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Dolly Privacy Policy

Effective September 22, 2026

Summary

Dolly is a native macOS screen recorder distributed on the Mac App Store, and it runs sandboxed under Apple's App Sandbox. Dolly does not require an account, run analytics or send your recordings anywhere. Your recordings, projects, interaction events, keystrokes and transcripts stay on your Mac. The only network connection Dolly itself makes is an optional, user-initiated download of a Whisper speech model.

Data Dolly handles locally

When you record, Dolly creates a project on your Mac that can include:

  • Video of the window or display you selected.
  • System audio and microphone audio, on separate tracks, when those options are enabled.
  • Cursor positions and clicks, used to build automatic zooms.
  • Keystrokes and modifier state, used to time zooms around typing. You can turn off keystroke capture entirely in Settings, and Dolly stops observing those events.
  • Project files, preview frames, exports and, if you run captioning, a local transcript.

All of this stays in your Dolly project or the app's sandboxed container. Dolly does not upload any of it to a server.

App sandbox and permissions

Dolly runs inside Apple's App Sandbox, as required for every Mac App Store app. It asks macOS for the following permissions, each grantable or revocable in System Settings → Privacy & Security:

  • Screen Recording: required to capture the window or display you choose.
  • Input Monitoring: used to time zooms to clicks and, if enabled, keystrokes.
  • Microphone (optional): only if you record with a microphone track enabled.

Network connections

Dolly is a local app with no Dolly cloud service. It makes a network connection only when you take one of these actions:

  • Downloading a Whisper model: local captioning needs a speech model on disk. Downloading one, the first time you use it, contacts the model host. Once downloaded, captioning and pause-cut suggestions run entirely on your Mac.
  • MCP editing (command-line tool): the separate dolly command-line tool, which is not part of the Mac App Store app, can run dolly mcp. That lets an agent client you configure, such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code or a local model, drive Dolly's document model over a local connection. Dolly does not choose or run that client, and does not send your footage anywhere on its own. If the agent client you connect is itself cloud-based, whatever it requests (frames, transcript or project details) is governed by that client's own privacy policy, not Dolly's. A local model client keeps the loop on your Mac.

Dolly has no Sparkle updater or other self-update mechanism in this build. Updates come through the Mac App Store, governed by Apple's own update process.

What Apple sees

As a Mac App Store app, Dolly's distribution, purchase, update delivery and any crash reports go through Apple's App Store infrastructure. That data is governed by Apple's privacy policy, not this one. Dolly does not add its own analytics or crash reporting on top of Apple's.

Sale and sharing

The developer does not sell personal information. Dolly has no advertising network and does not share local project data for advertising or profiling.

Your control

You choose what Dolly records and where projects are saved. You can delete projects, exports, transcripts and downloaded models through Finder at any time. You can turn off keystroke capture in Settings, and you can revoke Screen Recording, Input Monitoring or Microphone access in System Settings, which stops Dolly from using them.

Children

Dolly is a professional screen-recording tool and is not directed to children under 13. The developer does not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Changes and contact

If Dolly's data practices change, this page and its effective date will change before the new practice ships. For privacy questions, contact ai@duncansmith.tech.