Shotloop privacy
What Shotloop keeps on your Mac, what it sends over the network and when, the anonymous usage counts and how to turn them off.
- Updated
In short: Shotloop has no account, no ads, no crash reporting and no analytics SDK. Your projects stay on your Mac. It goes online to check for updates, to talk to the AI you chose, to fetch voice models and library assets when you need them, and, unless you turn it off, to send anonymous usage counts about once a day: never your projects, their names or text, your files or your keys.
What stays on your Mac
- Your projects, in the folder you pick (
~/Documents/Shotloopunless you choose another), each with a.shotloopfolder inside. - Settings, in
~/Library/Application Support/dev.oliverz.shotloop/settings.json, including any API keys you add. The file is readable by your macOS user only; the keys are not in the Keychain. - The usage counts not yet sent and a random install ID, in
telemetry.jsonin the same folder. - Downloaded voice models and library assets (
voices/,library/), cover images, the bundled examples, and your Claude Code usage limits (usage.json), in the same folder.
None of it is uploaded. To remove everything Shotloop has stored apart from your projects, delete ~/Library/Application Support/dev.oliverz.shotloop.
What leaves your Mac, and when
| What is sent | Sent to | When |
|---|---|---|
| A request for the latest version | GitHub (this project's releases) | At launch, every 6 hours, and when you check for updates; an update downloads only when you install it |
| Your brief, the project files the AI reads, the scene code it writes, and still frames of your shots | The AI you chose | When you plan, build or fix a film or design a cover, and when you test the connection in Settings |
| Anonymous usage counts (below) | oliverz.dev, Shotloop's site | About once a day, unless you turn it off |
| A voice model download, nothing about you | GitHub and Hugging Face; for Chinese, also ModelScope and the Python package index | The first voice-over in a language, or from Settings → Dependencies |
| Your search words | Poly Pizza (with your own key) or the Smithsonian's open-access API | When you search the asset library |
| Nothing about you or your projects | The site a link points to | When you click a link; it opens in your browser |
The AI step
Shotloop doesn't come with an AI. You connect one: a command-line agent you're signed in to (Claude Code, Codex or Gemini CLI; Claude Code is picked first when it's installed), an API key for a provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, DeepSeek and others, or an address you enter), or a model running on your Mac, in which case nothing leaves it.
The AI gets what a job needs: your brief, the files of the project it is working on, and still frames rendered from your shots so it can check its work. It can't run commands, go online or read anything outside the project folder. An API key is sent only to the provider it belongs to (or the address you entered). That provider's own privacy policy applies to what it receives.
Anonymous usage counts
On first launch Shotloop tells you it sends anonymous counts, and sends nothing until you've seen that notice. Then, at most once every 20 hours, it sends:
- a random install ID, made on your Mac, that identifies this install and not you
- the app version, the chip (Apple silicon or Intel) and the app's language
- how many films you planned, built, fixed and exported since the last report, and the visual style of the exported ones (news, map, 3D…)
It never sends your projects, their names or text, your files, your API keys or anything about your Mac beyond the chip. The site keeps one row per install and day with these counts and doesn't store IP addresses. The site is hosted on Cloudflare, which handles the request on its way. Development builds never send anything.
To turn it off: Settings → General → Anonymous usage, or Turn off on the first-launch notice. Counts not yet sent stay in telemetry.json until you delete it.
What Shotloop never does
- It never uploads your projects or files to its maker.
- It has no account, no crash reporting and no analytics beyond the counts above.
- It shows no ads and sells nothing.
Shotloop is open source (on GitHub, Apache 2.0), so all of the above can be checked against the code. Questions go to GitHub Issues.