How Kin works

Your Mac is your family’s server

Kin Server is an app that turns a Mac in your home into your family’s own private server. It holds everyone’s accounts, conversations, memories and photos, and it’s where Kin does all of its thinking.

The Kin app on each phone is a window into that Mac. It keeps a copy of what it has already shown you, so it stays quick even when your Mac is slow to answer. That copy is protected by your phone’s lock, and by Face ID if you turn it on in Kin.

Because everything lives on your Mac, your family can reach Kin only while it’s on and awake. That’s also when Kin does its overnight work. See Does my Mac need to stay on?

Kin thinks on your Mac

When you ask Kin something, the answer is worked out on your Mac. Kin’s models run on your Mac’s own chip. There’s no AI service in the cloud reading your questions or learning from them. When Kin needs to look something up, only the search goes out, as explained below.

Macs with Apple silicon share one pool of fast memory between the processor and the graphics, which is what lets a computer at home run a capable AI model. Kin picks the model that fits your Mac’s memory:

A Mac with more memory can run a bigger model, which gives more thoughtful answers. You can see and switch models on your Mac in Settings → Model.

Because it all happens at home, Kin keeps working over your Wi‑Fi even when your internet is down. See Does Kin work if my internet is down?

Kin remembers what matters

Kin remembers things like birthdays, allergies, plans and preferences, so nobody has to repeat themselves. Its memory is kept in three separate places:

These are separate files on your Mac, each locked with its own key, not one big database with a label on each entry. What you tell Kin one on one is saved only to your own memory. Things said in shared spaces, like family group chats and shared projects, can be saved to your family’s memory, which everyone in your family can see, kids included. A direct message between two people is remembered privately for each of them.

Overnight, on your Mac, Kin tidies up its memory. It keeps the facts that last, lets outdated ones go, and refreshes the short summaries it keeps in mind, a bit like how sleep helps us remember.

Who can see what at home

Your conversations, memories, messages and photos are encrypted on your Mac with keys made from your family’s passwords. We never see anyone’s password, so we can’t read any of it, and we can’t reset a password for you. Your recovery key can. See I forgot my password.

Others in your household can see your profile, including your personal instructions for Kin, and how much and when you use Kin, but not what you say.

One trade-off is on purpose. So nobody loses everything to a forgotten password, another adult in your household can reset yours, and your data comes back under the new password. That also means they could sign in as you. If it happens, you’re signed out everywhere and get a notification if you have them on, and for 7 days, signing in with your old password lets you stop the change. Stopping it can’t undo anything they already saw. If you’d rather nobody else could ever open your private data, turn off Allow reset by other adults in Lock & Security. Then only your password or recovery key can.

A few things aren’t encrypted, because Kin needs them before anyone signs in or to find memories quickly: your family’s names and profiles, the small photos on the sign-in screen, and the index Kin uses to find related memories. Turning on FileVault, which encrypts your Mac’s whole disk, protects those too. See How Kin keeps your family’s data safe.

At home and away

Your phone reaches your Mac in one of two ways, and Kin picks the right one on its own.

Rather not use the relay? On your Mac, turn off Settings → Privacy → Away-from-home access. Your phones then reach Kin only on your home Wi‑Fi. If you’re connected with other families, your Mac still sends them messages through the relay.

Connecting with other families

You can connect your family with another Kin family, to message each other and share group conversations. There’s no company database in the middle. Your Mac and theirs exchange messages through the same relay, sealed the same way, and each keeps its own copy of the conversations you share.

Each Mac proves who it is with a digital signature and only accepts messages from families it’s connected to, so messages can’t be faked or redirected. The relay can see that your two Macs are exchanging something, when, and how much, but never what.

When you connect, the other family sees your family’s name and photo, plus the names and photos of the people in your household who use Kin and whether each is an adult or a child, so they know who they can message. They see a conversation only if they’re part of it.

When Kin takes part in a conversation with another family, it doesn’t use your family’s memories. It works from that conversation and from what it has learned in conversations between your two families, which is kept apart from your family’s own memory.

Parents stay in charge. Only an admin can connect your family with another. A switch on each child’s profile decides whether they can be added to group conversations with families you aren’t connected to. You can disconnect from a family at any time from their page in Community.

When Kin uses the internet

Most of what Kin does never leaves your home. These are the times it reaches out, and why.

• Looking things up. When a question needs something current, like news or opening hours, Kin searches the web from your Mac and reads the results. The search engines see what was searched for, sometimes in your own words, coming from your home’s internet connection, with no name or account attached. For the weather, Kin asks a weather service about the place in question. We’re not part of any of it, and we never see what you searched for. Parents can turn web access off for a child or teen.
• Getting ready to search. When Kin starts, its web search can make a couple of routine setup requests to public reference services. They carry nothing from you.
• Link previews. When you open the Links tab in a conversation, your phone asks each linked website for its title and picture, the way a browser does.
• Notifications. If you turn on notifications on a phone, Kin seals each one on your Mac before it leaves. Our forwarding service, and then Apple, deliver it without being able to open it. They see which phone it’s for, when, and a short line your phone can show if it can’t open the notification.
• Updates. Every few minutes, Kin Server checks a public list of versions. It’s the same list for everyone and carries nothing about you, though, like any website, the server that hosts it sees the internet address the check comes from. Every update is signed by us and notarized by Apple, and Kin Server checks our signature before installing it, so it only accepts genuine updates.
• Your license. When you enter your license key, your Mac activates it with our licensing service. After that, Kin checks the license on your Mac without calling us. It only contacts the service again if you reinstall Kin or move it to a new Mac.
• Kin’s models. Kin downloads its models when you set it up, when you choose another one, or if it starts and finds one missing. It’s a plain file download.

What we can and can’t see

This is the same list you see when you set up Kin, straight from our Privacy Policy.

Being counted is your choice. Turn off Usage counting in Settings → Privacy on your Mac, and Kin works exactly the same. You just won’t be included in our counts.

The one record we keep that’s tied to you is your license: the email address you gave us to get your key, whether you asked for product news, when your Mac activated the key, and which version of our terms you agreed to. See the full Privacy Policy.

Every connection Kin makes

Here’s each connection Kin makes beyond your home network, what it carries, and how to turn it off.

Open about how, careful with the details

This page explains how Kin protects your family, not every detail of how it’s built. We leave out things like internal addresses and server settings, which would only help someone looking for trouble. We also keep the details of how Kin’s memory and models are tuned to ourselves. That’s our own work.

None of your privacy depends on those details staying secret. It depends on the keys, and only your family has them.

This page describes Kin Server build 36, from September 2026. We update it whenever a release changes what Kin connects to. Found a security problem? Email hello@meetkin.app and we’ll work with you on it.