Outbound Veil has been tested and works in TextEdit, Notes, Messages, Microsoft Word, and in Chrome text areas, including the ChatGPT and claude.ai prompt boxes. It cannot read the body of a new message in Apple Mail, and it is switched off in Terminal by default. Safari, Slack, VS Code, Pages, Google Docs and most other apps have not been tested.
What the three statuses mean
- Tested and works. A made-up note was typed or pasted into the field. The badge appeared, and Redact all rewrote the field.
- Tested and does not work. The field was tried, and Outbound Veil could not read it or could not use it safely.
- Not tested. No result is recorded. It may work or it may not, and this page does not guess. Every app or field not named below belongs in this group.
Every status is written out in words. The same test text was used each time: Maria Gonzalez, SSN 472-81-0094, born on March 3, 1990. All of it is invented.
The only recorded test run was on one Mac running macOS 26 on October 3, 2026, with builds made before release 1.0.0. Releases 1.0.1, 1.0.2 and 1.1.0 changed power use, the update key and licensing. The tests have not been recorded again since.
Checking and Redact all
| App and field | Status | What was recorded |
|---|---|---|
| TextEdit, document | Tested and works | Badge appeared. Redact all rewrote the field in place. Highlighted word by word. |
| Notes, note body | Tested and works | Badge appeared. Redact all rewrote the field in place. macOS reports where each word sits, so findings are highlighted word by word. |
| Messages, message box | Tested and works | Tried in a new message with no recipient, so nothing was sent. Badge appeared and Redact all rewrote the field. How highlighting looks in Messages was not measured. |
| Microsoft Word, document body | Tested and works | Badge appeared. Redact all rewrote the field in place. macOS reports where each word sits, so findings are highlighted word by word. |
| Chrome, plain text area on a web form | Tested and works | Four findings. Redact all replaced them with placeholders. macOS reports where each word sits, so findings are highlighted word by word. |
| Chrome, ChatGPT prompt box | Tested and works | Four findings. Redact all replaced them with placeholders. macOS does not report where each word sits in this box, so the whole box is outlined instead of each word being highlighted. |
| Chrome, claude.ai prompt box | Tested and works | Four findings. Redact all replaced them with placeholders. The whole box is outlined, as in ChatGPT. |
| Apple Mail, body of a new message | Tested and does not work | Mail hands macOS a web view with no text in it, so there is nothing to check. The menu says Cannot read this field in Mailinstead of showing an empty badge. No fix is currently planned. |
| Terminal, prompt | Tested and does not work | Terminal exposes its whole screen history as one block of text, not the line you are typing, and the text cannot be edited. Outbound Veil is switched off in Terminal by default. iTerm2, Warp and Ghostty start switched off too, and were not tested one by one. |
| Safari, plain text area, ChatGPT prompt box and claude.ai prompt box | Not tested | The tool used for testing cannot type into Safari, so the three Safari rows were never run. |
| Firefox, Edge, Brave, Arc and other browsers | Not tested | No result recorded for any field. |
| Google Docs and other web editors in a browser | Not tested | No result recorded. Web editors draw their own text areas, so a result in a plain text area says nothing about them. |
| Claude desktop app, prompt box | Not tested | Only probed. macOS reported the box as readable and editable, but no note was checked and Redact all was not tried. |
| ChatGPT desktop app, prompt box | Not tested | No result recorded. |
| Slack, message box | Not tested | Slack was not installed on the test Mac. |
| Microsoft Teams, message box | Not tested | No result recorded. |
| VS Code, editor | Not tested | VS Code was not installed on the test Mac. |
| Other apps built on Electron, such as Discord, Notion or Obsidian | Not tested | Outbound Veil asks apps built on Chromium or Electron to expose their fields to macOS. No result is recorded for any of them. |
| Pages, document | Not tested | No result recorded. |
| Password fields | Not tested | Outbound Veil is built to skip them, and an automated test covers that skip with a simulated password field. It has not been confirmed on a real macOS password field. 1Password, Bitwarden, Keychain Access and the Passwords app start switched off. |
Send hold
Send hold is optional and is turned on one app at a time in Settings, on the Apps tab. It holds the send key while a field still has findings. It needs Input Monitoring, which macOS asks for only when you turn a hold on.
| App | Status | What was recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Messages | Tested and works | In a new message with no recipient, a made-up number followed by Return was held. A panel offered Redact all, Send anyway and Cancel. |
| TextEdit | Not tested | One trial, on a Mac under extreme load, did not hold Return. Outbound Veil is designed to let the key through when a check runs late. The trial has not been repeated on an idle Mac. |
| Apple Mail | Not tested | The body of a new message cannot be read, so there is nothing to hold. The welcome guide does not offer Mail for send hold. |
| Slack | Not tested | Slack was not installed on the test Mac. |
| ChatGPT and claude.ai in Chrome | Not tested | The prompt boxes can be read and rewritten, but holding the send key on those pages has not been recorded. |
| ChatGPT and claude.ai in Safari | Not tested | No result recorded. |
What decides whether a field can be read
Outbound Veil reads a field only when macOS describes it as a text field, text area, combo box or search field and hands over its text. Three things follow.
- An app that draws its own text, or puts a web view where a text field would be, may give macOS nothing to read. Apple Mail is the case that was tested.
- Password fields, password managers and Outbound Veil’s own windows are skipped. Fields longer than 200,000 characters are skipped.
- A field that can be read may still refuse a direct edit. Redact all then pastes the replacement text. If that fails too, it puts the redacted text on the clipboard and says so.
Check your own app in the 7-day trial
The trial is the complete app for seven days, with no account. That is enough time to try the apps you use. Use made-up details only.
- Download the trial from the Outbound Veil page, open it and allow Accessibility. The setup guide shows where.
- Click into a text field in the app you want to test and type or paste
Maria Gonzalez, SSN 472-81-0094, born on March 3, 1990. Values such as 555 phone numbers or example.com addresses may not be flagged, so use this line. - Wait a second. A badge with a number of findings near the field means the field can be read. If the menu bar menu says
Cannot read this field
followed by the app’s name, it cannot. If nothing shows, check that checking is not paused and that Accessibility is still on. - Click the badge and choose Redact all. The field should now hold placeholders such as
[SSN_1]. If the app refuses the edit, the redacted text is put on your clipboard with a notice. - Choose Copy details of the focused field in the menu bar menu. It copies the app, the kind of field and whether it is readable and editable, and never what you typed. Email it to ben@purplelink.llc if you want a row added here.
- For send hold, open Settings, choose the Apps tab and set the app to Check and hold send. Test it only where a stray send does no harm, such as a document, or a new message with no recipient.
If your app cannot be read, the free trial is how to find out. If you buy and change your mind, email ben@purplelink.llc within 14 days of buying for a refund (terms).
Limits
Latin-script names only. It also flags public figures’ names. It will miss some things. It lowers the chance of a mistake and is not a compliance product.
More about Outbound Veil
- Outbound Veil: what it finds, privacy, price and the free trial.
- First ten minutes with Outbound Veil: install, Accessibility, a first check and choosing apps.
- Best PII redaction tools for ChatGPT and AI chats: how it compares with other approaches.