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Mavio’s privacy mode processes everything on your device — recordings never leave your computer, and no data is sent to cloud servers. This guide walks you through enabling, configuring, and understanding privacy mode.

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When to use privacy mode

Privacy mode is designed for situations where data confidentiality is critical:
  • Legal conversations — attorney-client privileged discussions
  • Medical meetings — HIPAA-sensitive patient information
  • Board meetings — confidential financial or strategic discussions
  • HR matters — sensitive employee conversations
  • NDA-covered calls — meetings with strict non-disclosure requirements

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Prerequisites

  • Mavio desktop app installed (privacy mode requires local processing)
  • macOS 12+ or Windows 10+ with at least 8 GB of RAM
  • Approximately 2 GB of free disk space for the on-device AI models
Privacy mode is available on the desktop app only. The browser extension and mobile app require cloud processing and cannot operate in privacy mode.

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Enable privacy mode

1

Open the desktop app settings

Launch the Mavio desktop app and navigate to Settings > Privacy & Security > Privacy mode.
2

Download the on-device models

Click Enable privacy mode. Mavio will download the required AI models for on-device transcription and summarization. This is a one-time download of approximately 1.5 GB.The download includes:
  • Speech-to-text model for transcription
  • Speaker diarization model for identifying speakers
  • Summarization model for generating meeting notes
The initial download may take several minutes depending on your internet connection. After this, privacy mode works completely offline.
3

Choose your privacy mode behavior

Select how privacy mode activates:
  • Always on — all recordings are processed locally, no exceptions
  • Per-recording toggle — choose privacy mode each time you start a recording
  • Schedule-based — automatically enable privacy mode during specific calendar events (e.g., meetings tagged “confidential”)
4

Configure data retention

With privacy mode, you have full control over where data is stored:
  • Local storage location — choose the folder where recordings and transcripts are saved
  • Auto-delete after — automatically remove recordings after a set period (7, 30, 90 days, or never)
  • Encryption — enable AES-256 encryption for all locally stored files
5

Test privacy mode

Start a test recording with privacy mode enabled. You will see a green shield icon in the recording controls indicating on-device processing. After stopping, verify:
  • The transcript appears in Mavio without any network requests
  • The recording file exists in your chosen local directory
  • No data appears in the cloud dashboard (unless you explicitly sync it later)

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What works differently in privacy mode

For the best on-device transcription quality, use a Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or later) or a Windows machine with a dedicated GPU. These hardware configurations significantly speed up local processing.

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Syncing privacy mode recordings to the cloud

If you decide a privately recorded meeting is safe to share, you can manually push it to the cloud:
  1. Open the meeting in the Mavio desktop app
  2. Click Sync to cloud in the top-right corner
  3. Confirm that you want to upload the recording and transcript
  4. The meeting will then appear in the web dashboard and be available for team sharing
This is a one-way, explicit action. Mavio never syncs privacy mode recordings automatically.