Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about Previously, pricing, and privacy
Previously captures screenshots of your screen at regular intervals and uses advanced OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to extract text. This makes everything you see searchable. The app runs quietly in the background and only activates when you need to search.
Yes. All your screen history is stored locally on your Mac. I can’t see it and it never touches my servers. If you use the optional AI summaries, that text goes directly to Fireworks using your own API key—still not through me.
Previously uses intelligent compression to minimize storage usage. On average, expect about 1-2 GB per month of active use. You can also set retention limits to automatically delete older history.
Previously automatically excludes a built-in list of sensitive apps like password managers, and makes a best-effort attempt to detect and blur sensitive content such as card numbers before anything is saved. Automated detection can miss things, so treat it as a strong safeguard, not a guarantee.
Previously requires macOS 14.4 or later and Apple Silicon.
Press the global keyboard shortcut (customizable, default is ⌘⇧Space) to open the search interface. Type what you remember - it can be text you saw, the name of an app, or a description of what you were looking at.
Previously automatically excludes a built-in list of sensitive apps, like password managers, so their content is never captured. Choosing your own apps to exclude isn’t available yet.
No. Previously is designed to be lightweight and efficient. It uses minimal CPU and memory, and you won’t notice any performance impact during normal use.
Previously is free. The entire memory engine—capture, transcription, who-said-what, keyword and semantic search—runs on your Mac at no charge. The only thing that costs anything is the optional AI summaries, and that’s your own Fireworks key billed directly by Fireworks, never through me.
The optional AI layer—answering questions about your history (Ask), and writing meeting, daily, and weekly summaries—uses your own Fireworks API key. You add your key in settings, and Previously makes the API calls directly. I never see your key or your data, and you pay Fireworks directly at their standard rates, not through me.
No. Everything that captures, stores, transcribes, and searches your past works without any key—including semantic (meaning-based) search, which runs on-device. A Fireworks key only unlocks the generated summaries and answers. Skip it and the recall still works; you just lose the written summaries.
Your data never touches my servers—only redaction-checked text goes to Fireworks, and only with your key. You get full transparency on AI costs and pay Fireworks directly. And honestly, it’s simpler for me as a solo developer—I don’t want to sit in the middle of your AI billing or your data.