Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 2, 2026

The short version. Brief reads your messages on your own Mac to find action items. What leaves your Mac depends on which filter engine you choose, not on your plan. Smart Filter and Apple Intelligence run entirely on your Mac — your message text never leaves it. Cloud AI sends the candidate message and the two or three before it to a model 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 hello@justbriefme.app.

What leaves your Mac

What leaves your Mac depends on which filter engine you choose.

Smart Filter and Apple Intelligence run entirely on your Mac. No message text leaves the device.

Cloud AI with your own API key sends message text directly from your Mac to the provider you chose — Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, or Perplexity. It does not pass through Brief's servers.

Cloud AI on Pro or Premium uses Brief's key, which means the text passes through Brief's server on its way to Anthropic. We don't store it. If the provider returns an error, a short excerpt of its response — up to 300 characters, which can include part of what was sent — is written to our error log.

When Cloud AI is on, what gets sent is the full text of candidate messages — not a truncated version — along with the two or three messages immediately before each one in that thread, the sender's label, and your first name. That context window means a message Brief decides isn't actionable can still be sent as context for one that is.

What Brief stores, on every engine, is the extracted action — not the message.

Your API keys (if you add one) 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.
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 hello@justbriefme.app 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.

← Back to Brief