Privacy policy

The short version

• The app has no account, no analytics and no tracking, and there is no NotchDesk server that holds your data.
• Your clipboard history, screenshots and the text recognized in them are stored on your Mac. They only go further if you turn on iCloud sync (to your own iCloud Drive), or if you connect an AI assistant through the automation server, which can read the clips you allow (never secret ones) and pass them to its provider.
• Your calendar is read from macOS to show it to you. NotchDesk doesn’t upload it. Time to leave, if you turn it on, sends an event’s address to Apple Maps, and an AI assistant you connect can read upcoming events if you allow it.
• Out of the box, the app makes these network requests: license activation and checks with Dodo Payments, a daily check for updates on notchdesk.com, and album art while Spotify is playing.
• Weather, Time to leave and iCloud sync add their own requests, described below, only once you turn them on. Currency conversion in the calculator downloads exchange rates from frankfurter.app, only when you convert a currency. The automation server and MCP server for AI assistants are off by default and only reachable from your Mac.
• The tools added in 1.4 work on your Mac: Quick Notes, screen captures and the text read from them, the Downloads list, dictionary lookups and the Mirror tab’s camera picture don’t leave it.
• Payments are handled by Dodo Payments, the merchant of record, under its own privacy policy. Your card details never reach NotchDesk.
• This website uses Google Analytics to count visits. It sets cookies only if you allow them, never sees your email address, and you can change your choice at any time: see Website analytics.

NotchDesk is made by Synthcoder (“we”, “us”). If you have a question about this policy, email support@notchdesk.com.

What stays on your Mac

NotchDesk stores its data in your user account, in ~/Library/Application Support/NotchDesk, and in the app’s macOS preferences. Nothing in this section is uploaded anywhere, except clipboard history you choose to sync (see What leaves your Mac) and what you let a connected AI assistant read (see Automation and AI assistants).

• Clipboard history: the text, links, code, colors, images and screenshots you copy, references to files you copy, the name of the app each clip came from, when it was copied, any pins, categories and reminders you add, and the meeting that was in progress when you copied it.
• Recognized text. Text in screenshots and images is recognized on your Mac with Apple’s Vision framework so you can search it. The images are not sent anywhere for this.
• Screenshots. If you leave screenshot capture on, NotchDesk adds new screenshots from your screenshot folder to your history.
• Calendar events and reminders. NotchDesk reads upcoming events and reminders due today from macOS (including iCloud, Google, Exchange and other accounts you’ve added to macOS) to show them. It doesn’t keep its own copy of your calendar. When you ask it to, with quick add, Add to Calendar or the focus timer’s optional calendar block, it saves an event or reminder through macOS, which syncs it with your account like any other.
• Things you create in NotchDesk: meeting notes, snippets, the file shelf list (and copies of files, if you turn on copy mode), focus statistics, and your world clocks, availability and other settings.
• Quick Notes, in notes.json in that folder. The file can only be read by your macOS user account (permissions 0600). Exporting writes Markdown files only to a folder you pick.
• The other tools’ data: your countdowns, the color palette, timers and alarms, calculator history, recent dictionary lookups (never secret clips; you can turn this off) and pinned shortcuts, in that folder or the app’s preferences. Screen captures you send to the file shelf are kept in a Screen Captures folder there, and deleted later, once they’re no longer on the shelf.
• Settings, the trial start date and your license (your key and the activation ID Dodo Payments returns). The license file, meeting notes and Quick Notes can only be read by your macOS user account.

What NotchDesk never records

• Copies that password managers and other apps mark as concealed or temporary (the org.nspasteboard.ConcealedType and TransientType markers).
• Anything copied in apps on the exclusion list. By default it includes 1Password, Bitwarden, Apple Passwords, Keychain Access, Dashlane, LastPass, KeePassXC, Proton Pass and System Settings. You can add or remove apps in Settings.
• Anything at all while capture is paused or clipboard history is turned off.

Clips that look like secrets (card numbers, one-time codes, API keys and tokens, private keys and password-like text) are recorded, but masked everywhere and deleted automatically after a delay you choose, 10 minutes by default, unless you pin them. Detection runs on your Mac and is a best guess, so you can also mark clips as secret yourself. When you mark a clip “Not a Secret”, NotchDesk remembers a fingerprint (a hash) of it, never the text.

You also choose how many clips to keep (100 to 5,000), and you can set retention rules that delete clips after a time you pick, by type or by app. Older clips are removed automatically, except ones you’ve pinned, categorized, set a reminder on or combined into a multi-clip.

Features that stay on your Mac

• Camera check. The mirror in the meeting alert shows your camera live, only after you switch on Check camera. Nothing is recorded, saved or sent, and the camera turns off when the alert closes.
• Mirror tab. A live preview from your camera, only while the Mirror tab is open. The camera turns off when the notch closes, you switch tabs or the screen locks. The picture never leaves your Mac and is never recorded or saved.
• Screen Tools. When you select an area, macOS’s own screenshot tool writes it to a temporary file in NotchDesk’s folder, which is deleted as soon as it’s been read (and any left over are deleted at the next launch). Capture area copies the image to your clipboard, and to your clipboard history if that’s on. Copy text and Scan QR use Apple’s Vision framework on your Mac; nothing is uploaded, and the text or code they find is copied without being added to your clipboard history.
• Downloads. NotchDesk watches your Downloads folder (or the folder you choose) on your Mac. It reads file names and metadata only: size, dates and the web address your browser recorded as the file’s source. Turn off “Show the site each file came from” to stop it reading that address. Previews come from macOS Quick Look, on your Mac. Nothing about your downloads is sent anywhere.
• Dictionary & Translate. Definitions come from the dictionaries built into macOS and work offline. Translate (macOS 15 and later) uses Apple’s Translation framework, which translates on your Mac; if a language isn’t installed yet, macOS downloads it from Apple. On macOS 14, Translate offers to open your text in a translation app or in Google Translate in your browser, and sends nothing until you click.
• System Monitor, Quick Toggles and break reminders. System Monitor reads CPU, memory, network, disk and battery figures from macOS while it’s on screen. Quick Toggles change settings on your Mac (Dark Mode through System Events, desktop icons and hidden files through Finder’s preferences). Break reminders only check how long it’s been since you last used the keyboard or mouse, never what you typed. None of them send anything.
• Shortcuts Launcher. Runs shortcuts from your Shortcuts app with macOS’s shortcuts command. Text you give a shortcut is written to a temporary file only you can read and deleted when the run ends. What a shortcut does with it, including any network requests, is up to that shortcut.
• Microphone and camera dot. During a video meeting, NotchDesk checks whether your microphone or camera is in use, to show a red dot. It never listens to or records audio or video.
• Snippets. With expansion on, NotchDesk watches the keys you type so it can spot an abbreviation such as ;late. It keeps only the last few characters in memory, on your Mac, and never stores or sends what you type. It doesn’t expand in password fields, while secure input is on, or in apps you’ve excluded.
• Now Playing. NotchDesk reads what’s playing on your Mac: from Music or Spotify, and on macOS before 15.4 from any app that reports to macOS’s Now Playing, such as a browser. The only network request it makes for this is downloading Spotify’s album art (see below).
• Headphones. Connect notices and battery levels come from your Mac’s own Bluetooth information.
• Siri & Shortcuts. The voice shortcuts pass NotchDesk only the command you ran, as a notchdesk:// link, plus, for “Add to my calendar”, the text you dictate. Spoken answers are made on your Mac with Apple’s speech synthesizer (AVSpeechSynthesizer), and NotchDesk sends nothing extra anywhere. Understanding what you say is Siri’s job, under Apple’s privacy policy.
• Add to Calendar. NotchDesk looks for dates and times in text you copy (not secret clips) to suggest an event. This happens on your Mac; nothing is sent. You can turn suggestions off in Settings.
• Privacy curtain (on automatically during video meetings) and hiding from screen capture. These only change what NotchDesk shows on screen. On macOS 15 and later, some recording apps can still capture NotchDesk’s windows, so the curtain is the safer choice when you share your screen.

What leaves your Mac

Out of the box, NotchDesk connects to the internet for three things. None of these requests include your clipboard, your calendar or anything you’ve copied. The tools added in 1.4 make no requests of their own, except exchange rates when you convert a currency (below).

1. License activation and checks (Dodo Payments)

When you activate a NotchDesk license, the app sends your license key and your Mac’s name to the public license API of Dodo Payments (live.dodopayments.com), which issued the key. The name makes it easier to tell your Macs apart, for example when we help you free a seat. About once a week the app sends the key and its activation ID to check the license is still valid, for example that it hasn’t been refunded. When you click Deactivate this Mac, the key and activation ID are sent to free the seat. No payment details are part of any of these requests. If your Mac is offline, these checks are skipped and your license keeps working. During the free trial no license requests are made. Dodo Payments handles these requests under its own privacy policy.

2. Update check (notchdesk.com)

Shortly after launch and then about once a day, NotchDesk downloads https://notchdesk.com/version.json to see whether a newer version is available. The request carries no identifier for you or your Mac. Like any web request, it reveals your IP address and a standard user agent to our web host, which may keep them briefly in ordinary server logs. We don’t use those logs to identify or track anyone.

3. Album art (Spotify)

While Spotify is playing and Now Playing is on, NotchDesk downloads the album art from the web address Spotify gives it. Like any web request, that reveals your IP address to the server that hosts the image. Music’s artwork comes from the Music app itself. Turn off Now Playing in Settings to stop this.

Only when you convert a currency

Exchange rates (frankfurter.app). When you convert between currencies in the Calculator, NotchDesk downloads the European Central Bank’s reference rates from api.frankfurter.app. The request contains only your default currency’s code, such as USD, never the amounts or what you typed, and like any web request it reveals your IP address to that server. Rates are kept on your Mac for 12 hours and used offline. No request is made unless you convert a currency. Turn off Currency conversion in Settings → Calculator to stop it completely.

Only if you turn them on

These features are off until you switch them on in Settings, and you can switch them off again at any time.

• Weather (Open-Meteo). NotchDesk sends your approximate location, rounded to about 1 km, to api.open-meteo.com to get the forecast, about every 30 minutes and when you move a fair distance. If you type a city instead of sharing your location, that name is looked up with Open-Meteo’s geocoding service (geocoding-api.open-meteo.com). To show the name of the place you’re in, macOS looks it up with Apple. No account or identifier is sent. The last forecast is kept on your Mac for a few hours.
• Time to leave (Apple Maps). For today’s events with a street address, NotchDesk asks Apple Maps (MapKit) for the travel time from your current location to the event’s address, about every 15 minutes in the 3 hours before the event. The address is turned into a map location with Apple’s geocoder. Apple handles these requests under its own privacy policy. Nothing else about the event is sent.
• Sync between Macs (iCloud Drive). NotchDesk writes your clipboard history to a NotchDesk folder in your own iCloud Drive, one file per Mac plus images, and reads the files your other Macs write there. Each Mac’s file also records when each clip was copied, the app it came from, whether it’s pinned, any note on it and the text recognized in its image, plus the Mac’s name and an ID derived (hashed) from its hardware, so your Macs can tell each other apart. Secret clips, clips set to expire, file clips and clips from excluded apps are never written. Apple stores and transfers these files as part of iCloud Drive; we never see them. Removing this Mac’s data in Settings deletes its file from iCloud Drive.

Links you open

When you click Join, open a link, open a location in Maps or open an event in Calendar, NotchDesk hands that link to the relevant app or website. With join routing, it opens the link in the app or browser you chose, and for Google Meet it may add the email address of the calendar’s Google account so Meet opens signed in to it. AirDrop and Share send files only to the people and apps you pick. The same goes for a link you open from a scanned QR code or a download’s source page, and for Translate on macOS 14, which opens Google Translate in your browser when you click it. What happens next is covered by that service’s own privacy policy.

NotchDesk has no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising and no third-party tracking code.

Automation and AI assistants

Automation is off by default.

• Local server. When you turn it on, NotchDesk listens on a Unix socket in its Application Support folder that only your macOS user account can open. It isn’t reachable over the network. It has four kinds of access: read clips, add clips, read calendar events and show activities in the notch. All four start switched on when you turn the server on, and you can switch off any of them. It never returns the text of clips marked secret, and refuses to read clipboard history while the privacy curtain is on.
• Command-line tool and MCP server. The notchdesk command and the MCP server for AI assistants talk to that local server, so they can only do what you’ve allowed.
• AI assistants. If you connect an AI assistant, whatever it reads through NotchDesk (for example a clip or your upcoming events) goes to that assistant, and from there it may be sent to the assistant’s provider. That’s covered by the assistant’s own privacy policy, so only connect tools you trust, and only allow what they need.
• URL actions. A separate switch, also off by default, lets notchdesk:// links show activities and toasts or add clips. Any app or web page can open such a link (browsers ask first), so leave it off unless you use it.
• Links for the tools. Several tools added in 1.4 have notchdesk:// links that work out of the box, each with its own switch in that tool’s Settings pane: Quick Notes links can add text to your notes, Calculator links can put a result on your clipboard, and Quick Toggles links can lock the screen, sleep the display or restart Finder. They act only on your Mac and send nothing anywhere, but any app or web page can open them, so turn off the ones you don’t use.

macOS permissions

macOS asks you before NotchDesk can use any of these, and NotchDesk asks only when a feature needs it. You can change your answer at any time in System Settings → Privacy & Security.

Buying a NotchDesk license

NotchDesk licenses are sold by Synthcoder through Dodo Payments, which acts as merchant of record. Dodo Payments collects your name, email address, billing address or country and payment details to process the payment, calculate and collect VAT, GST or sales tax, send your receipt and license key, and prevent fraud. It handles that data under its own privacy policy. Your card details go to Dodo Payments and its payment processors only; they never reach NotchDesk or us.

We receive the order details Dodo Payments shares with sellers, such as your name, email address, country, what you bought and your license key, along with the names of the Macs you activate. We use them only to provide your license, refunds and support, and to meet our legal and tax obligations.

The launch waitlist

Before NotchDesk launches, you can join a waitlist on this site to get one email when it’s available.

• What we keep: your email address, when you joined, a short code for your share link and who referred you (if you joined through someone’s link), where you came from (a campaign tag like utm_source and the referring website’s domain), and a one-way hash of your IP address used only to stop automated sign-ups. We don’t keep your IP address itself.
• What we send: a confirmation right after you join and an invitation when NotchDesk launches. Nothing else, and never to anyone else. Emails are sent from hello@notchdesk.com through our web host’s mail server.
• Where it’s kept: in a database on our web host’s server, outside the public website, reachable only by us.
• Leaving: every email has an unsubscribe link, or write to hello@notchdesk.com. We delete the waitlist after launch invitations have gone out, except unsubscribe records, which we keep so we never email you again.

Emailing us

If you email support@notchdesk.com, we use your email address and what you write to answer you. We keep the conversation for as long as it’s useful for supporting you, and delete it on request.

This website

• Website analytics: notchdesk.com uses Google Analytics 4, a service of Google, to count visits and see which pages and buttons help people. Until you choose, it runs without cookies, so it can’t recognize you from one visit to the next. If you click Allow on the cookie notice, it sets its own cookies (named _ga) to tell return visits apart. If you click No thanks, Google Analytics stops loading on later pages and visits. Browsers that send Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track never load it at all. It receives the page you’re on and the page you came from, the buttons and links you use (such as joining the waitlist or a share button), your device and browser type, and an approximate location worked out from your IP address, which Google Analytics doesn’t store. It never receives your email address, and the referral code in waitlist share links is removed before the data is stored. Google signals and ad personalization are off, the data is not used for advertising, and Google Analytics keeps it for 2 months. Your choice is remembered in this browser only.
• There are no tracking pixels or advertising on this site.
• It uses your device’s built-in fonts, so no font services are contacted.
• Buy buttons are plain links to the Dodo Payments checkout at checkout.dodopayments.com. The site loads nothing from Dodo Payments until you click one. Once you’re on the checkout, Dodo Payments’ own terms and privacy policy apply, and its checkout may use cookies of its own. After you pay, it sends you back to a thank-you page on notchdesk.com, where the website analytics above apply as on any other page.
• The interactive notch and Quick Paste demos on the home page run entirely in your browser. If you copy text on the page, the demos react to it, but that text is never stored or sent anywhere, and the page never reads your clipboard.
• Joining the waitlist sends the email address you type to notchdesk.com/api/, as described in The launch waitlist. The page also asks that address how many people are on the list.
• To show the current version and download checksum, pages load /version.json from notchdesk.com itself, the same small file the app checks for updates.
• On a phone, tablet or PC, the Send to my Mac button opens your device’s own share sheet with the address of this site. If sharing isn’t available, it copies the address to your clipboard when you click it, and nothing else.
• Our web host may keep standard server logs (IP address, user agent, page requested) for security and reliability.

Deleting your data

• Clipboard history: in NotchDesk Settings, choose Clear history (pinned and categorized clips are kept), or delete clips individually in the Library.
• Secrets and old clips: in Settings → Privacy, set how soon secrets are deleted and add retention rules. The storage meter there can delete images older than 30 days and clear unpinned screenshots.
• Synced clips: in Settings → Sync & Weather, click Remove This Mac’s Data… to delete this Mac’s file from iCloud Drive, or delete the NotchDesk folder in iCloud Drive yourself. Clips already brought into another Mac’s history stay there until you delete them on that Mac.
• Everything NotchDesk stored: quit NotchDesk, delete the app, delete the folder ~/Library/Application Support/NotchDesk (it also holds meeting notes, Quick Notes, snippets, countdowns, the color palette, the file shelf, screen captures kept for it and focus statistics), and run defaults delete com.rexotech.NotchDesk in Terminal to remove its settings. If you installed the command-line tool, delete ~/.local/bin/notchdesk.
• The waitlist: click Unsubscribe in any waitlist email, or email us to have your entry deleted completely.
• Purchase records: email us and we’ll help, including with requests to Dodo Payments. Some records must be kept for tax law.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct or delete personal data we hold about you, and to complain to your data protection authority. Email us to use them.

Changes and contact

NotchDesk isn’t directed at children under 13. If this policy changes, we’ll update this page and the date at the top. If a change affects what leaves your Mac, we’ll also mention it in the changelog.

Questions? Email support@notchdesk.com.