Last updated 25 September 2026

How to check Fetchi

Fetchi runs on your Mac, so you don't have to take our word for what it does. Each promise below comes with a check you can do yourself in about a minute, with nothing but Fetchi and Finder. The same list is in the app, under Settings → Privacy & control → How to check these promises.

The checks need Fetchi 0.2.4 or later, and the list in Settings is in 0.2.5 and later. The bottom of Settings names the version you have, and the installer's file name carries its own.

What Fetchi sends to another machine is written down on your Mac, never what it said, and the list says what it can't see.

  1. Ask Fetchi “what's the weather?”
  2. Open Settings → Privacy & control → What left this Mac.
  3. You'll see a line for “Weather and a rough location for it”, with the server's name, how many requests and how many bytes went out. Your question's words are not on it. “What this list can and can't see” says what it misses.
  4. One thing it misses carries your voice: on a Mac that can't turn speech into text by itself, what you say in any turn you speak rather than type goes to Apple's speech recognition servers, and that isn't listed.

Nothing is deleted or spent, and a tidy-up moves nothing, until you say yes on a card.

  1. Say “organize my Downloads”.
  2. A card lists every file Fetchi would move, and where to.
  3. Press No. Open Downloads in Finder: nothing has moved.

What Fetchi remembers about you is a folder of plain text on your Mac.

  1. In Finder, choose Go → Home and open the folder “Fetchi Brain”.
  2. Each page is a markdown file you can read in any text editor, one line per fact.
  3. Delete a line you'd rather it didn't have. Fetchi reads the folder again and does not put it back.

The per-app switches are enforced by Fetchi's own code, not by asking the model.

  1. Open Settings → Connections → What Fetchi may do in each app, and set Mail to Read only.
  2. Ask Fetchi to email yourself “hi”, giving your own address.
  3. No email arrives, and no card appears, because there is nothing to approve. Fetchi's code stopped the send before it could run.
  4. The reply may come from the AI model, so its words can vary; the reason it is given is the switch's own sentence, “Mail is read-only in Settings — turn on 'Read and act' to let me send.”
  5. Set Mail back to Read and act when you're done.

Every action Fetchi takes leaves a record on your Mac, and one that failed or was stopped says so.

  1. Say “turn on dark mode”.
  2. Open Settings → Activity → What I did.
  3. The action is listed with what came back from it. A step that failed or was stopped says so.
  4. Say “turn off dark mode” to put it back.

What you can't check from your Mac

Some promises are about our server and the model providers, and no check on your Mac can prove them: that our server doesn't log what you asked, and what Anthropic and OpenAI keep. The privacy policy says which of those are enforced by code and which are policy, and names what each provider is told.