Skip to content
Overshow
Sign inBook a walkthrough

On-device processing

Where screen capture, text extraction, transcription and search run, and what never leaves your computer by default.

Last updated: 23 September 2026

On-device Work

In Overshow, on-device means processing runs on your computer using local CPU, GPU and storage. Both Windows and macOS run screen capture, text extraction and full-text search locally. Public Mac builds also run Ask locally. Windows builds run Ask through an AI provider you set up, which can be a model on your own computer. Shipping builds omit meeting recording and carry no text embeddings. Experimental Mac builds can include local meeting transcription or embeddings. Cloud Ask keeps retrieval on your computer and sends the approved prompt and evidence to the configured provider only after explicit consent. On the Mac it needs a separate experimental build.

You are always in control of what Overshow captures. Processing only applies to material you have chosen to record under your current settings.

Capture Processing

  • Screen capture. Frames and derived signals are produced locally on both platforms. Optical character recognition that turns visible text into searchable content runs on your computer.
  • Audio (experimental Mac builds with meeting support). Microphone audio you include is recorded locally. Speech-to-text uses a transcription model bundled with the app, so audio does not need to leave your machine for that step.
  • Search. Indexing and query execution run against your local database on both platforms.

Ask

In public Mac builds, Ask grounds responses in your local index and runs the answer model on your computer. On Windows, and in the experimental Mac cloud build, Ask requires a configured provider and current consent. Cloud consent is separate from approval for a connected AI client. Without it, the app does not send an Ask prompt to the provider, and local search keeps working.

Offline and performance

On-device work can run while you are offline for core capture and search, subject to OS permissions and hardware. Heavy operations may slow other tasks briefly. That trade-off keeps sensitive content off shared infrastructure you do not control.

Recording Responsibilities

On-device processing does not remove your responsibility to comply with workplace rules, consent requirements, or local recording laws. It does mean that Overshow does not send your screen stream or raw audio to Overshow's servers for those processing steps.

Optional features that explicitly use the network (such as sign-in, billing, calendar sync, cloud mail if connected, cloud AI clients you approve, cloud Ask you explicitly set up, or publishing an approved record to the organisation repository) are separate from capture pipelines. Publication sends only the approved record and its approved source excerpts, not the local capture index. See the privacy overview for a concise list.