What the macOS app does (and doesn't) do with your data.
No ads
No tracking
No analytics
No cloud
Sharkfin runs entirely on your device. Your photos, your searches, and everything you do in the app stay on your machine. There are no ads, no tracking, no analytics, and no cloud — your data is never uploaded anywhere. Sharkfin is open source, so you can verify this for yourself.
Sharkfin uses the internet only once, to download the CLIP models that power search when you're setting up the app. These are fetched from my personal Hugging Face account at huggingface.co/xplato.
Once the models are downloaded, Sharkfin makes zero HTTP requests. No telemetry, no update pings, no phoning home — ever. You can disconnect from the internet and Sharkfin will keep working exactly the same.
Sharkfin does write logs to a file on your device to help with troubleshooting, and more detail is recorded when debug mode is enabled. These logs stay on your machine and are never sent anywhere. The only way I would ever see them is if you run into an issue and choose to send them to me yourself.
If you have any questions, please send me an email at hi@sharkfin.sh.