Plain about your privacy

Privacy Policy

Last updated: June 17, 2026

Whatsit helps you find a name you can’t quite reach, and call people just by describing them. This page explains, in plain language, what the app does with what you say and the people you save.

What stays on your phone

The people and places you add, the details you give them, and any photos you save are stored on your device. They are not uploaded to us or to anyone else.

• The people and places you save. Names, the details you add to help recall a name, phone numbers, and photos are kept on your device.
• Contacts you choose to bring in. When you import contacts, you pick which ones come in. Whatsit copies the name, phone number, and contact photo for those you select onto your device. Nothing is brought in without you, and we don’t read the rest of your address book.

Finding the right person to call happens on your phone — the matching that turns a description like “drives a yellow car” into the right person never leaves your device.

What you say to find a name

When you describe a name you’re reaching for — an actor, a movie, a show, a thing — that description is sent over a secure (HTTPS) connection to our service, which passes it to Anthropic — the company behind the Claude AI assistant — to work out the answer and send it back to you.

Your descriptions are not stored. We don’t keep them, and we don’t build a profile from them. Anthropic processes your description to generate the answer, under its own terms, and does not use it to train its AI models. We don’t use what you say for advertising, and we don’t sell it.

When the answer comes back with a photo or a trailer, only the resolved name (for example, “the platypus”) is used to look those up — from sources such as Wikimedia Commons and YouTube — not your original description.

Voice and speech

If you use your voice, Whatsit asks permission to use the microphone, then turns your speech into text using Apple’s built-in speech recognition. Depending on your device and language, Apple may process some of that audio on its own servers. That step is handled by Apple under Apple’s Privacy Policy. You can use Whatsit by typing instead if you prefer.

Calls

When you place a call, Whatsit hands it to your iPhone’s own Phone or FaceTime app — the same way tapping a number in Contacts would. Whatsit doesn’t make, route, record, or listen to your calls, and your carrier handles them as usual.

What Whatsit doesn’t do

• No account or sign-up is required to use the app.
• No advertising, and no selling or sharing of your information for marketing.
• We don’t use what you save or say to train our own systems.

Permissions you’re in charge of

Whatsit only asks for what a feature needs, when you use it:

• Microphone — so you can speak instead of type.
• Contacts — only if you choose to bring contacts in, and only the ones you select.

You can change your mind at any time in Settings › Whatsit on your iPhone.

Removing your information

You can delete any person, place, or photo inside the app whenever you like. Because your saved information lives on your device, deleting Whatsit from your iPhone removes that information along with it.

Children

Whatsit is meant for a general audience and isn’t directed at children under 13. We don’t knowingly collect information from children.

Changes to this policy

If we change how Whatsit handles your information, we’ll update this page and change the date at the top. Meaningful changes will be reflected here before they take effect.

Contact

Questions about your privacy, or anything else? We’d like to hear from you.