What is Ask Escape, and where does the conversation run?
Ask Escape is the app's built-in assistant. When you have a question in a hard moment, what to do about an urge, how to handle a relapse, why this keeps happening, you can ask it right inside the app instead of searching the open web. Here is what it is, and the short version of where your conversation goes.
What it is for
It is for the moment you would otherwise open a browser and type something you would rather no one saw. Ask Escape gives you a calm, judgment-free place to ask, without leaving the app or handing the question to a search engine. It is there for the practical question and for the 1am one, the kind you would not say out loud to anyone.
Where the conversation runs
This is the part people care about most, so here is the short version. Ask Escape is ours, the recovery assistant we built into the app, and we deliberately designed it to run on Apple's on-device AI. That means your question is answered right on your phone, instead of being sent to a cloud service the way most AI assistants work. It was the harder path to build, and we chose it on purpose, because your conversation is the last thing that should leave your phone. There is no Escape account and no Escape server behind it, and we never receive what you ask. For the fuller picture, including the honest limits, see how private an on-device AI conversation is.
What you need to use it
Ask Escape needs a device that supports Apple Intelligence. On phones without it, everything else in Escape, the blocker with its 40,000-site list, the urge tool, the panic button, Deep Block, and the 27 courses, works exactly the same. We built the core to stand on its own, so your recovery never hinges on owning the latest phone. Ask Escape is a real extra for the devices that can run it, layered on a product that is already complete without it.
What it is not
Ask Escape is a supportive tool, not a therapist and not medical advice. It can help you get through a moment and think more clearly, but for real distress it is not a substitute for a professional or a helpline. If you are in crisis, please reach out to one.
Escape blocks porn in Safari for free, extends to every browser with Deep Block, and adds a 90-second urge ritual, practice games that retrain how you meet an urge, and 27 short courses on identity and the long arc of recovery. No account, no personal tracking.
More on this topic in Privacy in recovery apps, or go deeper with the Who you became in private course.