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Local-First & Private: Your Data Stays on Your Device

Pluely v1 is built local-first. It's a native desktop app that runs on your computer, and by default your conversations, transcripts, prompts, and history are stored on your machine — not synced to a cloud account, not pooled into a dataset, not sold. This page explains exactly what stays local, what has to leave your device, and why.

What "local-first" means in practice

Pluely isn't a website you log into and a database somewhere holds your history. It's an app installed on your computer (see Installation) that:

  • Stores your Ask conversations, Listen transcripts, saved prompts, and meeting history in local storage on your own disk.
  • Keeps your settings, shortcuts, and preferences on-device.
  • Runs the overlay and dashboard as native windows on your machine, not a remote session.

If you uninstall Pluely or wipe its local data, that history goes with it — because it was never anywhere else in the first place.

The one thing that does leave your device

Pluely is an AI assistant, and AI models don't run inside the app itself — so the one thing that leaves your computer is the specific request you send when you ask a question or transcribe audio. That's it. Not your whole history, not your files sitting untouched on disk, not a background copy of your screen — just the piece of content (a question, a screenshot, a snippet of audio) needed to generate that one answer.

Concretely:

  • Typing a question in Ask mode sends that question (and any context you explicitly attached) to get an answer.
  • Running Listen mode streams audio out only while you're actively listening, to produce the live transcript.
  • Nothing is sent in the background, on a timer, or "just in case." If you're not asking or listening, nothing is being transmitted.

Route around Pluely's servers entirely

If you want the strongest possible guarantee — that not even a single request touches Pluely's infrastructure — Pluely v1 supports two local-first options:

  1. Bring your own provider key. Configure your own API key in Model selection and Pluely talks directly from your machine to your chosen provider using your credentials. Pluely's servers aren't in that path at all.
  2. Connect a local CLI. If you already run a command-line AI tool on your machine (for example Claude Code, Gemini CLI, or a local model through Ollama), Pluely can hand requests to that CLI instead. Everything happens on your computer — see Connect a local CLI for setup.

Either option is available if you'd rather not use Pluely's managed models at all, and both keep every request on hardware you control.

No always-on listening

Pluely never records or listens in the background. Microphone and system-audio capture only happen while a Listen mode session is actively running, and you're always the one who starts it:

  • Listen mode begins only when you press Start listening, and your operating system's microphone indicator lights up at that moment — never before.
  • Pause immediately stops sending audio and releases the microphone.
  • Stop ends the session completely.

There's no hidden mode where Pluely is passively capturing audio or your screen while you go about your day.

Screen-share stealth

Because Pluely is often used alongside a live call or a screen share, it includes a stealth mode: the overlay window can be excluded from what viewers see when you present or share your screen, so your notes, transcript, or Ask answers stay visible to you but invisible in the shared view. This is a display-level feature, not a data one — but it matters for privacy in the moment, not just at rest. See Stealth & privacy for exactly how it works on your OS.

Why this matters

Most AI assistants are cloud-first: your conversation lives on a server somewhere, and "local" is just a thin client. Pluely v1 inverts that — the app and your data live on your device by default, and the network only gets involved for the minimum needed to answer a question or transcribe audio. If you never ask a question, your data never leaves your computer at all.

Last updated 2026-07-10 · pluely.com