Privacy policy

In short

“Foxstep”, “we” and “us” mean the controller named under Contact at the end.

• Recording, editing and privacy checks happen on your Mac. You choose when to export, connect an assistant, ask a cloud question or request cloud writing suggestions.
• Foxstep asks you to sign in with a Foxstep account. Offline, recording, editing and export still work. Optional cloud features require sign-in and your consent.
• We count visits with cookieless Cloudflare Web Analytics. Optional advertising and joined download-to-purchase measurement use cookies only if you accept. Sign-in uses essential authentication storage.
• If you email us, we use what you send to reply. When you download Foxstep or ask to try it, we note the advert details in the link you followed and the site that sent you, to see how people find Foxstep.

1. Foxstep for Mac

1.1 What the app captures while you record

• Screenshots of the window or screen you’re working in
• Your clicks: where you clicked and with which mouse button
• The accessibility name and role of the control you clicked, such as a button’s label
• App names and window titles
• Text you type, which becomes step text you can see, edit and delete. Foxstep never reads password fields (macOS secure text fields). If you switch off “Include typed text” in Settings (it’s on by default), Foxstep doesn’t capture typed text while recording; clicks, screenshots and app and window names are still captured.
• If you turn on voice narration (off by default): your voice, through the microphone, turned into text on your Mac by Apple’s on-device speech recognition
• If you turn on Screen video (off by default): a video of the screen you’re recording, with the pointer, or of one app’s windows when you record a single app. Foxstep’s own windows are left out, apart from the camera bubble. Its only sound is your narration, if that’s on.
• If you turn on Camera bubble (off by default): your camera, shown in a round bubble on screen and recorded with the screen video

1.2 What’s stored, and where

Your local recordings and guides are stored on your Mac, in ~/Library/Application Support/FoxstepDesktop, with a folder for each guide. Each folder holds:

• the guide’s steps and screenshots;
• its screen video and camera bubble, if you recorded them;
• a technical event log: the timing of clicks and key presses, app and window changes, and the names of controls you clicked. It doesn’t keep the characters you type or the contents of fields;
• an edit history, used for undo, which keeps earlier versions of text and screenshots until you delete the guide. Cropping or annotating a screenshot keeps the earlier version in this history.

Privacy review scans guide text and screenshots locally and proposes replacements and image masks. Applying approved findings creates flattened images with a frosted appearance; the original pixels are removed from those images. The original files remain on your Mac for Undo. Animated images become still images when this protection is applied. Manual black redaction is permanent: it updates shared copies of the screenshot and clears the guide’s earlier versions.

Deleting a guide deletes its folder from your Mac. Copies may remain in backups of your Mac, such as Time Machine.

Foxstep doesn’t add its own encryption to these files. They’re protected by your Mac’s security, such as your login password and FileVault if you use it.

1.3 What leaves your Mac

• Recording, editing and privacy detection are local. When you’re signed in and ask a question (Ask, Summarise or a chat), Foxstep’s service sends Google’s AI in the EU your question and the text of the guides it’s about, including the text read from their screenshots on your Mac and a short description of each screenshot. Screenshots that haven’t been described yet are sent once, at reduced size, with the next question about their guide, so they can be described; the descriptions are kept on your Mac, not by Foxstep. Otherwise, screenshots go only with Max answers, up to four at a time: while a guide’s screenshots are still being described, or when you ask about how something looks. Before anything is sent, the privacy check on your Mac replaces anything it flags in the text, such as an email address, and holds back any screenshot it flags. A guide you have already reviewed goes as you approved it. A follow-up question also sends up to six earlier questions and answers from the same conversation, and chats send the titles, step counts and dates of up to 50 other guides.
• Optional cloud writing suggestions use your AI credits. After signing in, you choose to send the reviewed guide text and your instructions to Foxstep’s service and Google AI in the EU. Screenshot sharing is off by default. If you turn it on, the first four visible step screenshots are included.
• Raw capture logs and retained original images are never sent.
• Exports (PDF, web page and walkthrough) are files you save and share yourself. They use the current privacy-reviewed text and images. Review can include findings you choose to leave visible; always check the result before sharing. Exports with the video contain the recording as it was made: the privacy check and your review cover text and screenshots, not the video, so watch it before you share it.
• On Macs with Apple Intelligence (macOS 26 or later), naming a guide and tidying its wording use Apple’s on-device model, on your Mac.
• Foxstep includes an optional connection for AI assistants that support the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Nothing is shared through it unless you add it to an assistant yourself, using the setup in Settings. Once connected, that assistant can read saved guides and images from your library after their privacy review. It can also ask Foxstep to hide words, kinds of detail or areas of a screenshot in a guide, including one you haven’t reviewed yet. Foxstep looks for them on your Mac and adds them to that guide’s privacy review, and nothing changes until you apply it. The assistant receives only how many places were found and which of its words weren’t, never the guide’s text or screenshots. The assistant provider’s terms apply to anything it receives.

To measure whether Foxstep is useful, a signed-in app reports its first successfully saved export: an account identifier, random event and guide identifiers, and the export time. It sends no guide text, title, filename, screenshot or destination. Repeat exports and retries do not create additional first-export records. The app can save and export when this reporting service is unavailable.

Foxstep checks foxstep.io for a newer version once a day, never while recording. The check sends the app’s name and version, and nothing about your guides or your Mac; as with any web request, our host sees your IP address. You can turn automatic checks off in Settings. An update installs only after you approve it.

Cloud sign-in uses Firebase Authentication. The answer and cleanup services store your account identifier, request identifier and request time, and for answers the level used (Default or Max), to enforce usage limits. Cloud AI also records your consent, token usage, rate version, any charge, your credit balance and payment references, to settle credits and handle refunds. These usage records do not contain your questions, guides, screenshots or answers. They are retained to operate the service; you can request deletion using the contact details below, subject to payment-record retention requirements. The optional extra privacy detector is a one-time download of about 945 MB from Hugging Face and runs offline after installation; your guide content is not sent for the download or checks.

Optional cloud library

If you enable “Keep a copy in Foxstep’s cloud”, Foxstep uploads privacy-checked guide text, screen descriptions and cleared screenshots to Google Cloud storage in London. This lets cloud chat search the saved library. Turning syncing off stops new uploads; use Delete cloud copy to remove the hosted library. Your local guides stay on your Mac. Deleted cloud objects may remain temporarily in recovery backups.

You can separately create and revoke personal tokens for your own agents to read that cloud library. Tokens grant access to the account’s saved guides, so share them only with assistants you trust. That assistant’s provider controls anything it receives under its own terms.

Shared links

If you create a link in Share, Foxstep uploads that guide’s privacy-reviewed text and screenshots to our sharing service, hosted by Cloudflare at guides.foxstep.io. Anyone with the link can open it in a browser. The page shows the name on your Foxstep account, if it has one. We keep your account identifier with the link, and count how many times it’s opened and when it was last opened. We don’t keep who opened it, or their IP address or browser. Stopping the link deletes the hosted guide; a record that the link was stopped remains. Each account can keep up to 100 links.

A team link opens only for your team, after a Foxstep sign-in: the people with your team’s seats, colleagues with a verified email address at your team’s company domain, and anyone who joined with your team’s link. When a colleague opens a team guide, we keep their account identifier with that guide, so the team library can count how many colleagues have read it. The library shows each guide’s title, its author’s name, when it was updated and how often it’s been opened, but not who opened it. Your team’s owner can stop any team link.

1.4 macOS permissions

• Screen Recording: to take screenshots of the window you’re working in, and to record screen video if you turn it on.
• Accessibility: to read the name and role of the control you click, so a step can say Click “Save”.
• Input Monitoring, optional: another way to see your clicks and key presses while you record. Recording works without it.
• Microphone and Speech Recognition: only if you turn on narration.
• Camera: only if you turn on Camera bubble.

You can remove any permission in System Settings, under Privacy & Security. Recording needs the first two.

1.5 No analytics tools

The app contains no analytics or advertising tools. The only usage information it sends is the first-export report described in 1.3, which contains no guide content. Update checks send only the app’s name and version.

1.6 Other people’s information in your guides

Screenshots, screen video and typed text can include other people’s personal data, such as details of your clients or their customers. Content stays local unless you choose to share it, connect an assistant, ask a cloud question or request cloud writing suggestions. You decide what to record, keep and share, and you’re responsible for doing so lawfully. Detection can miss sensitive information, including faces and QR codes; check the guide and redact anything else before sharing.

1.7 Recordings an assistant asks for

On a Mac, an agent can request a recording only after you enable assistant recording in Foxstep. The request names one app and shows the normal recorder.

2. This website

• Hosting: foxstep.io is hosted by Cloudflare, which processes technical data such as your IP address and browser details to deliver the site and protect it from abuse.
• Fonts and scripts: the marketing pages serve their fonts, scripts and demo video directly from this website, except for the optional Google Ads script described below.
• Cookies and analytics: we count visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which uses no cookies and builds no profile of you; it records pages viewed, the referring site, country and device type. The sign-in service at app.foxstep.io uses Firebase Authentication, browser session storage and essential authentication cookies. The Mac app keeps sign-in tokens in macOS Keychain.
• Optional ad measurement: Google Ads loads only after you accept ad measurement. It uses advertising cookies and technical browser data to connect a Google advert click with a successfully saved trial request. We send a random request identifier to avoid counting the same request twice. We don’t send Google your email or handover details, and don’t use enhanced conversions or ad personalisation. We remember your choice in this browser for 180 days and share that choice with app.foxstep.io through a first-party cookie. The first-party funnel does not send account or guide identifiers to Google. Use Cookie settings in the footer to change your choice. Choosing Decline stops further optional measurement, requests removal of the first-party journey association and clears Google Ads cookies set by this site. If Google Ads has already loaded, changing to Decline also notifies Google of your choice. Declining initially sends nothing to Google and does not affect access to the download.
• Browser storage: the SOP template generator saves your selections in your browser’s local storage so they’re there when you return. They stay on your device and aren’t sent to us. The trial form keeps an essential random request identifier in this browser tab for up to 30 minutes, clearing it after a successful request. It prevents retries from creating duplicate requests and contains no email or handover text.
• Trial form: if you ask to try Foxstep through the form on this site, we receive your email address, anything you tell us about your handover, the advert details in the link you followed (such as the campaign name), the name of the site that sent you (such as google.com) and your network’s name (such as BT). We receive Google’s click ID only if you accept ad measurement. We store these details in our Cloudflare account, email ourselves a copy, and use them to help with setup and to ask how your handover went. With your ad-measurement consent, we tell Google Ads when your trial request is saved. We don’t add you to a mailing list.
• Downloads: we record the download time, referring page, the name of the site that sent you (such as google.com), campaign labels, country, browser type (such as Safari on macOS) and your network’s name (such as BT), without an email or IP address in the download record. A Google click identifier is retained only with ad-measurement consent. A download request does not prove that installation completed. If you accept measurement, a random first-party journey cookie lasts up to 90 days. Signing in through the same browser can connect that download and its campaign labels to your Foxstep account, first successful export and confirmed software purchase. We do not use your IP address, email address or browser fingerprint to guess a match. Declining leaves downloads unlinked. Withdrawal removes the journey association; account, licence and payment records remain separate operational records.
• Email: if you email us, we receive your email address, your name if you include it and whatever you write. We use it to reply, to arrange access and to keep a record of the conversation. Our email provider processes messages for us.

3. Purchases

Orders are handled by Stripe Managed Payments and its Onelink checkout. Your card details go to the payment provider, not Foxstep. The Onelink privacy policy explains that processing. We use your Foxstep account identifier and payment references to deliver your licence, AI credits, receipts and refunds; order/contact details remain accessible in the payment dashboard.

If you buy team seats, we keep each seat’s code and whether it has been claimed, and link each claimed seat to the Foxstep account that claimed it. The buyer sees whether a seat is taken, not who took it.

If your team runs a team space, Stripe handles its yearly payments. To run it, we keep the team’s name, its company email domain, its join link and which accounts joined with that link. We also keep the subscription’s status, its renewal date and how many makers it covers.

4. Our lawful bases

Under UK data protection law (the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018), we rely on:

• our legitimate interests in running and protecting this website;
• your consent for optional advertising cookies and conversion measurement;
• our legitimate interests in answering enquiries, or steps you ask us to take before a contract, when you email us;
• performing our contract with you when you use a cloud feature you choose, such as a shared link or a team space;
• performing our contract with you, and our legal obligations such as keeping tax records, when you buy a licence.

5. How long we keep data

• Emails: up to two years after our last exchange, unless you ask us to delete them sooner.
• Download records: up to two years.
• Order records: six years after the end of the financial year of the purchase, as UK tax law requires.
• Team spaces: the team’s details and who joined with its link, until the team ends or you ask us to remove them; payments as for orders.
• Shared links: the hosted guide and its open counts until you stop the link. If you can no longer use the app, email info@foxstep.io and we’ll stop it.
• Guides: local copies and originals remain on your Mac until you delete them. For optional cloud cleanup, the feature processes submitted content to return suggestions; it does not save guide text, screenshots, prompts or responses in its database or application logs. Google’s provider data-handling terms also apply.

6. Where data is processed

Cloudflare, Google, our email provider and Stripe may process data outside the UK. Where they do, we rely on UK adequacy regulations (including the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, for providers certified under it) or on the UK’s International Data Transfer Addendum to standard contractual clauses.

7. Your rights

You can ask us to give you a copy of your personal data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, or transfer it. Email info@foxstep.io. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

8. Children

Foxstep is a work tool and isn’t intended for children.

9. Changes

If we change this policy, we’ll update this page and the date at the top.

10. Contact

Email info@foxstep.io about this policy or your data. The controller is James Kerr, a sole trader trading as Foxstep, Flat D, 34 Westbourne Gardens, London W2 5PU, United Kingdom.