Home in on anything you have seen

Home in on what you saw, without it ever leaving home.

Homing remembers the text you copy, read on screen and keep in your documents, then finds it again when you describe it or ask a question. macOS itself blocks Homing from using the internet, so it could not send your memories out even if something went wrong.

Get Homing Mac with Apple silicon

when does my apartment contract roll over

▦

Lease Agreement.pdf

The term ends on February 28 and renews automatically for twelve months unless the tenant gives sixty days written notice.

~/Documents/Home · 3 weeks ago

□

Rent is due on the first of each month, late fee after the fifth

Mail · copied yesterday

▣

Re: renewal terms for unit 4B

Safari window · Tuesday

↩ copy↑↓ moveesc close⌘↩ askEverything stays on this Mac

Sample data. This is the layout of Homing's search window.

Offline by forcemacOS blocks Homing's network access. It is not a setting.

Text, not recordingsIt keeps words. It never records your screen in the background.

Answers show their sourcesAsk a question and see exactly which memories it used.

Remembers

Four places things get lost, in one memory.

Most tools cover one of them. Homing keeps them together, so one search finds the lease whether you copied a line from it, had it open, or only saved the file.

What you copy

Text, file names and the words inside copied pictures. Anything that looks like a password, API key, card number or one-time code is skipped, and so is anything copied from a password manager.

automatic

What you read on screen

Drag a box over anything, even a video or a PDF you can't select. Homing reads the text inside the box, copies it, and remembers it. It looks only at the box you drag.

⌃⌥R

Where you were working

Optionally, the title of the window you stayed in for a few seconds, so you can find the spreadsheet you had open on Tuesday. Private browser windows are skipped.

off until you turn it on

Inside your documents

Choose folders and Homing reads the PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Pages, Numbers, text and Markdown files in them. Scanned PDFs are read with text recognition. Your files are never copied or changed.

only the folders you choose

Homing keeps memories for three months unless you choose another time, from one week to forever. You can pause it, exclude any app, or forget everything in one click.

Finds

Describe it, and it finds the right one.

Homing ships with a search model built for matching a question to the text that answers it, and runs it on your Mac. Pick a question below. Each uses a real passage from the test set we measured.

Try a question

Sample documents and an example answer, written to match what the model finds.

87%

of 119 questions put the right document first, out of 60 documents

97%

had the right document among the top three

15 of 25

questions with no answer in the documents correctly returned nothing

Our own test, in English: 60 documents (bills, leases, emails, recipes, notes) and 119 questions written the way people type, including short keywords, typos and vague wording. For 7 of the 10 unanswerable questions it did not turn away, the search window said "No strong match" above the closest documents, and the other 3 showed a loosely related document as a normal result. A smaller first test (14 documents, 24 questions) scored 92% against 21% for the sentence model that comes with macOS. Both tests were written by us, so read them as a direction, not a guarantee.

Answers

Ask in plain words. See where the answer came from.

Press ⌘↩ on a question and Homing answers from your own memories and documents using Apple Intelligence on your Mac. The memories it used are listed under the answer, so you can check the source and open the file.

Asking needs macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence turned on. Searching works without it. Homing answers one question at a time. In our own check with 25 questions no document answers, Ask said it could not find an answer for 24 and gave a wrong answer to one, and when it was given the right documents it answered 18 of 20 sampled questions. Apple's on-device model sometimes declines to answer; Homing then shows the closest memories instead.

Proof

It can't phone home. We tested that.

Plenty of apps say they keep your data private. Homing runs in the macOS App Sandbox and asks for no network permission, which means the operating system refuses every connection it tries to make. We built two tiny test apps from identical code, one with Homing's permissions and one with network access added, and ran both.

Test app with network permission addedcontrol

raw TCP to 1.1.1.1:443
CONNECTED
HTTPS GET example.com
HTTP 200, 577 bytes

Test app with Homing's permissionsblocked

raw TCP to 1.1.1.1:443
connect() refused immediately: Operation not permitted
HTTPS GET example.com
NSURLErrorDomain -1003 A server with the specified hostname could not be found.

The control connects, so the test can tell the difference. The second app is refused by macOS before any data could leave.

✓

app-sandboxmacOS limits what Homing can reach.

✓

files.user-selected.read-only and files.bookmarks.app-scopeRead-only access to the folders you pick, remembered between launches. Nothing else on disk.

✗

network.client and network.serverDeliberately absent. Every build is checked, and fails if either ever appears.

You can check it yourself

Homing's Settings window reads its own signature each time it opens and shows the sandbox, the network permission, and what files it can read. It says so plainly if a copy isn't sandboxed.

Encrypted on your Mac

Memories and the text read from your documents are encrypted with a key kept in your Keychain. Copying the folder gives nobody anything readable.

Secrets are skipped

Text that looks like a password, key, card number or code is not stored, whether it comes from a copy or a document. Password managers and Keychain Access are always excluded.

Compared

Where Homing fits among the alternatives.

There are good tools in each of these groups. They differ most in what they keep and where the answers are made. This is how they compare on the points that matter for privacy.

	Homing	Siri AI in macOS 27 Spotlight	Screen-recording memory apps	Cloud AI assistants
Where answers are made	On your Mac only	On your Mac and on Apple's Private Cloud Compute servers	Varies. Some store everything locally but send questions to cloud models you choose	On the vendor's servers
What it keeps	Text you copied, read or opened, and your documents' text	Searches what is already on your Mac, such as files, messages and mail	Pictures of your screen and often audio, with the text pulled from them	Whatever you upload or connect
How you can check the privacy claim	macOS enforces it, and Settings shows it live	Apple's published design, which Apple says outside experts can inspect	The vendor's statements. Open-source ones let you read the code	The vendor's privacy policy
Reads scanned documents and what's on screen	Yes, with on-device text recognition	Can answer about what is on your screen	What appeared on screen, from the recordings	If you upload them
Cost to use	$29 once ($19 at launch). No subscription	Free with macOS. Apple says server-based features have daily limits	From free open-source tools to paid apps	Usually a monthly subscription

Siri AI is better at

Being built in and free, answering questions about the world, and taking actions across your apps. Homing only knows what you copied, read, and keep in the folders you choose.

Screen recorders are better at

Remembering things you only looked at. Homing keeps words, so a chart or a photo you never copied or read with the screen reader is not in its memory.

Cloud assistants are better at

Large language models and working from any device. Homing's answers use the model on your Mac, and it runs on one Mac.

Comparison based on each vendor's own published descriptions as of this writing. Features and prices change, so check them before you decide.

Questions

Straight answers.

What does Homing need to run?

A Mac with Apple silicon. Homing is built for macOS 14 or later and has been tested on macOS 27. Asking questions also needs macOS 26 or later with Apple Intelligence turned on. Search, the screen reader and document search work without it.

Which permissions does it ask for, and when?

Screen Recording, the first time you use the screen reader (it only reads the box you drag) or turn on window titles (it only reads the title of the front window). Access to a folder, only when you choose it in Settings. It asks for nothing else.

Does it record my screen?

No. There is no background capture. The screen reader looks at the one box you drag, turns it into text, and discards the picture.

What file types can it read?

PDF, Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx), PowerPoint (.pptx), Pages and Numbers (the current single-file formats), Rich Text, plain text, Markdown, CSV and TSV. Scanned PDFs are read with text recognition, for their first five pages. Not yet Keynote.

Which languages does it work in?

English. The search model is English-only, and so is the way it reads times such as "yesterday" or "last week".

What if I stop using it?

Choose Forget Everything in the menu bar. It deletes every memory and the text read from your documents, and stops watching your folders. Your documents are never touched.

How much does it cost?

$29, paid once, with a launch price of $19. There is no subscription and no account. Homing makes its answers on your Mac, so there are no server costs to pass on to you.

Does it work on iPhone or sync between Macs?

Not yet. It lives on one Mac, which is part of why nothing needs to leave it.

Why is it called Homing?

Two reasons. A homing device goes straight to its target, and Homing finds the one thing you are looking for among everything you have copied, read and saved. And everything it keeps stays at home, on your Mac.

Who makes it?

The maker of Pocketry, the private clipboard for Mac. Homing uses different shortcuts from Pocketry.

Get Homing

$29, paid once. No subscription.

Launch price: $19. After launch, Homing is $29 one time. There is no account and no monthly fee, because nothing runs on a server. Homing is finishing testing, and the release date will be announced here.

MacApple silicon

macOSBuilt for 14 or later, tested on 27. 26 or later to ask questions

Price$29 once ($19 at launch)