Security
Personal memory deserves serious security.
Security is not a badge.
It is a set of decisions: where data lives, what can reach it, what leaves the machine, what gets shared, and what happens when something fails.
Here are the decisions Shelf actually makes today, including the ones that are still limitations.
01 · The first decision
Reduce what has to travel in the first place.
Shelf keeps your library and its index in a folder on your Mac. There is no Shelf account, no sync server and no cloud copy of your library, so ordinary use does not send your saved things anywhere.
That lowers exposure. It does not make local software invulnerable. Anything with access to your Mac and your user account has access to those files, the same as any other app's data.
Layer 1 · Core memory
Storage, OCR, transcription, the meaning index, search, summaries and connections. On your Mac.
Layer 2 · Optional external AI
Off by default. Runs only with your own provider key, and only for the request you make.
Layer 3 · Explicit sharing
Publishing from the Mac app is not shipped. Nothing in your library is published today.
02 · Protections
What actually protects your library.
Not claimed
Shelf does not separately encrypt the library at rest, and there is no end-to-end encryption, because there is no server to encrypt anything to. No compliance certification is claimed either.
03 · Failure
Security also means predictable failure.
Losing the network does not take your library with it. Saving, reading, searching and connecting are local operations, so they carry on when a connection or an external service does not.
If the optional external model is unavailable, the request fails and the rest of Shelf keeps working. Core memory does not depend on a provider being up.
- Network drops
- Local memory continues. Fetching a new page waits for a connection.
- Provider fails
- One optional request fails. Nothing in your library changes.
- You delete something
- Removed with an undo, then cleaned up at the next launch.
- You want out
- Export the files, or delete the library folder yourself.
Stated plainly
Current limitations
- No encryption at rest inside Shelf
- Only backups you protect with a password are encrypted by Shelf. For the library itself, use FileVault.
- No independent audit or certification
- There is no SOC 2, HIPAA or similar attestation, and this page does not imply one.
- Your Mac is the boundary
- If your Mac is compromised or unlocked by someone else, Shelf cannot protect the library from them.
Trust should come from architecture. Not adjectives.
Read the architecture, then decide.
Shelf is free, needs no account, and keeps its library where you can see it.
Free. macOS 14 and later, Apple Silicon and Intel. No account.
Keep reading
Related pages
Shelf V3 is out now
Shelf V3 is the current build. Shelf does not use automatic updates, so download the latest build here and install it over your current version.
This is intentional. Shelf is built around a local-first, privacy-focused philosophy. An automatic updater requires additional background processes, network connections, update infrastructure, and another system with permission to modify the app. We prefer to keep Shelf’s network footprint and background activity as small as possible.
Manual updates keep the process explicit: Shelf only checks the internet when a feature actually needs it, and you decide when a new version is downloaded and installed.