emsai

License and privacy

Try Emsai, buy and activate a license, move it to another Mac, and know what stays on your Mac.

Emsai is a one-time purchase: no subscription, no account. Everything about your license is in Settings › License.

The 7-day trial

The trial starts the first time you open Emsai: every feature, for 7 days, without a card or an account. Settings › License shows how many days are left (Trial: 5 days left, then Trial: last day).

The trial is kept by Emsai’s license service, not by your Mac alone, so reinstalling Emsai or deleting its settings doesn’t start a new one. That’s also why the first launch needs an internet connection. If the Mac is offline then, Settings › License shows Trial waiting for the internet: connect, and Emsai checks again every 5 minutes (or click Check Again). It opens again by itself once the trial is confirmed.

When the trial ends

If the trial ends while Emsai runs, a notification tells you, then Emsai quits. From then on, nothing runs without a license: no shortcuts, panels, island, menu bar items or Spotlight actions, and Emsai Agents and Emsai Chat close too. Settings shows only the License page, so you can buy or activate a key. Links still open in your browser if Emsai is your default browser.

Your data stays on your Mac: your clipboard history, notes, past calls and settings are all there when you activate a license.

Buy a license

Click Buy Emsai in Settings › License, or buy from the purchase page. You pay once and the license is yours:

  • the base license covers two Macs, your desktop and your laptop; a five-Mac license exists for a small team;
  • every feature, every agent, each with its switch;
  • every 0.x and 1.x update included: bought during the beta, the license carries on through 1.0.

Your license key arrives by email right after the purchase.

Activate your key

  1. Open Settings › License.
  2. Paste the key from the email in License key (it looks like EMSAI-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX).
  3. Click Activate.

The page then says Licensed to your email, on this Mac. If the trial was already over, quit Emsai and open it again so that everything starts.

Activating needs the internet. For the first 30 days after your purchase (the 14-day refund window, and the time a late request takes), Emsai checks the license online in the background, and it keeps working up to 7 days offline (two days before, it reminds you to connect). After those 30 days, the license is yours for good: Emsai works offline indefinitely. There’s nothing to renew yourself.

Do the same on your second Mac with the same key.

Move your license to another Mac

  1. On the Mac you’re leaving, open Settings › License and click Deactivate This Mac.
  2. On the new Mac, activate your key as above.

You can deactivate a Mac three times a year. Need more, or lost the old Mac and can’t deactivate it? Write to hello@emsai.app and we’ll free it.

Privacy, in plain words

Emsai works on your Mac first. It has no analytics and no account, and we receive none of what you do in it.

What stays on your Mac

  • Live captions, voices, language detection and translation: done on the Mac, by Apple’s models and Emsai’s own. Your voice print never leaves it.
  • Clipboard history and scratchpad notes: kept on the Mac, encrypted.
  • Sessions found and agents’ usage: read from what the agents leave on your Mac.
  • Auto’s choice of agent: made on the Mac, by Apple’s model.

What goes to the providers you pick

Data leaves the Mac only for what you ask for, and only to the provider you chose:

  • Coding agents: a session in Emsai Agents runs the agent’s own tool on your Mac, signed in as you signed it in. It sends its provider what it would send from your terminal, under that provider’s terms.
  • AI features (chat, meeting notes, briefs, cross-review through an API): what you send goes to the provider you set in Settings › AI Models. A call’s transcript leaves the Mac only if you ask for the notes. Secrets are removed from code sent for a review.
  • Agents’ usage: reading another app’s sign-in to show its usage is off until you turn it on, and it’s only sent to that provider.

What goes to us

Only what the license needs. To start the trial, Emsai sends an anonymous identifier of the Mac (a hash of its hardware identifier, never the identifier itself). When you activate, the license service keeps your key, that anonymous identifier, the Mac’s name, and the activation and renewal dates. To know how many people run Emsai, each download and each Mac’s daily update check are counted, with no address and a different anonymous identifier. Payment goes through Paddle, our reseller.

The full details are in the privacy policy.