Good luck,
hanging right there.

All of this is optional. Every AI feature ships switched off, and Charmling is a complete app without any of them — the charm, the physics, the rituals, Wander Mode, the focus timer and the basket all work on their own and never read your screen. Turn the AI on if you want it, turn it off whenever, and it stops the same second.

And it's early. A model small enough to run on your own Mac is a model with limits: it writes a good first draft and it will sometimes miss the point of an hour. Treat every recap, standup and timesheet as a draft to read before you send it. It's the part of Charmling I'm working on hardest, and it gets better with every release — the on-device models are improving quickly too, and Charmling picks that up for free. Everything here needs Apple Intelligence: Apple silicon, macOS 26+.

Because there's nothing to subscribe to. The AI is Apple's on-device model — a free engine already on your own Mac. No servers, no API bills, no monthly anything. $14.99₹499$7.99 buys the app outright — every update included, nothing recurring.

Never. Day Memory's captures exist only in memory, are reduced to text on-device, and the text log self-erases within 48 hours. The app makes four kinds of network request and no others: an optional once-a-day update check, activating your licence when you enter it, a weekly re-check of that licence, and downloading an update when you ask for one. None of them carry anything from your screen.

No. Every AI feature is off out of the box and Charmling is a whole app without them — the charm, its physics and rituals, Wander Mode, the focus timer and the basket never read your screen and never ask a model anything. Switch the AI on if it appeals; switch it off and capture stops immediately. Private Mode is a single toggle that silences every capture at once. And be a little sceptical of what it writes: a model small enough to live on your Mac produces a solid first draft, not a finished one — read a timesheet before you hand it in. It's the part of the app improving fastest.

It is built so it doesn't, and it shows you its work. Password managers are never read — 1Password, Bitwarden, Keychain Access and the rest are skipped before a screenshot is taken, and a password manager open as a web page is skipped too, on what the page says rather than what the app is called. A window whose own title gives it away, like prod.env or Passwords, is never photographed at all. Everywhere else, any line naming a password, passphrase, recovery code or API key is deleted before anything is written down — and so is the line after it, because a login form puts the label and the password on separate lines. That works in nine languages, not just English. Anything shaped like a secret — an API token, a private key, a card number, a connection string with a password in it, a long random string, a masked ••••••• field — is replaced with [redacted]. All of it happens on your Mac, before storage, with nothing to switch on.

No filter is perfect, and anyone who tells you theirs is has not looked hard enough. That is exactly why the log lives 48 hours, sits in one plain file you can open and read, and can be erased in one click — all of it, the last hour, or everything from one app.

It's off. You have to switch it on, and the first page is shown to you before it's kept.

Day Memory erases the text from your screen after 48 hours — that doesn't change, and it's why Monday's standup can't mention Thursday. The diary is the answer to that, and it's a deliberately different kind of thing from the log it outlives: for each day it keeps the hours you worked, which apps, the window titles your own apps wrote, the names that provably appeared, and one sentence written on your Mac. No text from your screen, ever. It is strictly smaller and more abstract than the log it replaces.

Choose off, 7 days or 30 days under Day Memory ▸ Diary. It sits in the same folder in one file you can read, "Forget Everything Now" deletes it too, and Private Mode silences it along with everything else.

No, and that is deliberate: it is plain text so you can open it and read every word, which is the only way a promise like this can be checked. It is owner-only from the instant it is created, so no other account on the Mac can read it, and it erases itself after 48 hours. Two honest caveats. If FileVault is off and your Mac is stolen, someone could read the last two days. And if you back up your Home folder, your backup has copies — exclude ~/Library/Application Support/Charmling if that matters to you.

No. Mail, Slack, Messages, WhatsApp and the rest are recorded by window title only — never the words. Other people wrote those, and they never agreed to anything. You can see it in the file above: the Mail line has a subject and an empty body.

Technically yes, and you should check first. Screen Recording is a permission your IT department can see you granted, and some employers have views about it. Charmling sends nothing anywhere, but "it doesn't upload" and "your admin is fine with it" are different questions and only one of them is ours to answer.

The charm itself — physics, rituals, Wander Mode, the timer, the basket — runs on macOS 13 or later, on Apple silicon. It is built for Intel as well, but it has not been tested on real Intel hardware yet — if it misbehaves on yours, write to me and take the refund. The AI features (Day Memory, recaps, standups, timesheets, quizzes, Meeting Radar) need Apple Intelligence, which means an Apple silicon Mac on macOS 26 or later with it switched on in System Settings. Day Memory and the screenshot tools additionally need macOS 14 or later.

Four, all optional, all explained in plain language before macOS asks. Screen Recording → Day Memory and the screenshot tools. Accessibility → Stay Active and window titles. Calendar → Meeting Radar. Reminders → agent actions. Decline Screen Recording and Day Memory simply never runs; everything else carries on. While Day Memory is on, macOS shows its screen-recording indicator in your menu bar — that's the system telling you the truth about what the app is doing, and we'd rather you saw it.

Charmling checks a tiny static version file once a day (nothing about you is sent — you can turn it off). When something new ships, the charm whispers "update available" and one click downloads the new version; you drag it into Applications the same way you installed it. Nothing installs itself behind your back. Every update is free, forever.

Try it first — the first seven days are free, built in: the whole app, no card, no account. If you buy and change your mind anyway, reply to your receipt email, or write to support@charmling.app, and it's refunded within seven days of purchase. No questions, no form.

Yes — any emoji, or your own photo. Drop in a picture and Charmling cuts the subject out on your Mac and sets it in a gold locket that hangs on the same cord.