Quick Ask's privacy policy

Last updated 24 October 2026

Quick Ask is an app I (Mike Cann) made for asking quick questions out loud. This page says what it sends where. The short version is that the text of your question goes to wherever you've told Quick Ask to get answers from, and only once you've said that's OK. Quick Ask doesn't have a server of its own, so none of it comes to me.

Your voice

Quick Ask uses the microphone while it's open to hear your question, and iOS's own speech recognition turns it into text. Quick Ask never sends your audio anywhere itself, and doesn't keep any recordings.

Where iOS does that depends on your iPhone. On iOS 26, once Apple's SpeechAnalyzer model is downloaded, it's always done on your iPhone. Otherwise Quick Ask uses Apple's older speech recognition, which works on your iPhone when iOS has an on-device model for your language (English does on any recent iPhone). If it doesn't, or the on-device one won't start, iOS sends the audio to Apple's speech recognition while you talk, the same as dictation, and Apple's privacy policy covers that. You can see which it is in Quick Ask under Settings › Privacy › Speech to text, where it says "On this iPhone" or "Apple's servers".

What gets sent, and where

Before Quick Ask sends anything at all, it shows you where your questions will go and asks for your OK. It asks again whenever you change where answers come from, or change to a different server. Nothing goes anywhere until you've agreed, not even the little request that opens the connection early.

Once you have, each question sends:

• the text of your question
• your last three questions and answers in the conversation, so a follow-up makes sense
• your iPhone's local time and time zone (like Australia/Perth), so it can answer things like "what day is it?"

To answer quickly, Quick Ask sends your question at the first short pause, while it's still making sure you've finished. If you carry on talking it drops that one and sends the longer question at the next pause, so a question can go out more than once with the words so far.

Each time Quick Ask comes to the front it also sends a small request to the same place, so the connection's ready before you ask. It has no question, key or token in it.

If you use OpenRouter

Your question goes straight from your iPhone to OpenRouter, with your own OpenRouter key, and OpenRouter passes it on to the company running the AI model to get your answer. That's Cerebras for qwen3.8-27b, which is asked first, and Groq or Cerebras for gpt-oss-120b, which is asked as well when the first one's slow. If those are down, OpenRouter can send it to another company running the same model. If you pick a different model in Settings › Advanced, it goes to whoever runs that one.

What OpenRouter and those companies do with it is up to them, so have a read of OpenRouter's privacy policy. Your OpenRouter account and its settings are yours, and OpenRouter bills you for what you use.

If you use your own server

Your question goes straight from your iPhone to the server address you typed in, with your token, and nowhere else. What happens to it there is up to whoever runs that server (if that's you, it's up to you). What Quick Ask sends it is all on this page.

What stays on your iPhone

• Your OpenRouter key or server token, in the iPhone's Keychain, only on this device. It's only ever sent to OpenRouter or your server with your questions, and it's never shown again once it's saved. You can remove it in Settings.
• Your settings, and the timings for your last 20 questions, including the text of each question, which you can see and clear under Settings › Recent timings.
• The conversation, so follow-ups work. It's only kept while the app's running, and it's forgotten after ten minutes in the background.

What Quick Ask doesn't do

There's no account to make, and Quick Ask has no analytics, crash reporting, ads or tracking in it, so Quick Ask itself never sends me anything. It doesn't follow you around other apps or websites, and I don't sell or share anything about you (I don't have anything to sell). The only thing that could reach me is Apple's own: if you've told your iPhone to share analytics with app developers, Apple passes on its usual anonymous crash reports, the same as it does for any app.

This website

quickask.mikecann.app doesn't use cookies or ads. It's hosted on Cloudflare, which sees your internet address like any web host does.

Kids

Quick Ask isn't made for children, since the answers come from AI models that I don't control.

Changes

If this policy changes I'll update it here and change the date at the top.

Questions

Email me at quickask@mikecann.app and I'll get back to you.