Privacy Policy

Clear, transparent, and developer-friendly. Your data stays on your Mac.

Last updated: June 7, 2026

Our Core Privacy Principle

Overtab is built with a simple, uncompromised promise: what happens on your Mac, stays on your Mac. The application operates entirely offline, has no network access capabilities built into its core binary, and does not transmit any information whatsoever.

Why We Require Permissions

To perform low-level window interactions, macOS requires explicit system consent. Overtab asks for two specific permissions, which are used as follows:

Accessibility Permission

This is required to capture when you press and release the standalone Option key using Event Taps. It is also used to shift window focus, bring applications to the front, and send window closing events via AppKit Accessibility APIs when you click the close button on cards. It does not log keystrokes, monitor active typing, or control your system for any other purpose.

Screen Recording Permission

This is required to fetch thumbnails of open windows so they can be drawn inside the GNOME-style Activities grid and Tab Switcher HUD. Overtab retrieves these image buffers directly in memory using macOS Screen Capture APIs. No video or image files are ever written to disk or saved. If this permission is denied, Overtab falls back to displaying app icons and names rather than card previews.

Telemetry and Analytics

We do not track you.

  • No usage tracking or feature analytics.
  • No cookie tracking or online identifier storage.
  • No crash reports or diagnostic data are sent over the network (macOS handles local crash logs, which remain local).

Open Source Code Audits

Because Overtab is open source, its entire operation is completely transparent. You can audit the Swift package source code at any time to verify that no network frameworks, external telemetry hooks, or background data collection agents are present:

View Source Repository on GitHub

Changes to This Policy

Since Overtab collects no data, any future updates to this privacy policy will be made solely to reflect changes in macOS permission structures or additional local system integrations. All future versions will continue to operate under a zero-telemetry, local-only architectural design.

If you have any questions or concerns about Overtab's privacy structure, feel free to inspect the codebase or open an issue on the GitHub Releases repository.