olace

[ sync & privacy ]

Privacy & data

Your local and paired chats are private. Not even Olace can read them. Paired connections, files you attach from a paired computer, and everything that syncs are end-to-end encrypted. On top of that default, each chat runs in one of two modes.

Standard Mode

The normal mode. Your model choice decides where inference happens:

  • On a local or paired model, the model runs on your devices and Olace cannot read the conversation.
  • When a local or paired chat uses a tool, only what the tool needs to run leaves your device. A search engine needs a query and a weather service needs a city, as they would from any app, so your model writes that input on your device and only the input goes out. Your conversation itself never reaches Olace or the tool's provider in readable form. A Research report you ask for is the exception: it passes through Olace to be put together, and is not stored. A document you ask for is written and put together on your devices: only the title and instructions your model writes for it, and the image searches it runs, go out. Python runs in a sandbox on your own computer. The Privacy Policy lists exactly what each tool sends.
  • On an Olace Cloud model, the turn runs on a zero-data-retention provider.
  • Tools that reach outward, like web search or Research on a cloud route, use the network to do their job, and the cost is shown before anything metered runs. Web access under Settings › Privacy & Data decides whether the model reaches for the web on its own; it is on by default and applies to every conversation. With it off, Web Search and Research still search when you ask for them directly.

Direct Mode

Direct Mode is the strictest setting, for conversations that must not touch anything beyond your own devices:

Direct Mode processes chats only with AI models on your devices. It is fixed per conversation. Web access and image generation are off in this mode.

Points worth knowing:

  • Direct Mode is chosen per chat and fixed once the chat starts. To leave it, start a new standard chat.
  • Web search, Research, and Create Image are unavailable in Direct Mode chats, whatever the Web access setting says.
  • You start Direct Mode chats in the desktop and mobile apps; the web app does not offer it. A Direct Mode chat opened on the web continues there when it runs on a paired computer, and is view-only when it ran on another device's own local model.
  • Voice dictation in a Direct Mode chat is transcribed on your device. On Android this uses the system speech service's offline mode, so accuracy may dip slightly compared with standard chats.
  • Direct Mode chats still sync across your devices, always encrypted.

Toggle it from the composer's tool row or the chat header icon.

Your data controls

Under Settings › Privacy & Data:

  • Clear chat history deletes your chats from the cloud and all your devices when sync is on, or from this device when it is off.
  • Date and time. Gives the AI your local date and time as context for answers. Turn it off if you prefer.
  • Help improve Olace. Sends anonymous reliability metrics, like crashes and connection health. Never conversation content, never identifiers. On by default; turn it off here any time.

Where data rests

  • On desktop and mobile, your conversations are stored on your device, protected by your device's own security.
  • In the web app, conversations are kept encrypted in the browser database, and your key stays in memory for the session unless you choose Trust this browser. See Encrypted sync.
  • Anything stored in Olace's cloud (synced conversations and files) is zero-knowledge encrypted before it leaves your device.

Hosting on a machine you rent

Your host can be a GPU instance you rent, set up the same way as any other (Headless & cloud hosts). The cryptography does not change: the pairing is end-to-end encrypted, the relay routes only ciphertext, and Olace still cannot read your conversations. What changes is who holds the machine at the far end.

  • The turn runs in that machine's memory. Your prompt and the model's response exist there in readable form while it is generated, as on any computer running the model.
  • Anything stored on the host sits on the provider's disk. Your conversation is stored on the device you chat from, not on the host. If you also chat on the host itself, with the desktop app or olace chat, those conversations are stored there, and Olace keeps local conversations in the clear, protected by the machine's own security. On hardware you own, that is your disk encryption. On a rented instance, it is the provider's.
  • Shared folders are on the host. Anything you expose with Files from your computer lives on that disk too.
  • Direct Mode counts a paired host as one of your devices. It keeps inference on your own devices and turns off web access, image generation, and cloud models, which is exactly what it promises. It cannot turn a machine you rent into hardware you control.

None of this is particular to Olace; it is true of anything you run on a computer someone else owns. It is spelled out because the rest of this page is written for a host you own. If your threat model includes the operator of the machine, host on hardware you control.

For the cryptography details, see Security & open source.