Privacy Policy

What stays on your Mac

PrivyDock runs entirely on your computer. The list of apps you mark as private, along with every action you take (hide, launch, restore), is stored locally in your own user directory. None of that information is sent to PrivyDock.

Information you choose to give us

If you download PrivyDock, sign up for updates, contact support, request a refund, or email us, we receive what you provide: the name and email address you enter on the download form, and the content of any message you send. We use it to reply, send product access and important updates, process support and refunds, and maintain a basic record of the conversation.

We may also email you about PrivyDock itself: new releases, purchasing opening, and launch pricing or discounts. Every such email carries an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing takes effect immediately. We do not give or sell your email address to anyone else for their marketing.

Anonymous product analytics

PrivyDock uses a privacy-focused analytics service on the website and in the Mac app. We use it only to measure broad product signals like page visits, pricing interest, trial starts, pricing clicks, successful or failed hide and restore flows, and how often private apps are opened (a count, never which app). We do not send app names, bundle identifiers, file paths, diagnostics bundles, email addresses, or license keys through analytics. It uses no cookies and does not store IP addresses.

To count visitors and installs without knowing who they are, it relies on a random identifier, kept in your browser on the website and generated for each install in the app. It is not linked to your name, your email address, or your licence.

Website measurement

We also count page views and download clicks on this website ourselves. Each record stores the page or file, the referring site, a two-letter country code, and an anonymous visitor code. We set no cookies for this, and we never store your IP address.

The visitor code changes every day. It lets us tell how many different people visited on a given day without knowing who they are, and it cannot be used to follow you over time or across sites.

Raw records are kept for 90 days and then deleted, leaving only daily totals such as “41 downloads on 12 August”.

License activation

When you activate a paid license, PrivyDock sends the email address you used at checkout, your license key, your app version, your macOS version, the random identifier of this copy of the app, and a plain-language device name such as "Alex's MacBook Pro" so we can validate the license and help with support if something goes wrong. We do not send your private app list, file paths, or diagnostics bundles as part of license activation.

Your trial

PrivyDock keeps track of your thirty-day trial so it can tell you how much of it is left, and so a trial cannot simply be restarted by reinstalling. Once a day, and when it launches, the app sends a random identifier it generated for this copy, the date it first ran, your app version, and your macOS version. We also record a two-letter country code worked out from the connection; your IP address is not stored.

It also sends a one-way fingerprint of your Mac. Your Mac has a hardware identifier, and rather than send it, PrivyDock scrambles it first, on your machine, in a way that cannot be undone. What reaches us is a string of letters and numbers that means nothing on its own: it lets us recognise the same Mac twice, and it tells us nothing about the Mac, about you, or about what is on it. We never receive the hardware identifier itself, and the fingerprint is never linked to your app list, which never leaves your Mac at all.

If you buy a licence, it is linked to this fingerprint and to the copy's identifier, so that reinstalling on the same Mac keeps your licence instead of dropping you back onto the trial. That is the only point at which either is connected to your email address.

PrivyDock also reports a short list of product events, as codes: whether making an app private or restoring it succeeded or failed, whether a permission check passed, whether the paywall or the pricing page was opened, whether a licence was activated, and how many times a private app was opened. When something goes wrong, the report says which kind of problem it was: a short code such as "permission missing" or "disk full", alongside your app and macOS versions. That is how we find and fix problems you would otherwise have to write in about. It never includes the name of the app involved, where it lives on your Mac, or any other detail about what is on your Mac.

None of this is required for PrivyDock to work. Making apps private and restoring them never need a connection — not on your first run, not if you stay offline for months, and not if our servers are down. Your apps and your list of private apps stay on your Mac either way.

PrivyDock does check in with us when it can, to see whether your trial is still running or your licence is still valid. If it cannot reach us it carries on with what it last knew. The only thing that stops you making new apps private is your trial actually ending — never a network problem.

Permission diagnostics

macOS controls whether PrivyDock is allowed to move an app, and when it refuses, it does not explain why. To make those failures fixable, PrivyDock keeps a short local record of what macOS allowed and refused: whether the permission check passed, the numeric error macOS returned, which step the app suggested next, whether it was reopened, and your app and macOS versions. PrivyDock sends that record to us periodically.

It contains nothing about which apps you use or make private. Not a name, not a bundle identifier, not a file path. This is not a matter of us removing them afterwards — the record never holds them in the first place, because a permission problem is fully described by an error code and a sequence of steps.

You can read the record yourself at any time under Settings → Permission log, which shows it exactly as it would be sent, reveals the file on disk, and lets you delete it.

We keep these records for 30 days and then delete them. We do not sell them, share them, or send them to any other company, and they are used only to find and fix problems with permissions.

If you would rather send us more detail for a specific problem, Settings → Copy diagnostics builds a separate file that does include your hide and restore history — with every app name replaced by a placeholder such as "app-1" — and nothing is sent unless you choose to send it.

Payments

Payments are handled by Paddle, our merchant of record. Paddle receives billing and payment information directly. PrivyDock does not see or store full card details. We receive only the order and license information needed to fulfill your purchase, support your license, and process refunds.

Service providers

We rely on third-party service providers for website hosting and delivery, data storage, email, analytics, and payment processing. They may process technical request information such as IP address, browser metadata, logs, and request timing, only as needed to provide, secure, and troubleshoot those services for us.

Update checks

PrivyDock may check for new versions from privydock.com. Update checks may include your current app version, macOS version, and basic request metadata needed to serve the update feed.

What we do not collect

• We don't sell or share personal information.
• We don't send the names of your private apps to our servers.
• We don't send hidden app names, bundle identifiers, or file paths into analytics.
• We don't read the contents of your apps or documents.
• We don't store full payment card details.

Retention

Website page views and download clicks are kept for 90 days and then deleted, leaving only daily totals such as "41 downloads on 12 August". Permission diagnostics are kept for 30 days and then deleted outright.

Trial and install records, and the product event codes described above, hold no name or email address. They are kept for as long as PrivyDock is offered, because the trial record is what stops a trial from being restarted.

We keep support emails, sign-up emails, license records, and billing-related records for as long as needed to provide the service, meet legal obligations, resolve disputes, prevent abuse, and support refunds. You can request deletion, but we may need to retain limited records where law, accounting, tax, fraud prevention, or dispute handling requires it.

Your choices

You can ask us to access, correct, or delete personal information we hold about you by emailing support. To stop receiving product or marketing emails, use the unsubscribe link in any of them, or ask us. Transactional emails about purchases, refunds, support, or security may still be sent when needed.

Third-party policies

Paddle's privacy policy is at paddle.com/legal/privacy.

Getting in touch

Questions, corrections, or deletion requests can be sent to [email protected]. We reply to every message.