Chat with AI
that never leaves
your iPhone.
Aside runs entirely on-device using Apple Intelligence. No servers. No cloud. No account. Works in airplane mode. Your conversations stay where they started.
Built on Apple Intelligence (FoundationModels) · iPhone 15 Pro or later · iOS 26+ · Live on the App Store
Five Apple Intelligence demos, baked in.
Aside isn't just a chat window — it shows what Apple's on-device AI stack can actually do. Every demo runs locally on the Neural Engine, no API key, no cloud.
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1
Image Playground
Sparkles button opens Apple's image-generation sheet, seeded with whatever you've typed.
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2
Writing Tools
Long-press the composer to proofread, rewrite, or change tone — system-level, anywhere text is.
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3
Translate
Long-press any reply, translate to any of Apple's supported languages, fully on-device.
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4
Summarize
Sparkles menu in any chat distills the conversation into a streaming summary via FoundationModels.
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5
Smart Reply
Three quick-reply chips appear above the keyboard after each AI message — tap one to keep the thread going.
Built for the conversations that matter
Aside is for the questions you wouldn't post to a server. Health. Legal. Personal. Drafts you're not ready to share. Aside answers — and forgets nothing, because it never had a reason to remember anywhere but on your phone.
100% on-device
Your conversations stay on your iPhone.
Aside speaks to Apple Intelligence directly on your phone's Neural Engine. There's no server it could send your messages to. No cloud sync. No account to leak. Verify with a packet sniffer — Aside makes zero outbound network requests during a chat.
Code, Markdown, formatting
Polished replies — even on a plane.
Code blocks render in monospace inside framed boxes. Markdown headings and bold come through cleanly. Long-press any message to copy, regenerate, or delete. Because everything is local, you get this even at 35,000 feet.
History + search + export
Every chat saves on-device.
Organized in a clean list, sorted by recency. Pull down to search across every message you've ever written. Open any chat's menu to share or copy it as Markdown. Delete in a swipe.
Make it yours
Personality, look, and feel.
Pick a persona (concise, friendly tutor, brutally honest, code-focused — or write your own). Adjust text size, toggle Markdown rendering or the suggested-prompt chips, turn haptics on or off. Aside adapts to how you actually use it.
Why an on-device chat?
Most AI chat apps ship your conversation to a server and call it "private" because they encrypt the transport. Aside takes a different shape: the model itself lives on your phone, and the conversation never has the option of leaving.
No account
Nothing to sign up for. Install, open, chat. There's no profile, no login, no email.
No telemetry
Aside makes zero outbound network requests during a chat. Verify with any network monitor.
No cloud
Everything — conversations, attached photos, your settings — stays on the iPhone.
Common questions
Which iPhones support Aside?
Any iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence — iPhone 15 Pro / Pro Max, and all iPhone 16 / 17 models. You'll need iOS 26 or later and Apple Intelligence enabled in Settings.
Is Aside really free of any cloud?
Yes. Aside uses Apple's FoundationModels framework, which runs the language model on your device's Neural Engine. There's no API key, no remote inference, no fallback to a cloud LLM. If your phone is in airplane mode, Aside still works.
Why an on-device LLM instead of GPT-4 or Claude?
Different trade-off. Frontier cloud models are smarter; on-device models are private. Aside is for the moments where the conversation actually matters — health questions, legal drafts, journaling, exploring an idea — and you don't want it on someone else's server.
Will Aside ever add cloud features?
No. The whole point is "this conversation never leaves your phone." If we ever ship cloud sync or remote inference, it'll be a separate app — Aside stays local-only.
Can I attach photos?
Yes. Aside uses on-device Vision to extract text and classify the image, then asks the on-device model to reason about it. The image and its analysis never leave your phone.
Can I export a conversation?
Open the chat's menu (⋯) and pick "Share conversation" or "Copy as Markdown". You get a clean Markdown transcript you can paste anywhere.
How much does Aside cost?
$9.99 one-time on the App Store. No subscription, no in-app purchase, no upsell. View on the App Store →
Can I buy the source code?
Yes — Aside's complete iOS Swift source is available as a one-time $19 bundle, designed to be AI-agent friendly (well-commented, AGENTS.md included). Same package the app ships from. See the source-sale section below for details.
Couldn't I just build this myself?
Sure — and if you'd rather, you should. ~2,800 lines of SwiftUI on top of FoundationModels is maybe 20-40 hours of focused work if you're already fluent with Swift, SwiftData, and the Apple Intelligence frameworks. But most of that time is the same gotchas already solved here: the session-rebinding pattern when instructions change, the Image Playground sheet flow, SwiftData migration, the iOS 26 / Apple Intelligence availability fallbacks. $19 ≈ "skip the gotchas." If you'd rather build it from scratch, the free blog post on tonysoftware.com walks through the architecture in detail.
What's NOT included in the source bundle?
The bundle is iPhone-only — there's no iPad-tuned layout, no Mac Catalyst port, no Android version, and no backend service (Aside is intentionally 100% on-device). The bundle is the same Xcode project that ships Aside on the App Store, nothing more. If you need a cross-platform or cloud-sync variant you'd build that on top — the AIService wrapper is a clean seam to swap.
How is it delivered?
Instantly. Checkout is handled by Polar (our Merchant of Record); the download link is emailed to you the moment payment completes, and the same link gives you portal access for re-download + future updates.
How do I get future updates / re-download?
Your purchase doesn't expire. Sign in to the Polar customer portal any time with the email you used at checkout — the latest revision of the source bundle is always there. New Aside features get folded in, so re-downloading gets you the current code.
What if it's not for me?
There's a 7-day money-back guarantee — no questions asked. Reply to your Polar receipt email within 7 days and we'll refund you. Polar processes the refund directly.
Build on the same code that ships Aside.
The complete Xcode project for Aside Chat — the same source we submitted to App Store review. SwiftUI + Apple Intelligence (FoundationModels), SwiftData persistence, on-device voice input, custom-illustrated onboarding. Personal & commercial use, including derivative apps under your own branding.
- ✓Full Xcode project (xcodegen
project.yml+ all Swift source) — open and build. - ✓FoundationModels integration — clean
AIServicewrapper, session hot-swap for persona changes. - ✓Five Apple Intelligence demos — Image Playground in the composer, Writing Tools, Translate, Summarize, Smart Reply chips. Working source for each.
- ✓SwiftData persistence with Conversation + Message models.
- ✓On-device voice input (SFSpeechRecognizer + AVAudioEngine).
- ✓Polished SwiftUI features — chat, history, regenerate/stop, code-block rendering, custom-illustrated onboarding with TimelineView ambient motion.
- ✓
AGENTS.mdfor AI coding agents — feed to Claude/Cursor and your agent orients in seconds. - ✓Personal & commercial license — ship derivative apps to the App Store under your own branding.
Clean Swift, no third-party dependencies.
~2,800 lines of SwiftUI across 10 files. Five working Apple Intelligence demos. SwiftData persistence. Localized to 14 languages out of the box. Builds clean on Xcode 16.
aside-source/ ├── project.yml # XcodeGen — source of truth for targets/signing ├── Solo/ # Codename — the brand name is Aside (CFBundleDisplayName) │ ├── App/ # SoloApp + RootView — app entry, scene chrome │ ├── Features/ │ │ ├── Chat/ # ChatView + SummarySheet (Summarize demo) │ │ ├── History/ # Sidebar list of past conversations │ │ ├── Onboarding/ # 3-step intro with TimelineView ambient motion │ │ └── Settings/ # Persona, language, voice toggles │ ├── Models/ # Conversation (SwiftData @Model) │ └── Storage/ # AIService (FoundationModels wrapper), VoiceDictation ├── Resources/ # Assets.xcassets, Localizable.xcstrings (14 langs) └── AGENTS.md # Architecture brief for Claude / Codex / Gemini
Ship your own on-device AI chat app this week.
The complete Aside Xcode project — same source that ships in the live App Store app — with five Apple Intelligence demos already wired up. Personal & commercial license.
