common questions

aura is a privacy-first desktop browser built on chromium. alongside normal browsing it has an ai sidebar that reads the page with you, an agent mode and command bar that can drive your tabs, a brain workspace for notes and a knowledge graph, a research library for pdfs, a logbook, isolated workspaces and chrome extension support. the ai runs on your machine; your data stays on disk.

chrome and firefox get you to pages and stop there. aura keeps what you found: pages you chat about, notes you take, pdfs you save and entries you log are indexed locally and come back when you ask. and because an ai lives in the browser, it can also act — fill forms, compare products, run multi-step tasks — on your actual tab.

most of them send your page content, history or prompts to their own servers to make the ai work. aura runs inference through ollama on your machine by default and keeps the index of your saved content on disk. cloud models are optional, use your own api keys, and only see the request you send.

aura is built for windows, macos (apple silicon and intel) and linux, and launches very soon. join the waitlist on the home page and we will email you on launch day. after install it updates itself in the background.

not for local models. aura talks to ollama on your machine, so chat, summaries and search over your brain workspace work offline once a model is installed. cloud models (openai, anthropic) obviously need a connection.

install ollama and pull a model you like. aura detects what is installed and lists it in the model dropdown in the sidebar, command bar and settings. local models are free to use and never leave your machine.

yes. add your openai or anthropic api key in settings → api keys. the models then appear next to your local ones and you can switch per conversation. keys are stored locally and sent only to that provider.

it reasons step by step: navigate, search, click, type, scroll, scrape, repeat. in drive-tab mode it works on your live tab so you see everything; in stream mode it uses a separate headless browser and reports progress. actions with side effects pause for your confirmation, and a run that fails can be resumed.

history, bookmarks, tabs, notes, logbook entries, library pdfs, chat history and embeddings are stored under your user folder, per workspace, as files and sqlite databases. nothing is uploaded. the only thing held in the cloud is your account email and subscription state, because a plan has to work on more than one device.

no. there is no analytics in the browser and the desktop app sends no browsing data anywhere. the one background request it makes is an update check that carries the version number.

yes. settings → clear data removes history, cache and cookies, and because every store is a plain file you can also delete a workspace folder outright. deleting the app leaves nothing behind in the cloud except your account email, which you can ask us to remove.

yes. install directly from the chrome web store by extension id, or load a .crx file. extension popups work from the toolbar, you can enable or disable each one, and there is a one-click update for all of them.

fully separate environments inside one browser. each has its own tabs, theme, quick links and brain workspace, so research never mixes with personal browsing. switch from the sidebar. the free plan includes one workspace; paid plans include three, five or ten.

the browser is free to use with one workspace, the ai sidebar, and local models or your own api keys. starter (₹499/mo), pro (₹999/mo) and max (₹2,499/mo) enable agent mode and the brain workspace, with 3, 5 and 10 workspaces. annual billing saves about 17%.

no. aura does not resell model usage, so there are no credits or usage limits. ai runs on a model on your device through ollama by default. if you add your own openai or anthropic key, you pay that provider directly for what you use, and only the text you ask about is sent, only when you ask.

there is no password. enter your email, we send a six-digit code, you type it in. the same email in the desktop app and on this site means one subscription everywhere. codes expire after ten minutes.

yes, any time. the subscription stays active until the end of the period you already paid for and then drops back to the free plan. your local data is untouched either way.