Frequently asked questions
Everything people ask us, in plain terms.
Anoni anonymizes your documents locally, on your Mac or PC, before you hand them to an AI. Here are the answers to the most common questions. Privacy, the GDPR, formats, pricing.
How do I anonymize a document before ChatGPT?
Open the document in Anoni. A French model (CamemBERT) and business rules spot the sensitive data, locally. Click “Copy for AI”: names, company numbers, addresses and IBANs become realistic pseudonyms, and the text is copied. Paste it into ChatGPT or another AI. Paste the reply back into “Decode”. Anoni restores the real data from your encrypted vault.
Is Anoni GDPR-compliant?
Everything runs locally. No personal data leaves your machine. Each run produces an anonymization report (categories, counts, exclusions, SHA-256 fingerprint, version) with no personal data, ready to keep on file. Automatic detection is not a guarantee of compliance. On a sensitive document, read it through first. The tool helps. It doesn’t decide for you.
Does my data leave my computer?
No. Detection and anonymization run on your Mac or PC. Turn off Wi-Fi: everything keeps working. No document, no excerpt, no personal data is sent online, not to us, not to anyone. The first launch downloads the engine and detection models once. Never your files.
ChatGPT promises not to train on my data. Why Anoni?
Because your documents still leave your machine. They go to the AI provider’s servers. For professional confidentiality and the GDPR, a contractual promise is not enough. Regulators recommend pseudonymizing before sending. With Anoni, sensitive data never reaches the AI, promise or not.
What’s the difference between pseudonymization and redaction?
Anoni offers two modes. With pseudonymization, “John Smith” becomes “Mark Lee”. The document stays natural for an AI and stays reversible through a vault encrypted with AES-256-GCM, derived from your passphrase. With redaction, the data is hidden behind real opaque black bars in the exported PDF. It’s irreversible, for safe distribution.
What formats and data does Anoni support?
Anoni handles PDF, DOCX, TXT and Markdown files, with local OCR (French and English) for scanned PDFs. It detects names, company numbers, organizations, places, addresses, emails, phone numbers, IBANs, national ID / social security numbers, dates and secrets. You can also add a personal dictionary, manually select a missed word, or draw a redaction box over a signature or a stamp.
What are the system requirements?
Anoni is lightweight and needs no graphics card. It runs on macOS 11 (Big Sur) or newer, Windows 10 / 11 (64-bit) and recent 64-bit Linux distributions. Plan for 8 GB of RAM (4 GB minimum) and about 3 GB of disk space for the engine and detection models, downloaded once on first launch. After that, everything works offline.
Which operating systems does Anoni run on?
macOS, Windows and Linux, with signed updates. On macOS, the app is signed and notarized by Apple: it opens with a double-click. On Windows, SmartScreen may still show a warning at install: click “More info” → “Run anyway”.
Is Anoni free?
Yes. Every current Anoni feature is free, no subscription, no limit. All it takes is an email. You get French detection, realistic pseudonyms, the encrypted vault, PDF redaction, the personal dictionary, the local GDPR report and OCR for scanned PDFs. A Pro edition, with advanced features, is under consideration.
Another question? Write to us at contact@anoni.dev, or read the privacy policy.