Privacy
Last updated: 6 November 2026
In short
UsefulNotch runs on your Mac. We have no servers receiving your data, ask for no account and collect no usage analytics. This website uses no cookies or analytics tools.
Data controller
The controller is UsefulNotch, reachable at support@usefulnotch.com. For purchases, Polar Software Inc. processes payment data as an independent controller (see “Purchases”).
Data that stays on your Mac
Settings, Tray contents, notifications read from Notification Center, events, reminders, contacts, microphone and camera state are used only on your Mac and are never sent to anyone, not even to us.
Weather
If the Weather page is on, your approximate location (about 3 km) or the city you choose is sent to Apple (WeatherKit) to get the forecast, at most about once an hour.
Music
For Spotify, the artwork Spotify points to is downloaded. For Apple Music, only when Music provides none, title and artist are looked up in Apple’s public catalogue. If you turn on animated artwork, the album is looked up in the Apple Music catalogue.
Optional features
AI limits (off by default): the app uses the sign-in Claude Code and Cursor already saved on your Mac to ask Anthropic and Cursor for your account limits; those credentials never leave the Mac except towards the service they belong to. Time to leave: Apple Maps computes the travel time to the event’s location.
Calls
If you turn on the caller’s name, with Screen Recording the app only looks at the incoming call’s box, recognises the text on your Mac and neither keeps nor sends anything.
Licence and updates
When you activate the licence, and then every few days, the key and the Mac’s name are sent to Polar to check it. Once a day the app reads the list of updates and of features paused for compatibility from usefulnotch.com: the server only sees the IP address and the app version.
Crash reports
If the app quits unexpectedly, on the next launch it asks whether to send us the report macOS wrote. Mail opens with the report attached: you read it and decide whether to send it.
Purchases
Payment is handled by Polar Software Inc., the authorised reseller (merchant of record), which processes payment and billing data under its own policy (polar.sh/legal/privacy). From Polar we only receive what is needed to manage your licence: name, e-mail, country, order, key and activated Macs.
Legal bases and retention
We process purchase and licence data to perform the contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR) and keep it while the licence is active and for as long as tax law requires. We keep support e-mails as long as needed to answer you.
Your rights
You can ask us at any time for access, rectification, erasure, restriction or portability of your data, and object to its processing, by writing to support@usefulnotch.com. You can also lodge a complaint with your data protection authority (in Italy, the Garante per la protezione dei dati personali).