What SafeRelay Desktop does
Power users move content all day — between a terminal, a browser, a doc, an AI chat — and Alt-Tab, copy, paste, repeat. SafeRelay eliminates that friction and adds a safety layer underneath. The core idea: highlight text in any app, press one hotkey, and it teleports straight into your target — one app or several at once — in milliseconds, without ever switching windows.
But it's more than text relay. SafeRelay also captures screen regions (redacted locally via OCR), teleports screenshots into apps, transcribes voice and meeting audio, and scans whole files to make them AI-ready. Across every one of these flows, a local DLP engine runs in-flight and strips out secrets — API keys, passwords, card numbers, tokens, PII — before the content arrives. You can add your own protected terms, and every redacted value stays recoverable in a local vault.
Fast enough to stay in your flow. Safe because the redaction happens on your machine — no cloud uploads, no policy servers. Accurate because it's built on purpose-made detection patterns, not guesswork.
Secrets are stored in a local vault. Your target only ever sees the placeholder — and you never had to Alt-Tab.
First launch
Double-click SafeRelayAgent.exe. A tray icon appears in your system tray (bottom-right). That's it — SafeRelay is running.
Right-click the tray icon to explore the menu. Protection is ON by default.
Your first relay — Text Relay
This is the fastest way to see SafeRelay working.
- Open Notepad (or any app) — this will be your destination.
- Arm Notepad as your target. Click Notepad to give it focus, then press Ctrl+Alt+T. The tray shows "Armed: notepad.exe".
- Switch to a source app and highlight some text. Try a browser tab. Highlight text containing a fake API key like
sk-proj-abc123. - Press Ctrl+Shift+9. SafeRelay copies the text, redacts sensitive values, and pastes the protected result into Notepad.
[OPENAI_KEY_1] in place of the API key. The real value is stored safely in SafeRelay's local vault.Named Targets — save your most-used apps
Instead of arming a window every time, save it as a named target.
- Arm the app — click it, press Ctrl+Alt+T.
- Save it — Tray → Targets → Add Named Target. Enter a short name (e.g. "putty" or "notepad").
- Use it next time — Tray → Targets → Named Targets → your saved name. It re-arms that app instantly.
Set up your AI provider (optional)
Required only for AI Capture (Ctrl+Shift+A). All other features work without a key. Go to Tray → Set AI Provider / API Key.
| Provider | Base URL | Example model |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | https://api.openai.com/v1 | gpt-4o-mini |
| Groq | https://api.groq.com/openai/v1 | llama-3.3-70b-versatile |
| Local Ollama | http://localhost:11434/v1 | llava / llama3.2-vision |
| OpenRouter | https://openrouter.ai/api/v1 | any vision model |
Voice transcription (optional)
Press Ctrl+Alt+W, speak, click Stop. Transcript lands on your clipboard.
For fully offline transcription (recommended for privacy), install local Whisper — run pip install faster-whisper. On first use the app downloads the model (~74 MB) automatically, and all audio stays on your machine. Without local Whisper, audio is sent to Groq (if a key is set) or your configured AI provider.
DLP protection — what gets redacted
SafeRelay automatically redacts these across all relay flows:
| Category | Examples |
|---|---|
| API Keys | OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS, GitHub, Stripe, Slack, Google OAuth, Docker, npm |
| Credentials | Bearer tokens, PEM private keys, webhook URLs |
| Financial PII | Credit cards (Luhn-validated), SSN, IBAN, bank account numbers |
| Global PII | Emails, NI numbers, Aadhaar, PAN, CPF, NRIC, and 30+ more |
| Crypto | Bitcoin & Ethereum addresses, private keys, seed phrases |
| Network | Internal IP addresses, MAC addresses |
Configure active groups via Tray → Protection → DLP Shields. Add your own terms in the rules file at %APPDATA%\LogicGrid\SafeRelay\saferelay_desktop_rules.json.
Vault Viewer — see what's been redacted
Every value SafeRelay redacts this session is stored in its local vault. Open it via Tray → Protection → View Vault. Each entry shows as [PLACEHOLDER_xxx] → ****last4, so you can identify what was redacted without exposing the real value.
Inside the viewer, Apply to File… redacts any text file using the active vault and DLP engine (Free: up to 1 MB · Pro: up to 10 MB). Clear Vault wipes all session mappings — always free; it's a privacy control, not a Pro feature.
Custom Protected Terms
Add your own words, codenames, or regex patterns that SafeRelay redacts in every flow. Tray → Protection → Custom Protected Terms. Examples: PROJECT-FALCON, NDA-\d{4}, your company's internal domain. Changes take effect immediately — no restart needed. Free tier: up to 3 terms · Pro: unlimited.
Using SafeRelay with terminals
PuTTY, KiTTY, MobaXterm, Windows Terminal, and other emulators treat Ctrl+V as a control character, not paste. SafeRelay detects terminal windows automatically and uses Shift+Insert instead — no configuration needed.