Privacy Policy

We don't collect your data. Here's exactly how.

Effective November 12, 2026 · Applies to Ago for Mac, Ago for iPhone, and this website

What Ago does with your messages

Ago for Mac reads the Messages history that's already on your Mac and builds a search index from it. A search index is a file that makes searching fast, like the index at the back of a book. To do this, you give Ago Full Disk Access in macOS settings. That's the permission that lets an app read your Messages folder. With the same permission, Ago reads your Mac's contacts, so it can show names instead of phone numbers.

Everything Ago builds stays on your devices:

• On your Mac, the index lives in your user folder (~/Library/Application Support/Ago). Only your Mac user account can open it. It isn't encrypted by Ago itself, so if you want it encrypted on disk, turn on FileVault in macOS settings.
• On your iPhone, Ago keeps a copy of the index so search works offline. It's protected by your iPhone's built-in encryption and can't be read while your phone is locked. It stays on that phone and isn't included in iCloud backups. Contact photos are only held in memory while the app is open.

How your Mac and iPhone talk

Your iPhone gets its results from your Mac. They talk to each other directly, and to nothing else:

• Over your local network. That means the devices on your own Wi-Fi router. The data doesn't go out to the internet, and there's no Ago server in the middle.
• Encrypted end to end. The connection is scrambled so that only your Mac and your iPhone can read it. Other people on the same Wi-Fi can't.
• Paired once, by QR code. When you scan the code on your Mac, the two devices exchange keys. After that, your iPhone will only talk to that Mac. Only a device that scans the pairing code on your Mac can connect, so close the pairing window when you're done.
• Found only while you're pairing. Your Mac announces itself on the local network only while the pairing window is open, so your phone can find it.

Support for connecting through your own private Tailscale network, so you can search your Mac live when you're away from home, is planned. It isn't in the app yet. If it ships, it will be off by default, and it will still be a direct connection between your own devices.

What Ago never does

• No servers, and no accounts or sign-in.
• No analytics, usage tracking or advertising.
• No crash reporting of our own (Apple's is covered below).
• No update checks, cloud AI, web fonts or third-party code libraries that phone home.
• No web views. Message text is shown as plain text, never loaded as a web page, so a link in a message can't run code or load anything by itself.

We check this on every build. An automatic test scans the app for web addresses, internet code and third-party packages, and the build fails if it finds any.

Permissions Ago asks for

What Apple does on its own

Some things happen because of how Apple's platforms work, not because of Ago. None of them include your messages. We'd rather tell you than pretend they don't exist:

• Installing and updating. The App Store and TestFlight download and update the iPhone app. Apple knows you installed it, the same as any app.
• Opening the Mac app the first time. macOS checks online with Apple that the app is signed and notarized (Apple's malware check). This is called Gatekeeper, and it also checks the developer certificate.
• Crash reports. If you've turned on “Share with App Developers” in your iPhone settings, Apple may send us crash reports for Ago. In the TestFlight beta, TestFlight may send crash reports and any feedback you choose to submit. These hold technical details about where the app crashed, not your messages. You can turn sharing off in Settings or in the TestFlight app.
• Device backups. Ago's small settings file on your iPhone (such as your paired Mac's network address) is included in your normal iPhone backup, like any app's settings. Your messages and the search index are not.

This website

This site follows the same rules. No analytics, no cookies, no tracking pixels, no ads, and nothing loaded from other companies. The fonts are stored on this site. It's hosted on Vercel, which, like any web host, handles the network requests your browser makes and may keep standard server logs (such as IP addresses) for security and operations. We don't use those logs to track you.

Deleting your data

Because everything is on your devices, you're in control of deleting it:

• iPhone: open the pairing screen in Ago and tap Forget next to your Mac. That unpairs it and deletes the copy of the index from your phone. Or just delete the app. Deleting the app removes everything it stored.
• Mac: quit Ago, delete the folder ~/Library/Application Support/Ago, then move Ago to the Trash. You can also remove Ago from Full Disk Access in System Settings → Privacy & Security.

We can't delete or export your data for you, because we never had it.

Children

Ago isn't directed at children, and since we collect nothing, we don't knowingly collect anything from children either.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we'll update this page and the date at the top. If we ever wanted to collect data, we'd say so clearly here and in the app first. We don't plan to.