Recording & your data

Plainwork records how you move through your apps so it can spot repeatable tasks. Everything it captures stays on your device, in one encrypted database. See Suggested habits for how detection works.

What's recorded

• Clicks — the label of the control you clicked and its current content (a file name, a cell's text). Labels are read from the app, or, for controls the app doesn't label, from the pixels of that one control on your device.
• Typing — what you typed, read once from the field when you finish a burst of typing, plus how many characters and for how long. Password fields are never read — only counts.
• Drags — when you drag something (a file onto a chat, a row between windows): where it came from, where it landed, and the dragged item's name.
• Step screenshots — a small picture of the window you acted in, taken with clicks, drags, and typing. Only that app's window is captured — never the whole screen — at reduced size, at most a couple per second.
• App and window changes — which app and window came to the front.
• Scroll activity — that you scrolled, nothing more.
• Page addresses in supported browsers, so site blocking can work.

Everything recorded stays in the encrypted database on your device. It leaves your Mac only when a habit is being built for you — see Suggested habits. Plainwork records no audio. Opted-in background browser recovery separately sends a fixed goal and offered control labels to the model during execution; it does not transmit your recording history, browser storage or screenshots. Blocked apps — and always-ignored sensitive categories like password managers — produce no events, no screenshots, nothing.

Screen Recording

Step screenshots and unlabeled-control reading use the macOS Screen Recording permission, which Plainwork asks for during setup. Granted, clicks get precise labels and steps get screenshots; declined, everything still works — just less precisely, with no screenshots.

How long it's kept

Recorded events and step screenshots are deleted automatically after 30 days, and screenshots are additionally capped in total size (oldest go first). Detection only reads the most recent 7 days.

The recording menu

Open it from the status pill in the top-right of the home screen. It shows a coloured dot and a label (Recording, Paused, Starting, or Error) and, when open, when the current session started and how much time it has tracked today.

• Pause / Resume recording: Stop or restart capture. While paused, nothing new is recorded.
• Recording since: When the current recording session began.
• Wipe last hour: Removes the most recent hour of recorded events.

Clearing your data in Settings

In Settings → General, the Data section has two controls. Both ask you to confirm, and both act only on this device.

1. Remove all recording data: Deletes every recorded event and detected pattern. Your habits are kept. Recording restarts fresh afterwards.
2. Remove everything: Deletes all recording data and every habit, including habits you taught. Removed habits are archived so they don't sync back. Your account and preferences stay untouched.

Both are permanent and can't be undone.

Local storage security

Recorded events, preferences, and executable habits are encrypted, and the protected files are integrity-checked. If they're changed, deleted, or rolled back outside Plainwork, the app stops capture and habit execution instead of accepting the change.