TL;DR — Your camera feed never leaves your Mac. The app makes two outbound calls — license check (Polar) and update check (Sparkle) — and nothing else. The website uses Google Analytics. That's it.
What we collect from your camera
Nothing. When PhoneDown is running, frames flow from the camera into Apple's Vision framework on your Mac, get scored for "is there a phone near a hand," and are immediately discarded. Frames are never written to disk. Frames are never uploaded. There is no buffer. There is no review queue. There is no opt-in toggle for "help us improve" because there is no pipeline that could collect anything.
What the app does send over the network
Two things, both essential:
- License activation and validation — handled by Polar, our payment processor. When you paste your license key, the app sends the key to Polar to confirm it's real. Periodic re-validation happens silently. Polar receives the key and your IP at the time of the request.
- Update checks — handled by Sparkle, the standard macOS auto-update framework. The app fetches an XML appcast from a CDN to see if a newer version exists. The CDN sees your IP and the app version you're on.
That's the entire network surface of the app.
What the website collects
- Google Analytics 4 for page views, referrers, country, and device class. We use this to figure out which posts and pages are working. GA4 sets cookies in your browser. Google's privacy policy covers what they do with the data.
- Cloudflare serves the site and sees standard request logs (IP, user agent, page) for bot/abuse mitigation.
- The website does not use any other tracking pixels, fingerprinting libraries, marketing tags, or session replay tools.
Cookies
Browser cookies on the website come from Google Analytics only. The app itself stores nothing in any browser. If you'd rather not be measured, your browser's "block third-party cookies" or any standard ad-blocker will stop GA4 from loading.
Third-party processors, in one list
- Polar — payments + license issuance + license validation
- Sparkle / Cloudflare R2 — auto-updates (appcast + .dmg delivery)
- Cloudflare Pages — website hosting and CDN
- Google Analytics 4 — website analytics only (not in the app)
That is the complete list. If we add anything, this page is updated and the change is mentioned in the changelog.
Your rights
You can request that we delete your purchase record (which removes your ability to use the license) by emailing [email protected]. Polar holds the order data; we'll forward the deletion request to them. GDPR and CCPA both apply to the extent the data exists, but for most users the only personal data we have is your email address from the Polar order.
Refunds
Email us within 14 days of purchase for a full refund. No forms, no questionnaire, no guilt trip.
Changes to this policy
If we ever change what's collected, the "Last updated" date at the top of this page changes too, and we mention it in the next release notes. We won't quietly start collecting things.
Contact
Questions, complaints, or bug reports — [email protected].