Your Writing History Is an Encrypted File. The Key Is in Your Keychain.
Let me show you exactly where your writing history lives when you use WriteAmp, because "your data is encrypted" is a sentence that does a lot of work, and I'd rather you see the mechanism than trust the slogan.
It's one file. It has a name, a location, and a key, and if you understand those three things, you understand the entire privacy story of how WriteAmp learns from you.
The file
The file is called history.sqlcipher, and it lives inside WriteAmp's folder in your Mac's Application Support directory. That file is a database, and inside it are the writing samples the app has collected: the phrases you've typed in apps you haven't excluded, the counts, the timestamps.
The important word in the filename is sqlcipher. It means the database is encrypted. Not obfuscated, not hidden. Encrypted, which is a specific technical promise. The contents of that file are scrambled into ciphertext, and the only way to turn them back into your sentences is with the key.
The key
The key that unlocks that file is a long random passphrase, and it doesn't live next to the file. It lives in your Mac's Keychain, the same protected store that holds your Wi-Fi passwords and saved logins. The Keychain is itself encrypted and unlocked by your Mac's own security, which means the key to your writing history is protected by the same machinery that protects your credentials.
Why does that matter? Because an encrypted file whose key sits in a text file next to it isn't really encrypted. It's just inconvenient. The whole point of putting the key in the Keychain is that the two halves of the secret are stored separately and protected differently. Someone who steals the file can't read it, because they don't have the key. Someone who gets the key can't find the file, because they don't know where to look. And the app, when it needs to read or write your history, asks the Keychain for the key in the moment, uses it, and doesn't leave it lying around.
This also means other apps on your Mac can't read your history. The file is encrypted, and your Keychain doesn't hand out its contents to just anyone. Another user account on the same Mac can't read it either, for the same reason. Your writing history is readable by exactly one thing: the WriteAmp app running as you, on your Mac, with your Keychain unlocked.
The honest limits
I want to be precise about what this does and doesn't mean, because encryption isn't magic, and overselling it would be the same mistake as faking a feature.
That last line is the one I refuse to blur. I've seen apps describe local encryption in terms that make it sound like you're invincible. You're not. What it does is protect your history from everything short of your own Mac being compromised, which is the honest and still-valuable promise. I'm not going to use words like "military-grade" or "unbreakable," because those words are for marketing, and this is the part where I give you the mechanism instead.
The wipe
Here's the part that completes the story. Because your history is one file with one key, erasing it isn't a chore. When you hit wipe in Settings, the app deletes the file and tells the Keychain to forget the passphrase. Both halves gone. There's no archive, no trash, no copy the app kept "just in case." A fresh launch starts with a new file and a new key, and the old history isn't recoverable by anyone, including me.
A tool that learns from you can be judged by how it handles the moment you say stop. Because WriteAmp stores one encrypted file with one Keychain key, stopping is complete. Not "we will delete it within 30 days." Deleted. That's the difference between borrowing your data and owning it.
What it means for you
You don't need to do anything with any of this. The encryption is on by default, the key is managed by your Mac, and the file is invisible unless you go looking for it. But now you know it's there, and you know what it is, and you know what it would take to read it.
If you want to see it with your own eyes, the Apps and Personalization screen shows you exactly what the file contains, and the network ledger shows the only times WriteAmp ever talks to the internet, none of which involve this file leaving your Mac. The privacy page has the full written policy.
Your writing history is the most personal thing a computer can hold. It deserves a file that's locked, a key that's protected, and a delete button that actually deletes. That's what WriteAmp does, and now you know how.
Sources
- WriteAmp privacy page: how writing history is stored encrypted on your Mac
On macOS 26+ Macs, Apple Intelligence mode stays free even after the trial ends — you always keep a working path to suggestions.
Written by Amit Ashwini, who builds WriteAmp and runs its marketing. More: why the Tab key beats the chat box · mini, midi, and max compared · benchmark methodology.