Frequently asked questions

Owlka is an iPhone app that lets you drive Claude running on your own computer, no terminal and no coding background needed. The computer does the real work and the phone is the front seat. The two talk to each other through an end-to-end encrypted relay that we operate but cannot read. Your code, your terminal, and your project memory stay on your own machine. Want the longer version? See How it works.

You install the Owlka desktop app on your computer and the Owlka app on your iPhone. The desktop app shows a one-time QR code. You scan it from the phone, which exchanges the encryption keys directly between the two devices. After that, your phone and your computer both connect to the Owlka relay. Anything you type or say on the phone is sealed, sent phone to relay to computer, and the computer forwards it to the local claude command-line tool. Owlka drives that tool for you; you never open a terminal or type into it. Claude does the work on your computer and the reply is sealed and streamed back the same way.

Yes. Owlka is a desktop app and an iPhone app working together. The computer runs Claude and holds your files. The iPhone is how you talk to it from anywhere. Neither half does anything useful on its own.

No. Every message is encrypted on your phone or your computer before it leaves the device, and only your paired devices hold the keys. The relay looks at the recipient label on the outside of each sealed envelope and forwards it by key prefix. It does not open envelopes, it writes nothing to disk (it may hold a sealed packet in memory for a short window while a device reconnects), and it does not log their contents. We hold no master key and have no Owlka-side way to decrypt your conversation. The cryptographic detail is on the Security page.

We can see connection metadata: that a phone and a computer talked, when, the per-pair public-key identifiers, the IP addresses, and the byte size of each sealed packet. We cannot see what you said, your files, your tool arguments, or your tool output. If hiding even that metadata matters to you, an internet-based assistant is the wrong shape. The full, honest list is in our Privacy Policy.

No. Owlka does not train any model on your prompts, your code, or the work Claude produces for you. Your use of Claude itself is governed by your own agreement with Anthropic, because your computer talks to Anthropic directly under your own account.

Owlka does not transcribe speech on your device. If you tap Owlka’s microphone button, the recording is sent to ElevenLabs and transcribed there, using an ElevenLabs key you add yourself on your computer. Until you add one the button is greyed out and your microphone is never opened. From the phone, the audio travels sealed to your own computer first, and your computer is what talks to ElevenLabs, so no recording reaches an Owlka server. The security page sets out the full path.

Your subscription. The Owlka desktop app runs the local claude command-line tool on your behalf, which uses your own Claude Pro or Max login on your computer. Anthropic API tokens are never read or used. The desktop app scrubs every API-key-flavoured environment variable before it starts the Claude tool, so your usage runs through your subscription, not a metered API bill.

No to both. Owlka does not resell Anthropic. You bring your own Claude Pro or Max subscription. Owlka never sees, copies, or stores your Anthropic login. It lives where the Claude tools put it on your machine, under your operating system’s user permissions, and your computer talks to Anthropic directly. We never see your Claude traffic.

Yes. Claude, like every large language model, can sound confident and be wrong, invent facts, or write code that looks right but is not. It also has deep control of your computer and can create, edit, and delete files. Treat replies as drafts, keep backups, and read changes before you approve them. The full picture is on the AI Use page.

A Mac desktop app, a Windows desktop app, and an iPhone app. The Mac app is signed and notarised by Apple and runs on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. The Windows build is code-signed and runs on 64-bit Windows 10 and 11. The Owlka iPhone app is not on the App Store yet. It is available through TestFlight, so email support@owlka.com and we will send you an invite. Grab either desktop build on the download page. For exact system requirements, see Support.

Owlka is built by Owlka Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales. Owlka Ltd is the data controller for the small amount of personal data Owlka processes. Details and your data rights are in the Privacy Policy.

Install the Owlka desktop app on your computer and the Owlka app on your iPhone. In the desktop app, choose to pair a phone. A one-time QR code appears. In the iPhone app, choose to pair a new desktop and scan the code. The two devices exchange public keys directly, and the code expires straight after. One account covers two phones and two computers, and any of your phones can pair with any of your computers. Each pair is partitioned, so one person’s sessions are never visible to another.

Claude runs on your computer, so your computer needs to be awake and online for new work to happen. If the phone briefly drops off Wi-Fi, the relay queues sealed packets for a short window, so the phone can pick up where it left off when it reconnects. The relay does not store conversation history, so this is a short queue, not a backup. If your computer is asleep or offline, new prompts wait until it is reachable again.

Unpairing a phone from the desktop app invalidates that phone’s key, and sealed packets from it are refused after that. To remove everything, open the iPhone app, go to More, then Subscription, and tap “Delete my account and data”. The app wipes local data on your phone and tells the relay to forget your device records. Anything stored on your own computer is yours to manage on your machine. Full steps are in the Privacy Policy.