Basic
Free
forever
Private everyday help, entirely on your Mac.
- Local chat, documents, pictures, dictation, and read-aloud
- No account, ads, or answering traffic
- App updates included
Out now for Mac
Private help that stays
on your Mac.
Locke is a helper for questions, paperwork, and writing. It does its everyday thinking on your Mac itself, not on a company's servers. Basic is free, needs no account, and works with the Wi‑Fi off.
Download Locke Free · Apple Silicon · macOS 14 or newer
The airplane test
Turn off Wi‑Fi. Locke keeps answering.
Cloud chatbots go quiet the moment the internet does — your questions were never being answered on your computer in the first place. Locke's whole brain lives on your Mac, so a dead spot changes nothing.
It's the first thing to try after installing: flip Wi‑Fi off, ask something, and watch the answer arrive anyway.
Simulated conversation — the real one runs on your Mac.
This lease says it “auto‑renews.” What does that mean for me?
It means the lease starts over by itself when the term ends — usually for another year — unless you give written notice first. Look for a “notice period”: 30 or 60 days is common. If you drop the lease in here, I'll find the exact clause.
Answered with the Wi‑Fi off
Private by physics, not by promise.
Cloud chatbots keep your conversations on someone else's computers, protected by policies that can change. Locke is built so the private part never happens anywhere else. Three things follow from that:
Basic has nowhere to send it.
Basic and Plus answers happen on your Mac, with no answering network path at all. Watch Activity Monitor if you like; the network stays boring. No server means no server logs: nothing to breach, subpoena, or train on.
Basic can't bill you.
There's no Basic account to create, no card on file, and no trial timer. Paid data, cloud, and web features are optional additions. The private local app remains free.
Local words can't be used against you.
In 2025, a court ordered one AI company to keep even the chats people had deleted, and thousands of private conversations turned up in search results. None of that can happen to words that never left the house.
Optional and additive
Local stays free. More is clearly priced.
Plus adds a maintained offline encyclopedia for a one-time price. Max adds cloud answers and web search that you switch on yourself. Neither changes what Basic does for free: no meter, no trial, nothing that quietly expires.
Plus
$9.99
one time
An offline encyclopedia, maintained for you.
- Everything in Basic
- Wikipedia, prepared for offline search
- Library updates and future releases
Max
$4.99
per month · $49.99/year
Cloud answers and web search, when you say so.
- Everything in Basic
- Faster cloud answers and cited web search
- Offline library access while subscribed
The things people actually ask it.
Real jobs from real kitchen tables, the kind you'd rather not type into a website.
- “Read this letter from Medicare and tell me what it actually says.” a PDF, dropped in
- “Is this email from “PG&E” real, or a scam?” a screenshot, checked on the spot
- “Help me write something for Carol's funeral. Warmer. Shorter.” no one else sees the drafts
- “What's the word for when a contract renews by itself?” 11:40 pm
- “Read this contract. What should I push back on before I sign?” a PDF, with any reading limits shown
- “Make this recipe work for twelve people instead of four.” Sunday, 4 pm
- “Summarize this intake form and flag what I should ask about.” a therapist's laptop, nothing left it
- “What does atrial fibrillation actually feel like?” 3 am, door closed
What it does. And what it never does.
It does
- Explains and answers in plain language
- Reads PDFs, Word files, spreadsheets, and notes you drop in
- Reads pictures: a photo of a form, a screenshot of a suspicious email
- Helps you write, and rewrites until it sounds like you
- Takes dictation, transcribed on your Mac, so your voice isn't sent anywhere either
- Starts ready to chat: no setup choices or extra model download
It never does
- Basic never asks for an account, an email address, or a card
- Basic answering never sends your prompts, files, pictures, or history anywhere
- Never changes or deletes your files; it only reads what you hand it
- Never hides a network disclosure behind a vague “smart” mode
- Never talks to you in computer terms
- Basic and Plus never need the internet to answer (storms, planes, and dead spots included)
Medicare-notice.pdf · 3 pages
Read this letter and tell me what it actually says.
Here's the short version: nothing is wrong, and you don't owe anything.
- It's the annual notice. Your Part D premium goes from $34.20 to $36.80 in January.
- Your coverage itself isn't changing.
- You only need to act if you'd rather switch plans — that window is October 15 to December 7.
Want me to go through it line by line?
Ask anything…
For the family installer
Setting this up for someone you love?
You're the family IT department, so you know the bar. Locke was designed for that hour at the kitchen table: install it, turn the text size up, and do the Wi‑Fi trick. Then leave without worrying, because Basic has no account or payment path and her local questions do not end up in someone's logs.
Your checklist, honestly answered: Basic answering can't leak through an answering service because there isn't one, and you're welcome to verify with Activity Monitor or Little Snitch. Basic can't charge her because it has no account or checkout. It can't touch her files: it reads what she hands it and changes nothing. And when something goes wrong, it says what happened in plain words, so she calls you less, not more.
“I set my mom up with an AI that can't leak, can't charge her, and works with the Wi‑Fi off.”
Straight answers.
Is it really free?
Yes. Locke Basic is free and ad-free: no account, no trial, and no local feature that quietly stops working. Plus is a one-time purchase that adds a maintained offline encyclopedia. Max is an optional cloud and web subscription. What's in Basic stays free.
Do I need an account?
Basic, never. Plus and Max sign in with an email code (no password to invent or forget), so a purchase can follow you to a new Mac. Checkout opens in your browser with a standard card processor; Locke never sees your card number. And your conversations stay on your Mac either way: an account holds what you bought, not what you said.
How is this different from ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a service: your words travel to company servers and live under a privacy policy that, as 2025 showed, can keep them even after you delete them. Locke is an app: it runs where Photos or Pages runs, and your conversations stay on your own disk. Cloud chatbots are still stronger on long, difficult problems; for reading letters, checking scams, and help with writing, Locke is plenty, and it's the one that works in a dead spot.
What does my Mac need?
Apple Silicon (an M1 from 2020 counts) and macOS 14 or newer. The same tested model is included for every supported Mac, so chat is ready when Locke opens.
Does it ever touch the internet at all?
Locke may check first-party endpoints for app and model updates or download optional on-device data you choose. Basic and Plus answering sends no conversation content. If you explicitly select Locke Cloud, the app shows what categories will leave; Web is a separate per-turn Max control. Optional anonymous usage counts are off by default and never include your words.
Where do my conversations live?
On your Mac, in your own user folder, and nowhere else. We don't have servers that see them, so there's nothing for us to lose, leak, or hand over.
Basic needs no account or cloud.
It's just Locke.
Apple Silicon · macOS 14+ · model included