Privacy · PIKY Alpha 0.2.0 · October 2026
Local by design. You choose what to share.
PIKY is a Mac utility that gathers what you pick into a Pack and adds it to a supported app you choose. Packs are saved on your Mac, and Use Pack gives a copy to the app you choose. PIKY has no account, and PIKY itself makes no network connections.
When you pick
- PIKY reads text, files and what is on screen only while you are picking: from the moment you start (Option + Space) until you stop (Escape, or Option + Space again with nothing new picked). It keeps only what you pick.
- Text: PIKY reads the selection you make, through macOS Accessibility. In apps that don’t share their selection, it copies the selection as Command + C would, then puts your clipboard back as it was. It keeps no clipboard history.
- Files you click in Finder are kept in PIKY’s folder. On the same disk, the copy is a space-saving clone that shares the original’s storage until either one changes, so the Pack still works if the original is moved or deleted. A file on another drive stays a link to the original. PIKY never changes your originals.
- Camera (hold Option) needs Screen Recording permission. While you hold Option, PIKY looks at the window under your pointer to work out what to outline: brief snapshots that are processed on your Mac, held in memory and discarded. Only the area you click or drag is saved as a Pick. Nothing is recorded continuously.
- With each Pick, PIKY keeps the name of the app it came from and, when the app shares them, the window’s title and the page’s address.
Permissions you choose
Accessibility enables basic Picking and Use Pack. Screen access is only for Camera and can be deferred. macOS may show additional consent when Camera first previews the screen. Selected files in Desktop, Documents or Downloads may require Files & Folders access; PIKY explains a refusal so you can choose whether to allow it.
While PIKY is open
- So that it can find the message box you chose later, PIKY notes where you last clicked in each app (a position on screen, and which window), and counts presses of keys that move between boxes, such as Tab. It never records which keys you type or what you write. These notes stay in memory, are never saved or sent, and are gone when PIKY quits.
- While a Pack is ready, Command + Return belongs to PIKY, and so does the optional Undo shortcut if you keep one in Settings. “Hide Pack” in PIKY’s menu gives them back to your apps.
When you use your Pack
- To find the message box, PIKY asks the app you are in, through Accessibility, what kind of box has the keyboard, what it is labelled, the window’s title and page address, and how many characters the box holds. It does not read what you have written there.
- It hands that app temporary copies of your Picks, by paste or by drag: text as text, and when there are files or pictures too, a note named “PIKY Pack — name.md” that keeps your Picks in order. A paste puts the Pack on your clipboard, where it stays until you copy something else. In Claude Code in Apple Terminal, PIKY pastes the paths of those copies as text instead (a Pack of only texts goes as text).
- PIKY says what it offered and whether it saw the app open the files. It cannot see whether an app kept every file, so check your draft. It never presses Send.
- From then on, what the receiving app does with what you gave it is up to that app and its own privacy terms.
What stays on your Mac
- Your current Pack, and earlier Packs in PIKY’s Library, in PIKY’s folder (Library › Application Support › PIKY in your home folder), until you delete them. They are ordinary files that only your Mac account can open; they are not separately encrypted.
- Temporary copies made for pasting normally expire a day after their last use. PIKY cleans them up while it is running; copies still on the clipboard or in use while a Pack is being added can stay longer. Deleting a Pack removes its unused temporary copies too. Copies whose paths PIKY pasted into a terminal are kept for 24 hours after the paste, through New Pack, a restart or deleting the Pack, so a draft there can still read them. Settings › Storage › Clear asks before removing them.
- Deleting a Pack in Library removes PIKY’s copies of it from your Mac. It never deletes your original files, and it cannot take back what you already added to another app.
- Pack names are made on your Mac from what you picked.
- When an app keeps only part of a pasted list of files, PIKY’s settings note that, so the next Pack goes in a way that works there: the app’s identifier, in a browser the site’s name (such as example.com), and a number. The note is removed after two weeks. Never a page address, a title or anything you wrote.
- After you use a Pack, PIKY’s settings keep for up to a day which of its items went in and which did not, and where: internal numbers, the app’s identifier and, in a browser, the site’s name. PIKY uses it so that a later press does not send again what it saw go in. No file names, text or page addresses.
- The Alpha keeps a small local log of steps, app identifiers, counts, timings and on-screen positions in PIKY’s folder: no text, file names, pictures or addresses. PIKY never sends it anywhere.
What leaves your Mac
- From PIKY itself: nothing. PIKY itself makes no network connections; it has no account, no telemetry and no update check.
- From you: what you add to another app when you use a Pack, as described above.
- This website is separate from the app. It sets no cookies and has no accounts. When you press Download, the site counts one download (the PIKY version and the day, nothing about you) and sends your browser straight to the file.
- The site also counts visits, with its host’s analytics (Vercel Web Analytics), which uses no cookies: which page was opened and when, the site that linked to it, the kind of browser and device, the country, region and city the request came from, and a press of Download. One visit is told from another by a code made from the request and discarded within a day. Nothing follows you to another site, and none of it is tied to your name, your internet address or the app.
- The companies that host this site and the download file keep ordinary access logs, which include IP addresses, as every web host does. The file’s host also counts how often the file is downloaded.
You stay in control
Escape stops picking. The arrow beside PIKY in the menu bar takes back the last Pick, and New Pack starts over. Review and Library let you look at, rename and delete what PIKY holds, and Library shows how much space the Packs use. You can turn off Accessibility or Screen Recording for PIKY in System Settings at any time, and quitting PIKY stops everything on this page.