Privacy

Only what it needs to tell work from a detour:

• The app name. For example “Safari” or “Xcode”.
• The window title. For example “SwiftUI MenuBarExtra not updating – Stack Overflow”. It’s cleaned before it leaves your Mac (see below).
• Your task. The line you typed, like “Fix menu bar bug”.

It gets these through one macOS permission, Accessibility. It never asks for Screen Recording or Input Monitoring.

• Your screen. No screenshots, ever, and no Screen Recording permission.
• Page and file contents. It never opens a page or a document.
• Keystrokes. No Input Monitoring permission.
• Full web addresses. Only the title a browser shows.
• Apps on your never-send list. They’re skipped before anything is judged.

Your task, the app name, the cleaned window title

Your Mac → our server → the AI model, once per new window. Not stored on our server.

Verdict cache

Your Mac only: a hash and a verdict, kept 7 days.

Focus time and other stats

Your Mac only.

“It’s for the task” choices

Your Mac only.

License key, a device hash, a daily check counter

Our server, to validate your license and cap abuse.

Card and payment details

Polar only. We never see your card.

• Personal details are removed. Email addresses, long numbers and token-like strings are stripped from the title on your Mac.
• Some apps are never judged. The never-send list ships with password managers, banking apps and private browser windows (where they can be detected), and you can edit it.
• You can see every check. The Recent checks view lists each title that was sent and the answer that came back.

Our server passes your task, the app name and the cleaned title to a third-party AI model for one judgment. It keeps only anonymous counters: how many checks, never what was checked.

We’ll name the AI provider and its data-retention terms on this page before launch, and choose a zero-retention option wherever one is offered.

If you opt in, the app sends anonymous counts that help us tune it: questions shown, “It’s for the task” taps, returns to the task, and your strictness level. Never titles, never tasks.

FocusNod has no accounts, no remote dashboard and no way to see anyone else’s data. Stats stay on the Mac they came from.

• No analytics scripts, no ad pixels and no tracking cookies.
• Server logs. Like any web server, ours may keep standard access logs (IP address, page, browser, referring page) for up to 30 days, for security and to count visits in total.
• Search engines and AI assistants. We count visits from crawlers by name, and visits that arrive from an AI assistant by the referring site (for example chatgpt.com), as daily totals per page. No IP addresses, no cookies, nothing about you.
• The waitlist stores your email, your optional answer about what pulls you away, where you came from (for example “producthunt”) and when you joined. We use it only for the launch email and, if you pre-ordered, for messages about your order.
• Pre-orders are processed by Polar, our merchant of record. Polar tells us your email, what you bought, the discount used and whether it was refunded.

• Checks: not stored on our server at all.
• The verdict cache: 7 days, on your Mac.
• Server logs: up to 30 days.
• Waitlist and order records: until you ask us to delete them.

You can ask us to show, correct or delete everything we hold about you, or take you off the waitlist, by writing to hello@focusnod.com. We do it within 30 days, usually the same week, and it costs nothing.

FocusNod is made by DRISH LABS (drishlabs.com), which is responsible for this data. We never sell it or share it for anyone’s marketing.

When anything of substance changes, the effective date at the top changes with it.