The short version
- DeskMate does not collect, transmit or sell any personal information.
- No analytics, no advertising, no tracking, no accounts.
- Your settings and reminders are stored only on your Mac.
- Purchases are handled by Apple. We never see your name, Apple Account or payment details.
What we collect
Nothing. DeskMate contains no analytics, advertising, crash-reporting or tracking code, and it has no accounts or sign-in. It does not send information about you, your Mac or how you use it to us or to anyone else. On the App Store this is declared as Data Not Collected.
In this policy, “DeskMate”, “we” and “us” mean the DeskMate app and its developer, Varun Chaudhary.
What stays on your Mac
DeskMate keeps a small amount of information in its own preferences, inside the app’s sandboxed container on your Mac (~/Library/Containers/com.deskmate.mac). None of it is uploaded anywhere.
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your settings | Whether the character is shown, size, world height, displays, personality, movement, cursor sensitivity, Reduce Motion, cobwebs, the showdown, launch at login. So your choices survive a restart. |
| Your reminders | The title you type, when it is due, how it repeats and whether it is snoozed or waiting. So he can deliver them on time. |
| Purchase status | Whether the unlock or trial is currently valid, and the date it was last checked. So DeskMate keeps working briefly while you are offline. It contains nothing that identifies you. |
You can remove all of it by deleting DeskMate and its container folder above.
Your cursor and your screen
So the character can react to you, DeskMate reads the current position of your mouse pointer while it is running. That is a coordinate on screen and nothing more. It is used only to animate the character in that moment. It is never recorded, stored or sent anywhere.
So the character can step off a display that a full-screen app has taken over, DeskMate reads the size, position and layer of the windows on screen and which app owns them. It never reads window titles or what is inside any window.
DeskMate does not read your keystrokes, does not monitor input in other apps, and does not capture, record or read the contents of your screen. It does not ask for Screen Recording, Accessibility or Input Monitoring permission.
Notifications
If you create reminders, macOS asks once whether DeskMate may post notifications. You can say no and still use the app. Notifications are scheduled locally on your Mac through the macOS notification system. They are not sent through any server of ours, and they contain only the reminder title you wrote. You can change this any time in System Settings › Notifications › DeskMate.
Purchases and the free trial
DeskMate’s free trial and its one-time unlock are in-app purchases sold through the App Store. When you start the trial, buy, restore, or when the app checks what you own, that exchange is between your Mac and Apple. Apple handles any payment and tells DeskMate only which purchases are valid and when they were made. DeskMate uses the trial’s start date to know when its three days are up.
We never receive your name, email address, Apple Account or payment details. Apple gives developers sales figures that do not identify individual customers. Apple’s handling of your purchase is covered by the Apple Privacy Policy.
Network use
DeskMate makes no network requests of its own. The only network traffic it causes is the App Store checking your purchases, which Apple’s StoreKit framework performs directly with Apple.
If you have chosen in macOS to share analytics with app developers, Apple may share crash reports and usage statistics with us in a form that does not identify you. That is an Apple feature you control in System Settings › Privacy & Security › Analytics & Improvements, and it is governed by Apple’s policy.
This website
This site sets no cookies, runs no analytics and has no forms that send data anywhere. The reminder demo on the home page runs entirely in your browser. Its fonts are served by Google Fonts, so your browser connects to Google to fetch them, as described in Google’s Privacy Policy. Our hosting provider may keep standard server logs, such as IP addresses, for security and reliability, under its own policy.
Children
DeskMate is rated 4+ and collects no information from anyone, including children under 13.
Your rights
Wherever you live, including under the GDPR and the CCPA, you have rights to access, correct and delete personal data held about you. Because we hold none, there is nothing to hand over or erase, but you are welcome to ask us and we will answer.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted on this page with a new effective date. If DeskMate ever began collecting anything, this page would say exactly what, before any update that did so.