Memory
Memory is how your assistant gets to know you. It is the part of Phi that turns a browser you use into a browser that understands you — so that over time the assistant is not starting from scratch every time you ask it something.
What makes it different is where it learns from. Most assistants only know what you type into a chat box. Phi's Memory learns from what you actually do as you browse: the things you read, compare, return to, and work on. The difference is between remembering a conversation and understanding a person. Knowing that you spent an afternoon comparing cloud providers, or that you started a new job two weeks ago, is the kind of context that makes help feel personal rather than generic.
How it learns
Memory is automatic and works quietly in the background. You do not teach it anything and you are not doing unpaid data entry for your own browser — as you go about your day it gradually builds a picture of what matters to you, what you keep coming back to, and the kinds of tasks and topics that recur.
From that activity it also extracts small, specific facts about you — your interests, your work, your goals, the tools and people you deal with. These are called observations, and together they form the assistant's working understanding of who you are.
What you do recently counts for more than something you did once. Relevance decays: a current habit outweighs a one-off detour from months ago, so the picture stays in step with your life instead of being anchored to your past.
Memory Galaxy
What Memory learns is not a black box. Memory Galaxy is a view that lays it all out as a map centered on you — the themes that describe how you relate to things, the entities you engage with (sites, topics, people, skills), and the intents behind your browsing. You can look through it to see what the assistant has picked up and how the pieces connect, rather than taking it on trust.
You can open your Memory whenever you want to look. On the new tab, there is an entry just below the search box. In the browser itself, where to find it depends on your layout mode: in Performance and Balanced it sits at the bottom-left, and in Comfortable it moves to the top-right.
How the assistant uses it
When you ask the assistant a question, summarize a page, or hand it a task, it draws on what it remembers about you alongside what is in front of you right now — the current tab, or a whole Split View or Tab Group. That is what lets it answer in a way that fits you without you having to re-explain your situation each time. Memory also feeds the personalized new tab and its widgets, where what it knows shows up as something useful rather than staying hidden. For more on reaching and talking to the assistant, see Meet your assistant.
Staying in control
Everything Memory builds is stored locally on your device and stays under your control. Specifically, you can:
- View, manage, and delete anything it remembers, directly inside Phi.
- Turn off memory collection for a site when there are pages you would rather it not learn from.
- Import and export your memory, so it is portable and genuinely yours rather than locked in.
Your memory is never used to train AI models. For where your data lives and what Phi does and does not collect, see Privacy & Your Data. Note that turning AI off does not erase your memory — if you want it gone too, delete it from the Memory page, which is permanent.
Memory beyond Phi: Anamnesis
The same Memory system also ships on its own, for people who are not (yet) on Phi Browser. Anamnesis is a standalone extension for Chrome and Chromium-based browsers that builds the same kind of living, local browser memory from your browsing.
It keeps the same principles: your memory stays yours and lives with you, and you can view, edit, delete, or export it at any time. You bring your own API key, so the assistant talks to your chosen model provider directly — Phi does not sit in the middle or store your memory on a server. Because the exported memory is portable, you can carry it into Phi Browser or another AI service whenever you like. Learn more at phibrowser.com/anamnesis.
What's next
- Meet your assistant — how you reach it, talk to it, and what Skills are.
- New Tab & Widgets — the personalized new tab that Memory helps fill.
- Privacy & Your Data — where your data lives and how to stay in control.
- FAQ — quick answers to specific questions about Memory and the assistant.