What stays on your PC

The short version

Your recordings, manuals, PDFs and records never leave your computer. They are ordinary files in your library folder. Every manual is written on your PC, with no AI. Sopycat goes online only for the few things listed under Other times Sopycat uses the internet.

Usage counts stay here too

Settings › Usage Stats shows how much this computer has used Sopycat: times opened, tasks recorded, documents added, edited, converted and saved, Follow along completions and read receipts, for the last 30 days and all time. The counts live in a small file next to the settings on this computer. They are never sent anywhere, and Clear the counts starts them again.

What always happens on your PC

Recording the screen, and your voice if you turn it on.
Finding the steps and naming what you clicked. Sopycat gets the names from Windows, or reads the words on the screen itself.
Writing the title and instruction for each step. See How the words get written.
Drawing the pictures, with the highlight box, the step number and any blurring.
Turning your voice into words, once you have downloaded speech to text.
Search, the PDF editor, redaction, signatures and making scans searchable (OCR).
Follow along, the records of who read or completed a manual, the audit log and backups.

Your library is a folder of ordinary files on your PC. If you put that folder in OneDrive, Dropbox or a shared drive, those services copy it the way they copy any other folder. Sopycat itself sends none of your work anywhere. See Where your files live and Share a library with your office.

Private details in your manuals

Some typing is never written down. Passwords, card, social-security and phone numbers, email addresses and long account numbers are left out automatically. So is anything typed into a box named for private details, such as Date of birth or Member ID. The step names the box instead, for example "Enter the Card number". The pictures from that recording are then checked and the private details blurred, the box included. See Private typing.

Other typing, such as a name or an amount, is written into the manual. To leave out everything you type, turn off Write down what I type.

Settings › Screen Recording › Write down what I type

Blurring personal details in every picture

Turn on Blur personal details in the pictures automatically. Sopycat then reads each picture on your PC for email addresses, phone numbers, card numbers and social-security numbers, and pixelates them. It adds a few seconds per step. It is off unless you turn it on.

Settings › Screen Recording › Blur personal details in the pictures automatically

The automatic blur finds those four kinds of details only. Names, addresses, balances and anything else on the screen are not found. Look through the pictures before you share a manual, and blur anything else by hand with Blur something.

The unblurred originals stay in the manual's folder

Sopycat keeps the untouched frames from the recording in each manual's folder on your PC. That is how you can change or take away a blur later. It also means anyone who can open your library folder can see what was on screen before blurring, and a backup or a shared library folder includes those frames too. Keep the library folder somewhere only the right people can reach. See Fix the pictures.

Regulated-office mode

For offices with strict rules, this setting turns a few things off and records more. It needs an Office key.

Settings › Regulated Office Mode › Regulated-office mode

When it is on:

Saving a manual as a web page is turned off.
Automatic update checks are turned off. You check for updates by hand.
Every view, edit, export, backup, redaction, signature and record is written to the audit log in the library folder.

With it off, the audit log still records redactions, signatures, publishing, reading confirmations, Follow along runs, deleting and restoring, and restoring a backup.

The mode is a setting on each PC, so switch it on for every PC in the office. Sopycat helps you keep data on your PC. It does not make your office compliant with any rule on its own, so check with whoever sets your office's rules. See Set up Sopycat for an office.

Other times Sopycat uses the internet

Your Sopycat key. When you enter a key, and every 3 days after, Sopycat checks it with Lemon Squeezy, the store that sells Sopycat. It sends the key and an anonymous ID for this computer, such as "Sopycat PC 7F3A21". The ID is made from the Windows installation, never from the computer's name or your Windows user name. Lemon Squeezy also sees your IP address. Nothing about your documents is sent. During the trial nothing about you is sent. See Buying and your key.
Update checks. Sopycat checks the Sopycat release page on GitHub at start-up and every few hours, and downloads new versions quietly. GitHub hosts the downloads, so it sees your IP address. Along with the key check, this is all Sopycat does online on its own. To stop it, untick Check for updates automatically and press Check now when you want to. Regulated-office mode turns it off.
Downloads you start. Speech to text is the whisper.cpp program from GitHub and a speech model from Hugging Face. The Office pack (LibreOffice) comes from The Document Foundation. Each of them sees your IP address. Each is downloaded once and then runs on your PC.
Problem reports. Nothing is sent automatically when something goes wrong. Save and email and Save a report… save a file with the Sopycat and Windows versions, your settings with keys hidden, and the last lines of the log. It goes nowhere unless you email it to us yourself. See Getting help.
Links in a manual. Clicking a link opens that web page, inside Sopycat or in your usual browser.

Settings › App Updates, and Settings › Plan & License

That is the whole list. The app has no account, no analytics and no telemetry. Sopycat keeps no copy of your documents anywhere but your PC, or the shared folder your office picks.

Your key

Your Sopycat key is kept in Sopycat's settings on this computer, not in the library folder, so it is not shared with your team or put in backups. It is stored encrypted with Windows' own data protection. The name and email address it was bought with are kept beside it, but they are not encrypted. Sopycat shows only the last characters of the key, and reports hide it.

Earlier versions could also keep a key for an online writing service. Version 3.0 deletes that key from your PC the first time it starts.