Will it run on my Mac?
Kepter needs macOS 26 or newer and an Apple Silicon Mac, meaning M1 or later. It will not open on anything else. To check yours, open the Apple menu and choose About This Mac: a line that says Chip is Apple Silicon, a line that says Processor is Intel.
Why macOS 26, and why Apple Silicon only?
Because the reading is the product, and the reading runs on Apple's on-device models, which arrived in macOS 26 and require Apple Silicon. An older Mac could show you the grid, but not the part Kepter is for, and selling you the shell of the app would be dishonest. So the requirement is enforced rather than softened.
Do I need an account?
No. There is no sign-in and no account. You install it, pick the folders to watch, and it starts. There's nothing an account would hold, because nothing of yours is anywhere but your Mac.
Is my stuff private?
The short version: your files never leave your Mac, and Kepter never keeps a copy of one.
The long version: Kepter reads each file where it sits, using Apple's own text recognition and Apple's on-device models, on your machine. There is no upload and no cloud read. For each file it stores three things: a memory record (the extracted text, the plain words you would search by, dates, amounts), a thumbnail, and the path back to the original. The records are kept in an encrypted index on your Mac. Your files are never moved, never copied, and never sent anywhere. The receipts page says how we verified it.
What does Kepter store, and where?
Three things per file: the memory record, a thumbnail, and the path back to the original. They live in one folder on your Mac, inside your user Library. The index of records is encrypted; the thumbnails are a plain local cache so scrolling stays fast. Your originals are not in there. They stay exactly where you put them. The full inventory is here.
What does "reads it on your Mac" mean for a scanned document?
A scanned page is an image of words, with no text inside for search to find. Kepter runs Apple's text recognition over the image, on your Mac, and puts what it reads into the memory record. From then on the scan is findable by the words printed on it, even though the file itself still contains no text.
And for a voice memo?
Kepter transcribes it on your Mac, with macOS's own on-device speech recognition, and the spoken words go into the record. You find the memo by what was said in it. The same goes for what was said in a video. If macOS cannot transcribe a language on the Mac itself, Kepter leaves that memo untranscribed rather than send it anywhere.
Is there a chat?
No. You type what you remember, in your own words, and Kepter shows you the saved things that match, as themselves: the real receipt, the real scan, the real memo, each one a click from the original on your disk. It does not converse, does not summarize your life, and does not generate anything. The answer is always the thing itself, with the path to prove it.
What does Kepter skip, and why?
Archives, disk images and installers (.zip, .dmg, .pkg) are listed but never opened; Kepter shows they exist and reveals them in Finder, so nothing in a watched folder is quietly hidden from you. Code projects collapse to a single item, so a repo shows as one thing instead of ten thousand source files. Folders you've marked .noindex are left alone, the same convention Spotlight honors.
Do I lose anything Finder does?
No. Right-click any tile: open, rename, share, reveal in Finder, move to Trash. Every tile is the real file, so anything Finder can do to it, Kepter can too.
What about duplicates?
Save the same thing twice and you see it once, with a count. Things are grouped only when they are genuinely the same: byte for byte, or pages that render identically. Near-identical images show up as related instead, because guessing would be worse than asking. Nothing is ever auto-deleted, and when you do delete, it goes to the macOS Trash, recoverable, like the Finder.
What if Kepter disappears as a company?
Your things were never in Kepter, so they can't go down with it. Every file stays in its folder, opened by the same apps, whether or not Kepter exists. The copy of the app on your Mac has no server it needs to phone; it keeps running as long as macOS runs it.
What happens when the 30 days end?
Nothing is charged, because no card was taken. You are not locked out either: everything Kepter has already read stays searchable and openable for as long as you keep the app. What stops is Kepter reading new files. Pick $2.99 a month or $39 one time whenever you like and it reads everything that piled up. Monthly cancels any time from Settings.
Where do I get it?
Straight from kepter.app. The download is signed and notarized by Apple, and it updates itself, with your permission, from then on.
How do I leave?
Quit Kepter from the menu bar and drag the app to the Trash. If you want the memory gone too, delete Kepter’s container folder, ~/Library/Containers/app.kepter.keep; that removes the records and thumbnails. Your files are untouched by any of this, because Kepter never moved, copied or held them.
