How your privacy works
A disk cleaner has to read every corner of your machine to do its job. That’s exactly why where your data goes matters more here than almost anywhere else. This page is the plain-English version of that promise — not the legal policy, but a specific, honest account of what stays on your device, the few things that leave and why, and how you can check every word of it yourself.
What never leaves your device
The scanning, the AI, the analysis — all of it happens locally, on the machine in front of you. None of the following is ever uploaded, and there is no server-side copy of any of it:
- Your files and their contents. Vaulith reads file names, sizes, dates, and bytes on disk to find duplicates, large files, and stale documents — but that reading happens entirely on your device. The contents are never transmitted.
- Your photos and their contents. Detecting blurry shots and near-duplicates means the app looks at the actual image data. It does that locally. Your photos never leave the machine.
- Thumbnails and previews. Any thumbnail the app generates to show you what it found lives only in the app on your device. Nothing is sent to us or anyone else.
- Everything the AI sees. The models that judge image quality (LLaVA) and flag stale documents (Mistral) run locally through Ollama on your own hardware. Your files are the model’s input, and that whole exchange stays on your machine. There is no cloud AI call, so there is nothing for your file contents to ride along with.
The short version: the parts of you that a disk cleaner touches — your files, your photos, what’s inside them — never travel over the network. The AI is on-device, not in someone’s cloud.
What does leave your device, and why
We’d rather be precise than sound perfect. The app is not fully offline — it does talk to the network in a few narrow, ordinary ways. Here is the complete list.
License validation
If you’re on a paid plan, the app checks with our server to confirm your license is valid. That request carries what’s needed to verify the license — a license key or account identifier — and nothing about your files. It tells our server “this license is active,” not anything about what’s on your disk. A signed-in free account validates its (free) entitlement the same way; if you never sign in, no license check happens at all. This is the one connection the app genuinely needs, which is why we won’t claim “zero cloud contact” — it wouldn’t be true.
The web dashboard sync
No account is required to use the app. If you never sign in, nothing leaves your device — not even a license check. An account exists only to hold a paid license and to let you see your cleanup history across machines. While you’re signed in, each completed scan sends a scan summary to your account so it can appear in the web dashboard. The summary is strictly limited to: files scanned, duplicates found, reclaimable gigabytes, timestamps, and a device identifier. Nothing else.
- It syncs counts, sizes, and timestamps — never file contents.
- It never sends file names, paths, thumbnails, photos, or document text.
- The AI analysis and the deletion still run entirely on your device — only this small summary of numbers leaves it.
The update check
On launch, Vaulith also asks GitHub Releases whether a newer version exists — a standard version check that carries no account or file information. If there is one, the app tells you; nothing downloads or installs unless you say so.
The newsletter — only if you opt in
If you choose to subscribe, we store the email address you give us so we can send occasional product updates. You’re opting in on purpose, and you can unsubscribe from any email. Aside from account sign-in (which necessarily includes your email), if you don’t subscribe we don’t have your email from the app.
If the app hits an internal error, it sends an anonymous crash report — the error type and a path-scrubbed message, never your files, names, or account.
How you can verify all of this
You don’t have to take our word for any of it. Privacy claims are only worth as much as your ability to check them — so here’s how to check ours.
Confirm the app is the real one
The Mac build is signed and notarized by Apple, and the Windows build is code-signed with Authenticode (Microsoft Trusted Signing). That means the binary you run is the one we published and hasn’t been tampered with in transit. Your OS checks this signature for you when you launch it.
Watch its network activity yourself
Because the app does make a few connections, the honest test isn’t “does it ever talk to the network” — it’s what it says when it does. You can watch that directly:
- On macOS, a per-app firewall like Little Snitch shows you every outbound connection the app attempts, in real time, so you can see the handful it makes and block anything you don’t like.
- A packet capture tool like Wireshark (on macOS or Windows) lets you inspect the actual traffic and confirm there are no file or photo uploads — nothing at all if you never sign in, and only a small license check plus the scan summary once you do.
Run a full scan with a network monitor open and you’ll see the shape of it for yourself: a lot of local disk and CPU work, and a tiny amount of network traffic that carries none of your content.
What we don’t do
- No ads. There are none in the app, and none of your data feeds any.
- No third-party trackers. We don’t embed advertising or analytics trackers that follow you.
- No selling your data. We do not sell, rent, or trade your data to anyone. It isn’t a revenue source for us — the app is.
Why we can afford to be this strict: Vaulith makes money when the software is worth paying for, not when your data is worth harvesting. Keeping your files on your device isn’t a marketing line for us — it’s the whole design.
Try it — then watch it prove itself
Download Vaulith, open a network monitor alongside it, and run a scan. Your files, photos, and their contents stay on your machine, and the AI runs locally through Ollama. Signed out, the only network traffic is the launch-time version check (GitHub Releases) — signing in adds just the license check and a counts-and-sizes summary. If you opt to download AI models, Ollama pulls the model weights in from its registry; nothing of yours goes out. See it for yourself.
Download for macOS & Windows — FreeFrequently asked questions
Is Vaulith completely offline?
No, and we won’t claim it is. Signed out, the only network call it makes is the launch-time version check with GitHub Releases — nothing about you or your files rides along. (The one exception: if the app itself hits an internal error, it sends an anonymous, path-scrubbed crash report — never your files, names, or account.) Signed in, it validates your license with our server and syncs a scan summary of counts and sizes. What it never does is send your files, photos, or their contents anywhere.
Does the AI send my files to the cloud to analyze them?
No. The AI models (LLaVA for images, Mistral for documents) run locally on your device through Ollama. There is no cloud AI service involved, so your file and photo contents are never uploaded for analysis.
What exactly does the dashboard sync?
Only aggregate numbers — counts of items found, reclaimable sizes, and timestamps, plus a device identifier. It never includes file names, paths, contents, thumbnails, or photos. It syncs while you’re signed in so your history shows in the dashboard.
How do I know you’re telling the truth?
Verify it yourself. The Mac build is signed and notarized by Apple and the Windows build is Authenticode-signed, and you can watch its network activity with Little Snitch or Wireshark to confirm there are no file or photo uploads.