Private by architecture

There is no account to breach, because there is no server.

ShabuBox isn’t just "privacy-friendly", it is fully private. The AI that reads and understands your paperwork lives on your Mac. Your documents never leave it. Here’s exactly how that works.

The claim

Genuinely private

Not a policy choice you have to trust — a design where your documents can’t leave, because nothing is built to send them.

The mechanism

On-device models

OCR, document understanding, entity extraction, and chat all run locally, inside Apple’s App Sandbox.

The verification

"Data Not Collected"

The App Store nutrition label reflects it, and there’s no account or server anywhere to hold your data.

The stack

Every model runs on your Mac.

Apple Foundation Models

Apple Intelligence powers the first tier of on-device chat generation.

Apple Vision OCR

The same framework as Live Text reads every page — no cloud OCR.

MLX local models

Open models run via MLX, 4-bit quantized, gated to what your Mac’s RAM can handle.

GLiNER2 NER

Entity extraction — people, organizations, places, addresses — runs entirely on-device.

What crosses the network

Two things go over the network. Neither is your data.

One-time model download

If you opt into a richer local chat model, it downloads once from the HuggingFace CDN. No document data is ever transmitted.

Local scanner discovery

To find AirScan scanners, ShabuBox looks on your local network. That traffic never leaves your home or office.

Everything else

No analytics. No crash-reporting SDKs. No account sync. No telemetry of any kind.

How to verify it yourself

Turn off Wi-Fi and Ethernet — import, OCR, understand, file, and search still work.

Check the App Store privacy label: "Data Not Collected."

There is no sign-up screen and no account settings, because there is no account.

Your files stay as ordinary files in ordinary folders you can inspect in Finder.

App Store privacy label

"Data Not Collected"

The strongest label Apple offers. It’s not a promise you have to take on faith — it’s enforced by the sandbox and reviewed by Apple.

Looking for the formal document? Read the Privacy Policy.