Privacy Promise

Orbit asks for Screen Recording permission so it can capture the visual state of your active display at the exact moment you activate it. The image is held in temporary memory for the active turn, used as context, and then discarded.

Orbit does not continuously record your screen. There is no background buffering.

Orbit offers two voice modes with very different privacy characteristics:

• Local Voice (Apple Speech): Uses Apple's built-in speech recognition and text-to-speech. All processing happens on your Mac — no audio ever leaves your device. No API key required.
• Cloud Voice (OpenAI transcription + GPT TTS): Sends audio to OpenAI for higher-quality transcription and speech. Requires your own OpenAI API key, which Orbit stores in macOS Keychain — never in plain text.

We don't want your data. The native Orbit macOS app contains zero tracking SDKs, zero analytics engines, and zero crash reporters that “phone home” to our servers. Any crash logs are generated locally by macOS and stay on your machine.

All API keys and credentials are stored exclusively in the macOS Keychain — the same secure enclave that Safari and other Apple apps use. Orbit never writes keys to plain text files, config files, or environment variables.

Depending on how you configure Orbit, it interacts with third parties:

• ChatGPT / Codex: Powers the AI assistant. Handles your text, screen context, and the streamed work that follows. Uses your existing ChatGPT subscription.
• OpenAI API (optional): Only if you enable Cloud Voice. Audio is sent to OpenAI for transcription and GPT TTS for speech, using the API key you provide.

Every line of Orbit is public on GitHub under the MIT license. You can audit the source code yourself, verify every claim on this page, and build Orbit from source. If you have concerns about how Orbit handles data, file an issue or contact the maintainers directly.