# What leaves your Mac

> What stays on your Mac, what goes to your AI provider, and what reaches the Eddy team.

Source: https://eddystudio.ai/docs/privacy/ · Written from the app's source code, last checked 3 November 2026; generated tables are rebuilt from the source on every build; not every behaviour hand-tested in the beta build

This page explains the app's behaviour in plain words. The [privacy policy](https://eddystudio.ai/privacy/) is the formal version, and it wins if the two ever differ.

## Stays on your Mac

- Your footage. Eddy never changes your original files; edits are made on top of them.
- Your finished videos, until you choose to do something with them.
- The transcript work, which runs on your Mac with the speech model that comes with the app, or the optional fast transcription model if you download it.
- Scene labelling, which reads the screen on your Mac, and the optional vision model if you install it.
- Your saved formats.

## Goes to your AI provider

To edit, Eddy sends the transcript, other relevant text and a few selected frames to ChatGPT or Claude, through your own account. That provider's terms apply to what it receives.

For scene labels, you can also let ChatGPT or Claude look at a few still frames. That is off unless you turn it on for a project.

If you connect ChatGPT or Claude as an agent (see [For AI agents](https://eddystudio.ai/docs/for-agents/)), that agent also receives what its Eddy tools return, such as the transcript, frames of your edit and file names. That provider's terms apply to it too.

## Reaches the Eddy team

**Anonymous usage, on by default.** The app sends the team anonymous usage events and a masked screen replay of the app window. The events say which buttons and screens you use, how long each step takes, which tools Eddy ran and whether they worked. In the replay your video, pictures, words and file names are blanked out. It never sends your footage, audio, transcript, chat or file names. It goes to PostHog's US cloud under a random id, not your name or email. Turn off **Send anonymous usage** in the Doctor sheet and it stops at once.

Everything else, only when you choose to send it:

- a note from the **Feedback** box ([what it includes](https://eddystudio.ai/docs/working-with-eddy/#send-feedback-the-improvements-box)),
- a **Send a report to Eddy** support report from the Doctor sheet,
- crash reports, which are off unless you turn them on in the Doctor sheet.

Feedback notes and support reports are cleaned first: your home folder path, user name, email addresses and keys are removed. Crash reports are different: they are the app's crash dumps, sent as they are, and can include bits of the app's memory such as a file name.

Notes and reports are stored privately for the team. Besides the team reading them, automated AI runs sort them into the team's private task list.

## Other connections

- **Updates.** The app asks `updates.eddystudio.ai` whether a new version exists.
- **Remote access.** Only if you turn it on. Your Mac connects out to Eddy's relay so ChatGPT or claude.ai can reach it. The relay passes calls through and stores no footage. See [For agents](https://eddystudio.ai/docs/for-agents/#connect-chatgpt-or-claude-ai-remote-access).
- **Model downloads.** The optional fast transcription model and the optional vision model, if you install them, are downloaded once from Hugging Face. The vision model's software comes from PyPI.
- **Web page screenshots.** When the edit uses a web page you mention, Eddy loads that public page to take its picture.
- **Reference videos.** When you ask Eddy to copy a format, it downloads that reference video to your Mac.
- **Your channel and YouTube.** Reading your look from your channel, and any YouTube upload, only happen when you ask.