Privacy
How the Base phone app keeps your chats on your phone
What the Base app privacy policy and iPhone support page say about where your prompts, voice, photos and files go, plus the one Web Search exception.
Base, our chat app for phones, writes its answers on the phone and handles your prompts, voice, photos and files there. As of October 2026, its privacy policy (opens in a new tab) (last updated September 16, 2026, and covering Base for iPhone and Android) names one exception: Web Search, which you turn on one message at a time. The support page (opens in a new tab) covers requirements and limits for the iPhone version.
The policy opens with this:
Offline Base LLC does not collect your prompts, responses, chat history, speech audio, photos, or selected file contents. The only time Base sends something to us is when you turn on Web Search for a message.
What stays on the phone
Base processes your prompts and writes its answers on the phone, and it keeps your chat history in its private app storage until you delete the chat or the app.
Here is where Base handles each feature:
Feature | Where it is handled |
|---|---|
Voice input | On-device recognition: Apple's Speech framework on iPhone, Android's on-device recognizer on Android. Base keeps no microphone recording. |
Read aloud | The phone's built-in text-to-speech |
Photos | Only the ones you take or pick. Resized and analyzed on the phone, then saved with the local chat. |
Text and PDF files | Only files you select. Base extracts the text on the phone, and the file and its contents stay there. |
Diagnostics | Base calculates model, device, storage and performance details on the phone and keeps them there. |
Base asks for camera, photo, microphone and speech permissions only when you use the feature that needs them.
Android has one more piece: a "Report this response" button. Base saves the report on the phone next to the answer it refers to, and it reaches us only if you choose to share it.
Accounts, ads and tracking
In the policy's words, Base has "no account system, advertising SDK, or analytics SDK." It does not track you across apps or websites. We do not sell your data or share it for advertising.
The policy also says Base "is intended for adults and is not directed to children under 13."
One download at setup, then offline
During first setup, Base connects to Hugging Face to download the verified Liquid LFM2.5 model files. Liquid AI (opens in a new tab) publishes its models there. Hugging Face may see the ordinary information any download involves, such as your IP address and request metadata. The download is between your phone and Hugging Face.
Once the model is installed, generating responses needs no internet. On iPhone, the Diagnostics screen shows "Ready offline" when the local model is available. If you have Base installed, you can check this yourself: once Diagnostics says Ready offline, turn on airplane mode and send a message.
The model is compact so it can run on a phone. For how model size and memory relate, see How much memory a local AI model needs.
The support page also says: "Base uses a compact local model. Responses can be inaccurate." It asks you to check important medical, legal, financial or safety information independently. For a sense of what a small model handles well, read What a million real questions say about small local models.
The one exception: Web Search
Web Search is off unless you turn it on for a message.
When you turn on Web Search for a message, that message's search query goes to our Web Search service, which passes it to our search provider (currently Exa) to find sources. The rest of your chat stays on the phone, and the answer is still written on the phone.
Web Search also involves a credential, a device check and service logs:
- A device credential. The first time you use Web Search, Base creates a random credential on the phone and registers it with our service. We store a one-way hash of it, an anonymous installation ID and a count of searches, which we use for fair-use limits and top-up codes.
- An app and device check. Registration uses Apple App Attest on iPhone and Google Play Integrity on Android to confirm the request comes from a genuine copy of Base. We store the result Apple or Google return, such as whether the app and device passed and the app version. That result is all we get. Your Apple Account and Google Account stay with Apple and Google.
- Service logs. The service runs on Google Cloud. Its request logs record the time, status code, result count, installation ID, IP address and your device's user agent, and leave out your query text. We keep them for 30 days. Rate-limit records keep only a keyed hash of your IP address.
We share your query with the search provider only to get results. If you want the Web Search registration for your installation deleted, the privacy policy lists a support address to write to.
A search query can carry private details by itself, so check the words before you turn on Web Search.
iPhone requirements and limits
The support page lists the basics for Base on iPhone:
- It requires iOS 17 or later. The current model has been confirmed on an iPhone 12 Pro Max.
- It downloads about 664 MB once during setup.
- You can attach up to three files per message, each under 15 MB.
- Base has no OCR, so scanned and image-only PDFs are unsupported. Password-protected PDFs are unsupported too.
- Voice input needs an on-device speech recognizer for your chosen language. If your language has none, type instead.
- Speed depends on the iPhone and the prompt length. Keep Base in the foreground while it answers.
Where the protection ends
Deleting a chat removes its local record. Deleting Base removes its app data, including chats, photos, extracted text, reports and model files, from the phone.
Keeping data on the phone makes the phone the thing to protect. Our terms (opens in a new tab) state the general limit: we "cannot protect data on a machine that is already compromised, shared, unencrypted, or physically accessible to someone else." That applies to a phone as much as a laptop, so the passcode on your phone also guards your chat history.
We explain the wider reasoning behind this design in Why we make local the default for private AI. For how a sibling product handles the same questions on a laptop, see How Base Drive earns the trust a USB drive needs.