# Private AI Chat You Can Trust: How CanopyChat Protects Your Data | CanopyChat

Source: https://canopychat.app/blog/private-ai-chat-what-on-device-means

AI explained · November 9, 2026

# Private AI Chat You Can Trust: How CanopyChat Protects Your Data

**Your conversations belong to you. CanopyChat answers on your own phone or computer first, and any cloud feature is something you choose to turn on.** Many AI chat apps send every message to a server by default. CanopyChat does not.

## Your chats stay on your device

On a computer, [CanopyChat](https://canopychat.app/) starts with Canopy Lite, a model that runs on your machine. The text you type and the files you share are processed there, so no server receives your prompt and no copy sits in anyone else’s logs. It needs no account, and it keeps working offline.

## The cloud is always opt in

Bigger cloud models, web grounding and Flame’s memory are features you add on purpose, with [a plan](https://canopychat.app/plans) or a setting. None of them is the default, and you can turn them off again whenever you like.

## When you use the cloud, we use zero data retention

For cloud models, CanopyChat works with providers under zero-data-retention terms. Your request is processed to produce a response, and it is not stored by the provider or used to train its models. Requests do not carry your name, email address or account identifiers, and CanopyChat does not keep the content of cloud requests after the answer is delivered.

## Built with Apple’s privacy-first approach

CanopyChat is built for Apple devices, and for harder questions it can use Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, a cloud service Apple designed around privacy. That help is off until you allow it, and you can turn it off at any time in Settings. Attachments and your on-device memory are never sent.

## You decide what is kept

Features that need to remember something, such as Flame’s persistent memory, are off until you turn them on. You can switch them off and ask us to delete what was kept. Your connection to your own devices for remote control is end-to-end encrypted, so our relay cannot read it.

## Questions worth asking any AI app

1.  Where does the model run for a normal chat?
2.  Does the cloud turn on only when I choose it?
3.  Are my requests kept, or used to train models?
4.  Is there a plain-language privacy policy, and can I delete my data?

CanopyChat has a clear answer to each. Read the full [privacy policy](https://canopychat.app/privacy), or learn [how local AI models work](https://canopychat.app/blog/run-ai-models-locally).