Privacy

PrinterAI collects nothing about you. No analytics, no crash reporting, no account, no identifier, no advertising. This page explains what it can see and what — in two specific cases — leaves your Mac.

Last updated 5 August 2026.

What the app reads

To diagnose your printer it reads the printing system on your Mac: which printers are set up, what each reports about itself, ink and toner levels, and whether anything is waiting to print. It can see that a document is queued. It never reads what a document contains.

It also browses your local network to check whether your printer is switched on. That is the only thing the Local Network permission is used for.

What leaves your Mac

For the free app: nothing, with two exceptions, both on a button you press and both labelled on the button itself.

• "Look up the right cartridges" opens a web search for your printer's make and model. Your printer's model is in that search because that is the question. Nothing else is.
• Opening System Settings, which is a link to your own Mac, not the internet.

If you subscribe to the bigger helper

The optional $4.99/month assistant answers on a server we run. When you use it, and only then, these are sent: the facts the app established about your printer — its model, its reported state, ink levels, whether it is reachable — and the messages you type in that conversation.

Not sent: your name, your email, any document, any identifier, or anything about your Mac beyond its printing setup. The app has nowhere to put those things.

The server stores none of it. Your question is verified as coming from a subscriber, forwarded to the language model that answers it, returned to you, and forgotten. There is no database and no transcript log. Apple tells us only that a subscription is valid; we never learn who you are.

Nor does the company that writes the answer. That company is Anthropic, and the assistant is theirs, called Claude. We only allow your question to be sent to services that have agreed to keep nothing, and a request that would be kept is refused rather than sent. Otherwise our promise would end at our own front door, which is not worth much.

What we never do

• No analytics or telemetry of any kind.
• No advertising, and no data sold or shared.
• No tracking across apps or websites.
• No account, so nothing to delete — there is nothing held.

If you send a printer report

If PrinterAI does not recognise your printer it may offer to send its make and model so a future version does. That is opt-in, it shows you the exact words before you agree, and it is the whole of what is sent — for example Dell C1760nw Color Printer, driver v1.6.

Children

PrinterAI is a printer utility and is not directed at children. It collects nothing from anyone.

Changes

If this policy ever changes, the date above changes with it. It will not change to start collecting things quietly.

Contact

Questions about privacy: geoffbaron@gmail.com.