AI planner apps and calendar privacy: what Motion, Reclaim and Akiflow access and store

The privacy and data security risks of AI planner apps come down to three things: how much calendar access you grant, what the company keeps on its servers, and whether your events can be used to train AI. Motion, Reclaim and Akiflow each ask to read and change events on the calendar you connect, since a planner that creates or moves events has to write to your calendar. Their own pages then differ on storage, retention and AI training, and those parts are worth reading before you connect a work calendar.

This guide reports what each company's help center, security page and privacy policy said when we read them on October 11, 2026, with a link to every page. We didn't test the apps, and we give their statements in their own terms. We make Barside, a free desktop app for Windows, Linux and Mac that takes a read-only route to your calendar. The last sections hold a checklist and that local option, limits included.

What are the privacy and data security risks of AI planner apps that connect to your calendar?

The privacy and data security risks of AI planner apps start with calendar access, because a planner needs more of it than a calendar viewer does. To create a focus block, or move one when a meeting lands on top of it, the app has to read your events and write new ones, so the permission you grant usually covers viewing and editing. That's a normal part of how this kind of app works, and it's why the consent screen deserves a slow read.

Four things decide how much exposure that access creates:

• Scope. Whether the app can only read events or can also edit and delete them, and whether that covers one calendar or every calendar your account can reach.
• Other people's details. Event titles, attendee names and email addresses, descriptions and meeting links belong partly to colleagues and clients who never signed up for the app.
• Storage and retention. Whether a copy of your events sits on the company's servers, in which country, and how long it stays after you delete your account.
• AI use. Whether event text is sent to an AI model, and whether the company or its providers may train models on it.

None of these is a reason to avoid a planner. They're the questions a policy should answer, and the three companies below answer most of them in public.

Which Google and Microsoft 365 permissions do Motion, Reclaim and Akiflow request?

To compare AI calendar planner privacy, start with the calendar data access each app requests on Google Calendar and Microsoft 365, then read its privacy policy. Motion, Reclaim and Akiflow publish both. All three ask for access that covers reading and changing events, and the level of detail differs: Reclaim lists each permission by name, Motion describes read and write access in general terms, and Akiflow lists its permissions for Google and for Outlook.

Reclaim

Reclaim's security page lists its permissions one by one. For Google, the calendar permission reads "View and edit events on all your calendars", in a group of scopes the page calls required for Reclaim's basic functionality. The same group lists "See and download any calendar you can access using your Google Calendar", "See and download your contacts", a matching permission for "Other contacts", and "See and download your organization's GSuite directory" for Workspace directory contacts. A separate permission, "Create, edit, organize, and delete all your tasks", applies only if you turn on the Google Tasks integration. For Outlook calendars, the page lists Calendars.ReadWrite and Calendars.Read.Shared, the second for shared and delegated calendars, along with MailboxSettings.Read, User.Read, openid, email and offline_access.

Its help article on Google OAuth scopes and permissions points to the security page as the source of truth and adds: "We never ask for more scopes than we need, and only ask for them when we need them." A named list like this is easy to hand to an IT reviewer.

Motion

Motion's Integration & Permissions page says Motion connects with Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook and iCloud Calendar, and it describes two kinds of access. On reading, it says "Motion needs to read your external calendars to display existing events inside Motion." On writing, it says "Motion requires permission to create and update events, such as booking link meetings or event edits made in Motion."

The page adds that only the calendars you explicitly connect are synced, and that you can adjust which calendars count toward your availability and which are for display only. We found no list of named permissions on that page, so the exact wording is on the Google or Microsoft consent screen when you connect.

Akiflow

Akiflow's Google Calendar help article lists three permissions. The calendar one reads "See, edit, share and permanently delete all the calendars that you can access using Google Calendar", which Akiflow says lets you see, create, edit and delete events from inside the app. The other two cover your contacts and your "Other contacts", so you can invite them to events.

The article says connecting "only syncs your calendar events into your workspace" and doesn't share your Akiflow account or tasks with other people. Its Outlook Calendar article lists four permissions for Outlook calendars: "Have full access to your calendar", so you can see, create, edit and delete events from Akiflow, "Read your contacts", "Read your profile", and one to maintain access so the two calendars stay in sync.

What do their privacy policies say about storage and AI training?

Each company describes holding data from your connected accounts in its own cloud service, with encryption in transit and at rest. They say different things about retention and AI training, so the table gives each statement in short and the notes under it give the wording and the source.

Reclaim. Its privacy policy, last updated June 25, 2025, says Reclaim uses only the Google and Outlook calendar data it needs to provide the service and doesn't use that data for advertising. It says humans may read the data only with your consent, for security or legal compliance, or for limited internal operations such as resolving support issues or analyzing data to improve the service. On generative AI, it says it will not use your personal data, or let its providers use it, "to train any large language or other generative AI models" unless it has your separate, explicit consent or you have opted in.

Reclaim's security page adds the storage detail. It says "Reclaim does store data from the primary calendar associated with your Reclaim account", while events from other calendars you sync are held in memory only long enough to make the synced copy. It also says all data is hosted in the USA, encrypted in transit and at rest with AES-256, and that a self-service deletion starts a job to wipe your calendar data within one hour.

Motion. Its privacy policy, last updated June 27, 2025, says the data it receives when you log in with Google or Microsoft depends on your settings and on what your calendars contain, and may include your name, email and access tokens. It states "All data are encrypted at-rest and in-transit", that Motion completed a SOC 2 Type II audit, and that its services are hosted on Google Cloud Platform. On retention, it says "We retain personal information for the duration of your account and for up to one year after an account is deleted", and that you can request earlier deletion.

The policy's list of how Motion uses information includes "Training and developing machine learning algorithms, and identification of industry trends and developments, and anonymous benchmarking". We found no sentence in the policy that says which data this covers or whether calendar content is left out. Motion's security page says Motion does not, and never will, train AI models using your data, and that its third-party LLM providers, including OpenAI, do not use your inputs or outputs to train or improve their models. It names OpenAI, Anthropic and Google as examples of those providers, and says data is stored in Google's Central-1 region, based in Iowa. If you need to know how the two statements fit together, ask Motion in writing before you connect.

Akiflow. Its security page says its servers hold your account, your tasks and labels, "Data coming from third-party sources relevant to Akiflow" and the authorization tokens for those sources. It describes TLS for data in transit and 256-bit AES encryption at rest, and says its infrastructure uses GCP. Asked about SOC 2, ISO 27001 and FERPA compliance, the same page says Akiflow doesn't currently have these certifications, and that it will sign a Data Processing Agreement if you message its support team.

Akiflow's AI addendum says the AI features are optional, that the text you give them, such as messages, tasks and events, is "never used to train or fine-tune general-purpose AI models beyond your organization", and that you can turn them off in your account settings. It links to a list of sub-processors for AI, which names Anthropic, Google, Groq and OpenAI for text analysis and inference. Its privacy policy says Akiflow will not sell or rent your personal information or user data to any third party. It says data is kept as long as needed to provide the service and that Akiflow has internal policies for swift deletion of account data. In that policy, we found no fixed period for deletion after an account closes.

Policies change, and a plan your employer buys can come with its own terms. Reclaim's policy, for one, says that when your employer pays for your access, it processes your work calendar information as a data processor on your employer's behalf.

Does an AI scheduling assistant need your email as well as your calendar?

An AI scheduling assistant app asks for data access permissions on your calendar first, and some also ask for contacts, tasks or email, usually for a feature you choose to turn on. The three differ on this, going by their own pages:

• Reclaim. Beyond the calendar, its security page lists two contacts permissions, a Workspace directory permission, a Google Tasks permission used only with that integration, and two permissions for its Gmail add-on: "Create new drafts" and "Read open message metadata".
• Akiflow. Its help article says Google Calendar and Gmail are two separate integrations, even on the same Google account. Its privacy policy says it needs permission to read and modify email metadata so that emails can be imported as tasks, and to read email contents so the subject can go into the task. It says the only Gmail data shared with Akiflow is what gets imported into tasks, and that the Gmail authorization tokens are stored only on your device.
• Motion. The permissions page we read covers calendars. We found no email permission on it.

A sensible habit is to grant the calendar permission, then add contacts, tasks or email only when a feature you want asks for them. Each extra permission is one more kind of data to ask about in the checklist further down.

What will a work IT team ask before you connect a work calendar?

With AI planner apps, data access and privacy on a work calendar are your employer's decision as much as yours. The account belongs to the organization, and the calendar holds colleagues' and clients' details. Google and Microsoft both give admins a control for this.

On Google Workspace, the admin guide Control which apps access Google Workspace data says admins can set each third-party app to Trusted, Limited, Specific Google data or Blocked, under Security → Access and data control → API controls. They can also choose "Don't allow users to access any third-party apps", and then people can't sign in with Google to an app until an admin configures it. The guide also describes an option that lets users request access to an app that hasn't been configured.

On Microsoft work accounts, the guide to how users consent to applications says that by default all users may consent to apps for permissions that don't require administrator consent, and it recommends allowing user consent only for apps from verified publishers. Admins change this in the Microsoft Entra admin center, under Identity → Applications → Enterprise apps → Consent and permissions → User consent settings. An admin consent workflow lets you request a review of an app you can't approve yourself, so if connecting a work account stops at a permission message, an admin probably has to approve the planner first.

The questions below are examples of what an IT or security reviewer may ask. Your organization will have its own list.

1. Which permissions does the app request, and does it need write access to every calendar?
2. Where is calendar data hosted, and which other companies process it?
3. Is there a current audit report, such as SOC 2, that we can see?
4. Will the vendor sign a Data Processing Agreement?
5. How long is data kept after an account is deleted?
6. Is event text sent to an AI model, and may anyone train on it?
7. Who pays for the plan, and does that change whose terms apply?

The pages linked above answer several of these for each product. The ones left open are the questions to send to the vendor in writing.

A checklist before you connect an AI planner to your calendar

1. Ask IT first when the calendar belongs to your employer or school.
2. Read the consent screen line by line. Note whether access is read-only or includes editing and deleting, and whether it covers every calendar.
3. Connect only the calendars the planner needs. A personal calendar and a client's shared calendar don't have to come along.
4. Leave optional permissions off for contacts, tasks and email until a feature needs them.
5. Find the storage answers: the hosting country, the encryption, and any audit report.
6. Find the retention answer: what happens to your events when you delete your account, and how soon.
7. Find the AI answer: whether AI features are optional, where event text goes, and the training terms. Ask in writing when the policy is silent.
8. Tidy sensitive events. Keep confidential detail out of titles and descriptions on any calendar you connect.
9. Close the loop when you leave. Disconnect the calendar and delete your account with the vendor, since the retention periods quoted above run from account deletion.

A local option: your calendar on your computer with Barside

Barside doesn't auto-schedule, so it can't replace an AI planner for that job. What it offers is a calendar view that needs no sign-in to your Google or Microsoft account. Barside reads Google Calendar and Outlook through each calendar's private iCal (ICS) address, a link those services offer so other apps can read a calendar. It downloads the events straight from Google or Microsoft to your computer, and it only reads them: it can't add, move or delete anything.

How to connect a calendar

1. Download Barside for Windows, Linux or Mac. The calendar needs no Barside account.
2. Open Settings & backups, scroll to Calendars and choose Add calendar.
3. Under Where do I find it?, choose Google Calendar, Outlook or Other, and follow the steps shown to copy the address.
4. Paste it into Secret iCal address and choose Check address. Barside loads the calendar once and tells you how many events it found in the next 30 days.
5. Check the Calendar name, pick a color and choose Add calendar. You can connect up to 10 calendars.

Open Calendar in the sidebar, or press Alt+Shift+Space in any app and type cal, to see today and the next 7 days beside your notes. The daily briefing lists the rest of today's events with your reminders and tasks, and it's worked out on your computer with no AI and no network.

Where the calendar data lives

• Barside refreshes each calendar every 15 minutes, straight from Google or Microsoft.
• The secret address is stored encrypted on your computer and is never included in backups. The last copy of each calendar is kept encrypted as well.
• Removing a calendar in Barside stops the updates and deletes its saved copy.
• The calendar works the same on Windows, Linux and Mac. On Linux, the address is encrypted through your desktop's keyring, so a keyring must be open before you add a calendar. In Barside for Mac, the macOS Keychain protects it.

The calendar section of the privacy guide has the full details, and the calendar next to your notes covers meeting notes and the quiet heads-up before each meeting.

Limits to know before you rely on it

• The secret address is a key. Anyone who has it can read that calendar, so treat it like a password. If it leaks, reset it in Google Calendar and add the new one in Barside.
• A work admin can turn this route off too. Barside's setup guide notes that a Google Workspace admin can switch off the secret iCal address, and that an organization can switch off calendar publishing in Outlook. Ask IT before you look for another way.
• AI is your choice. Barside has no AI of its own. If you connect one in Settings → AI and start a scheduled agent such as Morning briefing, the agent reads your calendar events, and what it works with goes to that AI company under its data policy. With no AI connected, no calendar text goes to an AI. See AI agents that ask before they act.
• Meeting notes are ordinary notes. A Meeting note made from an event puts its title, time, people and place into a note on your computer. If you turn on cloud sync in Barside Plus (US$20 a month or US$200 a year), synced notes are stored on Barside's servers, which can read them.
• It's a desktop view. There's no phone app, Barside never changes events, and Google can take hours to publish a change to the iCal address.

Two made-up examples

• Dana, an operations manager, isn't allowed to connect third-party apps to her company Google account, but her admin permits the secret iCal address. She adds it to Barside, sees her meetings beside her notes, and plans focus blocks by hand with time blocking.
• Luis, a freelance developer, keeps an AI planner on his personal calendar, where automatic scheduling saves him time. A client's shared calendar stays out of it, and he views that one in Barside as a read-only feed.

How the two approaches compare

If your employer approves a planner and automatic scheduling saves you time, a cloud planner is a reasonable trade, and all three companies publish the pages you need to start that review. If policy rules out third-party access, or you only need to see the day beside your notes, a read-only local view covers it.

Our guide to AI planner apps that auto schedule tasks compares what the planners do, and the list of free daily planner apps that sync with Google Calendar covers more options. For the same questions applied to notes, read AI note apps and client confidentiality. For more apps that keep data on your device, see the best local-first apps.

Works well with

Barside's calendar is one part of a local setup for planning: the events come from your calendar, and the plan lives in your notes.