Privacy Policy
Last updated: August 2, 2026
The short version. Brief reads your messages on your own Mac to find
action items. On the free plan, filtering happens entirely on your Mac and
nothing leaves the device. On the paid plans, Brief sends the candidate
message and a few surrounding lines to its AI provider to judge whether it is
actionable — used only to answer that one request, never stored by us, never used to
train models. Either way, only the extracted action — a title, date/time and short
summary — is saved to your account. We never sell your data and never share it with
third parties for their own use.
Who we are
Brief ("we", "us") is a Mac and iPhone app that helps you turn the action items in your iMessages into reminders and a morning brief. Contact us at [email protected].
What stays on your device
- The full text of your messages — never uploaded to Brief. Our own servers never receive your message text; what we store is the extracted action. On paid plans, the candidate message and a few surrounding lines are sent to our AI provider for the filtering judgment and are not retained by us or used to train models. On the free plan this does not happen at all — the filter runs on your Mac.
- AI summaries and Work/Personal classifications generated for the review queue are computed on-device and stored locally.
- Your API keys (if you add one for the premium brief) are stored in your device Keychain and never sent to our servers.
What we collect (and why)
- The extracted action — a title, date/time and short summary, plus the sender's number — for the items Brief surfaces, so you can review and route them on your iPhone. The raw message text is not stored. It stays on your Mac.
- Contact names, inside item titles — names are matched to phone numbers on your device; your contact list is never uploaded and is never sent to the AI provider. When Brief creates an item, the matched name appears in that item's title, and that title syncs to your account so your phone can show it. Where no contact matches, the phone number is used instead.
- Routing decisions and item status (e.g. routed to Reminders, dismissed) to keep your queue in sync across devices.
- Your morning brief content (weather, news, scores, stock and betting picks, your overnight catch-up summary) so it can be displayed on your phone.
- Your email address, to create your account and send the sign-in link.
- A device push token, if you enable notifications, so we can tell you when your brief is ready or new items are caught.
- Your plan (Free, Bring Your Own Key, Pro, or Premium) and a monthly count of items you've actioned. The count is kept so you and we can see your usage; the free-tier limit itself is applied on your own device.
How your data is stored
Synced data (the extracted actions, routing decisions, brief content, account info) is stored in our database provider (Supabase) and protected by per-user access rules so only you can read your data. Data is encrypted in transit.
Third parties
- Supabase — our database and authentication provider (data processor).
- Open-Meteo, ESPN, Yahoo Finance, and news sources — queried to build your brief. These requests don't include your personal message content.
- Anthropic — Brief's own AI service sends candidate messages and your brief topics for filtering and for generating your morning brief. This is how Brief works by default; you don't need an account or a key of your own.
- Your chosen AI provider (Perplexity, Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google) — only if you optionally add your own key instead, in which case that provider handles it under their terms rather than ours.
- Apple — App Store purchases and push notification delivery.
What we never do
- We never sell your data.
- We never use your messages or any of your data to train AI models.
- We never share your data with third parties for their own marketing or purposes.
Your rights
- Delete your account and data at any time — email [email protected] and we'll remove your account and all associated synced data.
- Export your data — request a copy of the data we hold for you.
- Revoke access at any time by removing Full Disk Access from the Brief Mac app or deleting the apps.
Children
Brief is not directed to children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect their data.
Changes
We'll update this page and the "last updated" date when our practices change.