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Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 5, 2026

Magnetism Studios (“we,” “our,” or “us”) built Overlap, an app for Mac and iPhone that analyzes your iMessage and WhatsApp history. Overlap processes your messages in two places: on your own device, and on our cloud infrastructure. The key protection is that your messages are anonymized on your device before anything is uploaded, and your raw chats are never stored on our servers. This policy explains what we do — and don’t — collect.

The short version:

· Overlap processes your messages both on your device and in the cloud.

· Anything sent to the cloud is anonymized on your device first — names replaced, identifying details stripped.

· Your raw chats, message database, and contact list are never uploaded and never stored on our servers.

· If you use Overlap on both Mac and iPhone, your data syncs between them through your own iCloud account — not through us.

· We never sell your data or use it for advertising.

· Payment is handled by Paddle; we store only your email and license key to run your license.

1. How your messages are processed

To do its job, Overlap reads your iMessage and WhatsApp history and your Contacts (to label conversations with names). Processing happens in two stages:

Apple restricts direct access to the iMessage database to the Mac — it isn’t accessible to apps on iOS. Because of that, importing iMessage history requires the Mac app (which reads it locally, with your permission, via macOS Full Disk Access); WhatsApp history can be imported on either Mac or iPhone via WhatsApp’s own chat export. See our Help page for the step-by-step walkthrough.

2. What “anonymized” means here

Whenever message data leaves your device — whether for the cloud portion of the analysis or for an optional AI insight — it is sanitized on your device first. Before anything is sent:

What we receive is therefore a stripped-down excerpt that is not tied to your identity or to the identities of the people you talk to. We do not store these excerpts once the result they were sent for has been returned to you.

3. Syncing between your Mac and iPhone

If you use Overlap on more than one device, your imported chat data and analysis are kept in sync using your own iCloud account, tied to your Apple ID. We do not have access to this data, and it is never stored on Overlap’s or Magnetism Studios’ servers — it stays in your personal iCloud storage, under Apple’s account security and encryption, the same as your Photos or Notes.

4. Optional AI insights

Some features (for example, personality readings and relationship insights) are generated with the help of a third-party AI model. These features are optional and run only when you choose to trigger them. When you do, Overlap sends an anonymized sample of messages to our processing proxy, which forwards it to an AI provider.

These excerpts are used only to generate the insight you asked for. Our proxy is operated on Cloudflare; the AI provider is OpenRouter, which routes the request to a model provider such as Anthropic. We do not store the message excerpts after the insight is returned.

5. Anonymous usage analytics

We use TelemetryDeck, a privacy-focused analytics service, to understand which features are used and to improve the app. These events contain no message content and no personal identifiers, and are not used to track you across other apps or websites.

6. Purchase & license information

When you buy a license, our payment provider Paddle acts as the “Merchant of Record” and collects your email and payment details to process the sale, under Paddle’s privacy policy. We receive your email address and an associated license key, which we store on our infrastructure (Cloudflare) to issue and verify your license. When you activate Overlap, the app contacts our license server to validate your key. No message content is involved in licensing.

7. Third-party services

8. Data retention

We retain your email and license key for as long as your license is active, and as needed for tax and accounting records (handled by Paddle). Usage analytics are aggregated and anonymized. We do not retain the anonymized message excerpts sent for cloud processing or AI insights once the result has been returned to you.

9. Security

All network communication uses encryption in transit (HTTPS/TLS), including the anonymized excerpts sent for cloud processing. Your license is stored in your device’s Keychain. Data synced between your own devices via iCloud is protected by your Apple ID and Apple’s end-to-end encryption, outside of our reach. We limit access to the minimal data we hold. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, but we take commercially reasonable steps to protect your information.

10. Your rights

You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of the email and license data we hold about you by emailing support@overlapchats.com. If you are in the European Economic Area, Magnetism Studios is the data controller; we process your data to perform our contract with you (licensing and delivering the analysis you asked for, including its cloud-processed portion), for our legitimate interests (security and product improvement), and with your consent (optional AI features and analytics). You may also lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. If you are a California resident, we do not sell your personal information, and you have the right to know, delete, and not be discriminated against for exercising these rights.

11. Children

Overlap is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.

12. Changes & contact

We may update this policy from time to time and will revise the date above when we do. Questions? Email support@overlapchats.com.