Littlebird's context awareness
How Littlebird understands your work
Littlebird’s ability to understand what you’re working on comes from a process called Context Awareness. It’s designed to be powerful and private, giving you the benefit of a personalized AI without compromising your security.
This article explains how context awareness works, what Littlebird captures, and how you can control it.
How Littlebird gathers context
Instead of recording your screen with video or screenshots, Littlebird reads the text and elements of your active applications, content that is currently visible on your screen. This includes things like:
Text from documents, emails, or websites you are actively viewing
The names of the applications you are using (e.g. Slack, Google Chrome)
Information from your meeting notes or project plans if they are displayed on your screen
This process runs every few seconds, allowing Littlebird to build a memory of your recent activity so it can answer your questions accurately.
This allows Littlebird to build a private, encrypted index of your activity. This index is what gives Littlebird its unique "memory" of your work, allowing it to provide you with intelligent and relevant assistance.
What Littlebird does NOT do
Your privacy is our highest priority. To be perfectly clear:
Littlebird is not a screen recorder or a keylogger. It does not record video of your screen or log your individual keystrokes.
It does not capture passwords. It is designed to automatically ignore password fields.
Your data is always private and encrypted. It is never used to train our or any third-party AI models.
You are always in full control. In Littlebird's settings, you can exclude any application from context awareness, and you can delete your past context at any time.
How to control context awareness
You have full, immediate control over when Littlebird is aware of your context. The primary control is located directly within the app window.
1. The context status button:
When you have the Littlebird app open, the context status button in the bottom-left corner shows the current status:
Green light: When the dot is green, it means context awareness is active. Littlebird is learning from the visible content on your screen.
To Pause: Simply click the green dot, and you’ll have an option to Pause context awareness with a variety of options. Once paused, the button will turn gray.
To Resume: Click the context button again and select Resume. It will turn green, and context awareness will resume.
2. The menu bar icon:
For quick access when the main app window is closed, you can also use the Littlebird icon in your Mac's menu bar (at the very top of your screen). Clicking this icon gives you the same options to Pause or Resume context awareness.
3. Excluding specific applications:
If there are applications you do not want Littlebird to see, you can add them to the exclusion list.
Navigate to Settings in the Littlebird app
Go to the Context Awareness tab
Here, you can control which applications Littlebird can see
This combination of controls ensures that you can benefit from Littlebird's contextual awareness while maintaining complete authority over your privacy.
You have full control over when and what Littlebird collects.
4. Excluding specific website domains:
You can also exclude specific website domains across your browsers to ensure context is not pulled from these sites, keeping your private information private. Simply just add the domain to the list and you're all set.
