The short version
Selv keeps your captured life — the notes, screens, audio, and everyday activity it collects — on your Mac, encrypted at rest. The AI that reads it runs locally, on your machine. Your captured data isn't uploaded to Selv.
What "encrypted at rest" means here
Your data is encrypted on disk with strong, industry-standard encryption. The keys live only on your Mac and unlock only with your password — and with Touch ID where you turn it on. If someone copies your files off the machine, they get an unreadable blob, not your memories.
What that is — and what it isn't
This is on-device, at-rest encryption. It is not end-to-end encryption of a cloud account, because your data isn't kept in a Selv cloud to begin with — there's nothing on our servers to encrypt end-to-end. We say it the honest way: your data stays on your Mac.
What the AI does
Search, retrieval, and the on-device models all run locally against your encrypted data. Asking Selv a question doesn't send your data to us or to a third-party AI service.
What does use the network
So we're precise rather than absolute — a few things do talk to the network, and none of them carry your captured data:
- Activating your license — a one-time online check when you first set up a Mac. See Licensing & device-switching.
- App updates.
- Any integrations you turn on yourself — for example, syncing your own Apple Health through your own iCloud account.
Everything you capture and write stays out of all of that.