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Tinfoil Chat supports document-heavy workflows: upload files into conversations, organize related work into projects with shared instructions and documents, and search across your encrypted cloud history. See cloud sync encryption for storage details.

Document uploads

Attach files from the message composer. On web, select + → Add files or photos. On iOS, tap + to open Add to Chat, then choose Camera, Photos, or Files. Camera, Photos, and image selection through Files are available only for vision-capable models. Supported files. Web supports PDFs, Office documents (docx, pptx, xlsx), CSVs, images, audio, and many plain-text and code formats. iOS Files supports multiple document selections for chats and projects, plus multiple images in multimodal chats. Voice input is separate from file attachments. How files are processed. Processing never exposes your documents to Tinfoil:
  • Web reads plain text and code files in the browser. It processes PDFs and Office documents with an attested document-conversion service, and sends images to vision-capable models. Web audio attachments are transcribed by the speech model.
  • iOS extracts PDFs and supported text formats on-device. Other supported documents use the attested document-conversion service.
  • Voice input uses private speech-to-text and requires Premium on both platforms.
How files are stored. Each image, and each document’s extracted text, is stored as a separate attachment encrypted with its own key, and that key is kept inside the encrypted chat, so reading an attachment still requires your personal encryption key.

Projects

Projects group related chats and give them shared context, so you don’t have to re-upload or re-explain the same material in every conversation. Projects require cloud sync and Premium on both platforms. What a project contains:
  • Instructions: how the assistant should behave, included in every chat in the project.
  • Documents: reference files available to every chat in the project.
  • Chats: conversations that belong to the project.
Each project chat receives the project’s instructions and documents, while conversation histories remain separate. Like everything else, project instructions, documents, and chats are encrypted under your key and unreadable to Tinfoil.
  1. In the sidebar, open Projects and click New Project. The app creates My Project #N and opens it.
  2. Edit the project name, description, and instructions from the project page.
  3. Add reference files in the project’s documents area.
  4. Start chats from the project page, or drag existing chats into the project from the sidebar.
Moving a local-only chat into a project converts it to a cloud chat because projects are cloud-synced. Search in the sidebar combines exact keyword matches with semantic similarity across synced chats. The attested harness enclave builds and searches the index, and stores it encrypted under a key derived from your personal encryption key. Local-only chats are not indexed. Index coverage is bounded for very long chats, so content near the end may not appear. If semantic embedding is unavailable, search falls back to keyword results.

Deep research

Deep research searches the web and reads pages for up to about 20 minutes, then writes a cited report and replies with what it found. It requires Premium and the global Web Search setting, and you can start one deep research per hour.
Open Input options in the composer and select Deep research. A Deep research label appears in the composer while it is on, and under the question you send.
How a research runs.
  • If your question is unclear, the assistant may first ask a few questions in the chat. Answer them and send, and the research starts. A reply that only asks questions does not count toward the hourly limit.
  • While it researches, the reply shows its searches, the pages it reads, and its reasoning. It then writes the full report as a document, with links to its sources, and replies with the answer and key findings. Open the report from its card in the chat: in a side panel on web, or in a sheet on iOS. With Generative UI off, the reply is the report itself.
  • The research keeps running if you leave the chat, and the report appears when you return.
  • Deep research turns off as soon as you send the question. Editing or regenerating that question researches it again, which counts toward the hourly limit. Follow-up questions are ordinary messages that can draw on the full report.
The research runs in the attested harness enclave, and its searches go through the same private search as Web Search, including automatic PII blocking when that setting is on. Like other replies, the report and its steps are stored encrypted under your key.

Personalization and custom prompts

On web, use Settings → Personalization and Settings → Prompts. On iOS, use Settings → Chat Settings → Personalization and Settings → Chat Settings → Prompts. See Chat settings for platform-specific setup, prompt precedence, and reasoning controls. All of these sync across devices and are encrypted under your key, like chats. Tinfoil cannot see your name, traits, or prompts.

Importing from other apps

You can import conversation history from ChatGPT and Claude, or re-import a Tinfoil export, from Settings → Cloud Sync in the web app:
  • Import from ChatGPT: upload your ChatGPT data export.
  • Import from Claude: import conversations, and (on paid plans) projects.
  • Import from Tinfoil: restore a Tinfoil export archive.
Imports run in the attested harness enclave. With cloud sync enabled and your key unlocked, the enclave stores the imported data encrypted under your key in the background and tries to email you when it finishes. Without cloud sync, the enclave sends the imported chats back to your browser to keep on that device and stores nothing; projects are not imported because they are kept in the cloud.

Sharing a chat

You can share a read-only snapshot via link. Its random key is placed in the URL fragment, which browsers do not send when fetching the page. On both platforms, the attested harness enclave seals the snapshot and, with the key from the link, decrypts it for recipients; storage receives ciphertext and operational metadata. Anyone with the full link can read the snapshot. On web, save a temporary chat before sharing it. On iOS, sharing a temporary chat is allowed and creates a persistent encrypted snapshot; the temporary chat history itself remains unsaved.

Voice and models

Tinfoil Chat includes voice input (private speech-to-text) and lets you switch between the models in the chat model catalog. Model responses stream from attested enclaves; the in-app Verification Center shows live attestation status.