Privacy

Last updated 15 September 2026

The short version: GreatBar has no backend, no account of its own and no telemetry. What you put in it, and what the pages you open in it leave behind, stays on your Mac.

What the app keeps, and where

GreatBar keeps your shortcuts, your bars and the names of your sessions in a file of its own, inside the app’s container. A file or a folder you add is kept as a security-scoped bookmark the system hands out rather than as a path, which is also what lets a sandboxed app open it again later. Settings live in macOS user defaults. Delete the container and the app starts empty. Nothing is sent to us; there is nowhere to send it.

The pages you open in it

A link that opens in GreatBar is a web view, so it behaves like a browser tab: the site sees the request, and its cookies and local data are kept on your Mac by WebKit. Each session is a data store of its own, so one account’s logins are not readable by another. A link that browses privately keeps nothing at all, and closing its panel or window ends it. Deleting a session deletes its data with it, and an account’s own screen has one button that clears the lot.

GreatBar does not read the contents of the pages you open, and keeps no history of where you went. What it keeps about a link is what you typed into it: the address, the name, the icon, and the choices in its editor.

What the app sends over the network

• The sites you open. A page you open in GreatBar loads from that site, as it would in any browser. Nothing about it passes through us.
• A site’s own icon, once. A web link with no icon of its own fetches the site’s favicon the first time it needs one, and keeps it. That request goes to that site.
• An update check. Once a day GreatBar fetches a small file from this site listing the latest version. That request tells our hosting provider your IP address and the app’s user agent, as any download would. Automatic checks can be turned off in Settings.
• Feedback, when you send it. Send Feedback in About opens a Google Form in your browser with the app’s version and macOS’s filled in; what you write there goes to Google Forms and then to us. Nothing is sent until you press Submit, and nothing about your shortcuts is included unless you type it.

That is the complete list. There is no analytics SDK, no crash reporter, no advertising identifier. The ad and tracker lists ship inside the app and are refreshed by updating the app, so blocking costs no request of its own. When a link into Slack needs your workspace’s id, that is read once from Slack’s own data on this Mac, not asked of Slack over the network.

What this website collects

This site uses Google Analytics to learn which pages are read, roughly where visitors come from and what they arrived on, so we know whether the words are doing their job. Google sets a cookie for it and receives the usual page-view data; it does not receive your IP address in a stored form (Analytics 4 drops it) and we send it nothing about you by name. If you would rather not be counted, a content blocker or your browser’s tracking protection stops it, and the site works exactly the same without it.

The video on the home page is hosted on YouTube. Until you press play, the page shows a still image served from this domain and nothing is requested from YouTube. When you press play, the player loads from youtube-nocookie.com; YouTube then receives your IP address and the usual request data, and may store data in your browser to play the video, under Google’s own privacy policy.

The fonts, scripts and images of the site itself come from this domain; the only third parties are Google, for the analytics above and for the feedback form, and YouTube, once you play the video. It is served by a hosting provider that keeps standard server logs (IP address, timestamp, requested file, user agent) to serve and protect it. We do not read them for anything else.

Your data rights

The app holds no personal data about you, and this site holds none by name: analytics is counts, and a feedback form holds only what you typed into it. If you want something you sent removed, or have a question, write to us.

Children

GreatBar is a utility with no accounts and no collected data; it is not directed at children.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. The terms the app is offered under are on the terms page.