Anonymize text.
Keep what matters.

A local, dedicated AI removes personal data from interviews, documents and logs, entirely on your device. No uploads, no cloud dependency: your text is never online.

Built by Prof. Dr. Bennett Kleinberg & jocapps® GmbH in Germany.
ISO 27001 & ISO 9001 certified.

14-day free trial · Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android · English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian & more

Watch the explainer video

Customer references from our team

    interview-04.docx
    interview-04.docx

    Interview, 14 March 2026

    “My name is Marie Weber and I’m 42.

    I work as a nurse at St. Mary’s Hospital in Munich.

    You can reach me at marie.weber@gmail.com or on +49 170 555 01 23.

    My husband Jan and I live at 12 Baker Street.”

    Original Anonymized
    ↔ Drag to compare Processed on your device, fully offline

    Local AI

    Not another cloud platform.

    A local, secure AI built for one specific problem. It runs on your device, needs no internet connection, and your data is never online. No uploads, no remote APIs: disconnect from the internet and keep anonymising. Use it as a fully local end-to-end tool, or as a local privacy layer in front of cloud AI services. Either way, the anonymisation itself always happens on your device, which also settles the sovereignty question: text that never leaves your machine cannot be transferred anywhere.

    100%local processing
    0uploads, works offline
    3/secdocuments anonymised
    16configurable entity types
    A

    Classic: anonymise & work fully local

    For researchers, clinicians and analysts: anonymise interviews, notes and documents directly on your device. Then analyse, archive or share the anonymised copies without privacy risk.

    Your device: nothing is uploaded

    Original text with personal data
    Textwash™ Pro anonymises: 100% locally, fully offline
    Anonymised text
    Analyse · share · archive
    B

    AI proxy: pre-clean text for OpenAI, Claude & Co.

    Want to use cloud LLMs on sensitive text? Textwash™ Pro anonymises everything first, and the LLM only ever receives the already-anonymised version. Use it this way from the desktop app or Textwash™ Pro Cloud, or wire it into your own pipeline via the API.

    Your device: anonymisation happens here

    Original text with personal data
    Textwash™ Pro anonymises: 100% locally

     only the anonymised text is sent 

    Cloud: optional next step

    OpenAI · Claude · any LLM: receives anonymised text only

    The anonymisation is never done by OpenAI, Claude & Co. Textwash™ Pro does it on your device, and the original, identifiable text never leaves your machine.

    What data sovereignty means here, concretely

    • Nothing crosses a border. Your text is anonymised on your own device, so it never travels to another country or another company.
    • No third party in the path. The desktop app has no backend of its own: nobody receives your originals, because there is nowhere for them to go.
    • Air-gapped by choice. Unplug the network and the anonymisation keeps running, which is what clinical, legal and classified environments need.
    • A European vendor. Built and supported in Germany, ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certified, and Textwash™ is a registered EU trademark.

    A and B are the two most common setups, and there are many more. Comparing anonymisation tools? Whatever tool you choose, ask the provider for two things: an empirical evaluation of what it can and cannot do, and a clear reason why your data would need to leave your systems at all. If that transparency is missing, treat risk claims with caution.

    Textwash™ Pro in action

    See it work.

    A local AI model, running on your device, recognises personal data from context, not just keyword lists. Switch between examples and languages:

    Examples
    Languages
    Input text

    "Lisa works at Apple and lives at 123 Baker St."

    Anonymised output

    "PERSON_1 works at ORG_1 and lives at ADDRESS_1."

    PERSON LOCATION ADDRESS ORGANISATION EMAIL ADDRESS PHONE NUMBER DATE TIME MONTHS AGE OCCUPATION TITLE NUMERICS PRONOUNS CULTURAL IDENTITY OTHER IDENTIFIABLE ATTRIBUTE

    You decide what gets anonymised: pick exactly the entity types you need and keep everything else intact.

    Textwash™ Pro Cloud

    You want to use Claude or ChatGPT, but GDPR says no?

    A familiar situation: your team wants a cloud LLM to summarise interviews, support tickets or case notes. But the documents are full of names, addresses and personal details, so GDPR, confidentiality agreements or your ethics board block the idea, and the data sits unused. Textwash™ Pro Cloud unblocks exactly this: every prompt is anonymised before it reaches the model.

    textwash.eu/cloud

    You · summarise-this

    Summarise the key complaints in this interview:
    “PERSON_1, AGE_1, OCCUPATION_1 at ORG_1, reports night-shift overload since DATE_1 …”

    🔒 14 identifiers removed on your device, before sending

    Claude · answer

    Three themes stand out: persistent night-shift overload since DATE_1, understaffing at ORG_1, and missed breaks. PERSON_1 proposes a rotation plan …

    ✨ 14 identifiers put back on your device: the model only ever saw the placeholders

    Privacy by architecture: anonymisation happens on your device, before anything is shared. Your original data is never online, not with us, not with anyone, and never in another jurisdiction.

    Sign in to Cloud

    One engine. Every platform.

    Desktop, mobile, cloud, or API: the anonymisation is always research-grade.

    Desktop & mobile app

    Textwash™ Pro

    Mac · Windows · Linux · iOS · Android

    • 100% local & offline, air-gap ready
    • Local privacy layer for ChatGPT, Claude & Co.
    • Whitelist, blacklist & custom rules
    • Codebook, statistics & risk score

    Cloud workspace

    Textwash™ Pro Cloud

    Browser-based · hosted by us or in your cloud

    • AI workspace with Claude, ChatGPT & DeepSeek
    • Batch processing for whole teams
    • Projects, dashboards & result logs

    API & integrations

    Textwash™ Pro API

    Cloud-based · REST · n8n · Make · Zapier

    • Cleans prompts, tickets & records before they reach an LLM
    • Scales to large document volumes
    • Whitelist & blacklist rules
    Textwash™ Pro interview-04.docx
    Ready. 14 identifiers detected in this document.

    Interview 04, recorded 14 March 2026DATE_1

    Participant: Marie WeberPERSON_1, 42AGE_1, works as a nurseOCCUPATION_1 at St. Mary’s HospitalORG_1 in MunichLOCATION_1. Case reference PN-4471NUMERICS_1.

    Contact: marie.weber@gmail.comEMAIL_1, +49 170 555 01 23PHONE_1, 12 Baker StreetADDRESS_1.

    Note: MariePERSON_1 reports that night shifts starting at 22:00TIME_1 have been understaffed since JanuaryMONTHS_1. Jan WeberPERSON_2 confirmed the rota change.

    Codebook13 entries

    PERSON_1Marie Weber2 mentions
    PERSON_2Jan Weber1 mention
    ORG_1St. Mary’s Hospital1 mention
    LOCATION_1Munich1 mention
    NUMERICS_1PN-44711 mention

    Stays on this device. Exportable as CSV or JSON.

    This run

    0identifiers replaced
    0unique placeholders
    0 KBsent to a server
    Highre-identification risk

    Textwash™ Free (open source) vs. Textwash™ Pro: feature comparison

    Textwash™ Pro builds on the open-source original and extends it with the most advanced models, more languages, and a complete workflow around them.

    Textwash™ Free · open source
    Textwash™ Pro
    AI models
    Basic models
    Most advanced models, continuously updated
    Languages
    English + Dutch
    English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian & many more
    Interface
    Script only (command line)
    Desktop & mobile apps, cloud & API
    100% local & offline
    ✓
    ✓ incl. air-gapped environments
    Processing speed
    Depends on command-line skills and CPU
    Super-fast: approx. 3 documents per second; parallelised via CPU + GPU (see reports)
    Whitelist: keep chosen terms untouched
    ✕
    ✓ incl. visual rule builder
    Blacklist: always anonymise custom terms & patterns
    ✕
    ✓ incl. visual rule builder
    Configurable entity types
    Fixed set
    16 selectable entity types + detection sensitivity
    Create your own schemas
    ✕
    ✓
    Custom label mapping
    ✕
    ✓
    Anonymisation risk score
    ✕
    ✓
    Risk sensitivity filtering
    ✕
    ✓
    Interactive before/after view
    ✕
    ✓
    Advanced reporting
    ✕
    ✓ Codebook, statistics & coverage reports
    File formats: PDF, DOCX & XLSX
    Plain text only
    ✓ plus TXT & CSV
    Batch processing
    Manual scripting
    ✓ Files & whole folders
    Built-in tutorials
    ✕
    ✓
    Support & updates
    Community (GPL-3.0)
    Professional support & SLA options

    Textwash™ Free is the open-source original (GPL-3.0): script-based, no GUI, for technical users who want the code itself. Source code & paper ↗

    Built for sensitive work.

    Research & open science

    Share interviews, surveys, and qualitative data while protecting participants.

    Legal, health & social services

    Remove identifiers from clinical notes, case summaries, and documentation.

    AI & LLM pipelines

    Anonymise prompts, tickets and free-text inputs before they reach internal or external AI systems, so a European team can use a model hosted elsewhere without the source text ever leaving the building.

    GDPR & HIPAA compliance

    Anonymise support logs, email archives, contact forms, application logs and CRM notes before they are stored or shared.

    Archiving & records

    Cut privacy risk in legacy files and knowledge bases, without losing their value.

    User research & UX

    Share user interviews and support tickets safely across teams and partners.

    Institutional rollout, integrations, or governance requirements? We offer advisory & implementation services: textwash-pro@jocapps.eu or book a call.

    Research & evidence

    Proven. Not promised.

    We don't just claim strong privacy. Independent, peer-reviewed research backs it up, including intruder tests where humans tried, and failed, to re-identify people. Evidence your procurement and governance teams can cite.

    In research use at

    UCL, University College London University of Michigan Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam Radboudumc, Nijmegen
    arXiv 2026 Procedia Computer Science 2025 arXiv 2024 Nature Scientific Reports 2023 ACM 2023 arXiv 2021
    Benchmark comparison from the technical report: re-identification success rate against BLEU score and computation cost
    Independent benchmarks rank Textwash™ Pro highly competitive on privacy performance. Open the paper on arXiv ↗

    Textwash™ Pro is developed and distributed by Prof. Dr. Bennett Kleinberg & jocapps® GmbH and builds on the open Textwash™ research project by Dr. Maximilian Mozes & Prof. Dr. Bennett Kleinberg, released under the GNU General Public License v3.0. source & paper ↗

    Paper: Kleinberg, B., Davies, T., & Mozes, M. (2022). Textwash, automated open-source text anonymisation. arXiv:2208.13081.

    Grow with Textwash™ Pro.

    Affiliates, resellers, and technology partners: one privacy product your clients actually need.

    Become a partner Email us

    Questions, answered.

    Is Textwash™ Pro usable without optional services?

    Yes. The product is fully usable on its own, and services are optional.

    How can an AI like this run on my own laptop?

    Because it is local and purpose-built, not a general-purpose chatbot. Textwash™ Pro does one job, deciding which parts of a text are personal data, so the model runs on an ordinary Mac, Windows or Linux machine and still reads each phrase in context instead of matching fixed word lists.

    Is Textwash™ Pro another cloud AI service?

    No. Not another cloud platform: Textwash™ Pro is a local, secure AI built for one specific problem: removing personal data from text. It runs on your device, needs no internet connection, and your data is never online.

    Can I use ChatGPT or Claude on confidential data with Textwash™ Pro?

    Yes, this is a core use case. Textwash™ Pro works as an AI proxy: it anonymises the text locally on your device first, and the cloud service only ever receives the already-anonymised version. You can work this way from the desktop app or Textwash™ Pro Cloud, or wire it into your own pipeline via the API. The original, identifiable text never goes online, which keeps GDPR and confidentiality obligations manageable.

    How does Textwash™ Pro support GDPR compliance in practice?

    Textwash™ Pro is aligned with GDPR principles including data minimisation, purpose limitation, and privacy by design/default (Articles 5 and 25), and supports compliance-focused workflows for sensitive text handling.

    Where is my text processed, and does anything leave the EU?

    With the desktop and mobile apps, your text is processed on your own device and nothing is transmitted at all, so the question of a transfer to a third country does not arise. Textwash™ Pro Cloud and the API can be operated in your own infrastructure, which keeps the processing wherever your organisation needs it to be. The software itself is built and supported by a German company, and Textwash™ is a registered trademark in the European Union.

    Can Textwash™ Pro be used in sovereign or air-gapped AI environments?

    Yes. The Windows, Linux and macOS deployment runs fully local and offline, so no data leaves the client environment and no external API connectivity is required. That is what makes it workable in air-gapped, classified and sovereign-cloud settings: the anonymisation keeps running with the network switched off.

    Can on-premise and cloud setups be combined?

    Yes. Hybrid architectures can combine local processing with API or cloud components, depending on policy and risk constraints.

    Do you provide SLA options?

    Yes. We can define service levels, support windows, response targets, and escalation paths for qualifying organisations.

    Is Textwash™ Pro suitable for public sector programmes?

    Yes. We support public sector, research, healthcare, and regulated environments with governance-aligned implementation plans.

    How do you support audits and compliance reviews?

    We provide documentation inputs, quality checkpoints, and implementation evidence to help internal governance and external audits.

    Who should contact you for enterprise or institutional rollout?

    Programme managers, data protection teams, and technical leads can contact us at textwash-pro@jocapps.eu to discuss fit and rollout options.

    Ready when you are.

    14-day free trial · cancel anytime · GDPR & HIPAA compliant · ISO 27001 & ISO 9001 certified · Made in Germany