never your whole screen); noticing that a meeting has started; and the language check behind Smart translation: once per recording, a picture of the window you’re typing into is read on our servers. That check skips password managers and obvious sign-in and banking pages, and if it can’t isolate the window you’re in, it gives up rather than capture your whole screen. Visual awareness is the exception: while it’s on in the Calls panel, each question you ask includes a picture of the screen your meeting is on.
These rows only show the status. You grant the permissions themselves in System Settings → Privacy & Security, where the third one is called Screen Recording (Screen & System Audio Recording on macOS 15 and later). Permissions walks through each one.
Save transcripts
Accounts with Calls see one more control here:
- Save transcripts: “Kept as text so you can ask about them later.” On by default. It’s one switch for every call; presets don’t change it.
Speaker names on calls come from the names shown in the meeting window, never from your voice. Cluinn reads that window on your Mac, and during a call it also takes pictures of that one window (never your whole screen) and sends them to be read: about every 20 seconds while people are still joining, then every few minutes once the list of names settles, plus one when someone new starts speaking. The pictures are used only for the names and aren’t stored, and no voiceprint of anyone is ever saved: voices are told apart during the call only. The People list is built on your Mac from the names already in your saved calls; nothing new is collected or sent anywhere for it. See Speaker names.
Where your data lives
Never stored on our servers, and never backed up: your audio, meaning dictation recordings and call audio. Cluinn transcribes on your own Mac wherever it can: on a recent Apple silicon Mac with an active plan, your speech becomes text on the machine itself, with no external speech model and no audio uploaded. During a trial, or any time Cluinn can’t run the on-device model, the audio is sent to our servers to be turned into text and discarded straight after. The AI features always send text. The content of either request isn’t kept afterwards; only technical details such as the model, duration and cost are logged.
On your Mac and, where encrypted backup is switched on for your account, in your encrypted backup: dictation transcripts, call transcripts and takeaways, your notes, folders and tags and the text pulled out of files you attached.
That backup is kept on our servers, encrypted. It’s in Settings → Backup on every plan and starts switched off. During a free trial there’s no Backup tab and nothing is backed up. More in Sync & backup, or read our full privacy policy.
Everything on your Mac is kept in your account’s own folder.
To clear things on a schedule rather than by hand, Settings → Dictation → Delete automatically clears old dictations, and Settings → Calls → Empty automatically erases calls you’ve already deleted.
To clear everything at once, Settings → Content → Erase everything… removes every call, dictation, note and file, on this Mac and in your backup. Settings → Memory → Erase all memory clears what Cluinn has learned from your calls. See Content and Memory.
Delete your account
The most complete control is Delete account… at the bottom of Settings → Account. It’s permanent. After you type your account email to confirm, your recordings, calls and notes on this Mac are erased, anything in your encrypted backup is scheduled for deletion, your subscription ends and the account itself is gone in about 30 days. The details are in Account & billing.
If you only want to stop being billed, cancel instead: you keep access until the end of the period you’ve paid for.
Warning: There’s no undo for the data on your Mac. If you want to keep any transcript, copy or download it before you delete your account.