What Notchpals knows about you, and what it never sees

The short answer: Notchpals has no account and no analytics. To time its reminders it reads a handful of things on your Mac, such as the time, how long since you last touched the keyboard or mouse, and whether the microphone or camera is in use, and those stay on the Mac. It goes online for four things only: downloading characters, checking your license, recording which characters you own, and checking for updates once a day.

The rest of this post goes through each item, why it is needed, and what Notchpals does not read. With an app that sits at the top of your screen all day, the second list matters as much as the first.

No account, no analytics

You don't sign up or log in to use Notchpals, and there is no profile to fill in. The app has no analytics either, so it does not report how often you press Later, which characters you poke, or when you use your Mac.

That shapes a few other things. There are no streaks, stats or history screens. And Notchpals never knows whether you actually drank the water or stood up. It takes your Done on trust.

What it reads on your Mac, and why

Every reminder needs a reason to come now and not at some other time. These are the signals Notchpals uses to decide, and all of them stay on the Mac.

A few of these deserve a closer look.

Keyboard and mouse

Notchpals knows how long it has been since you last pressed a key or moved the mouse. It does not know which keys. That one number is how it tells that you have stepped away (no input for 2 minutes), how it stops the clock while you are gone, and how the host knows to say welcome back after 15 minutes or more away.

Microphone and camera

It checks whether the mic or camera is in use, so that the crew stays quiet on calls. The answer it gets is a yes or a no. The sound and the picture go to whatever app is using them, never to Notchpals.

The app in front

The scrolling check comes after 20 minutes in a row in one of a fixed set of apps (Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Steam, Apple TV and Apple News), and only if Bolt, the Focus character, is in your crew. Browsers are not on the list, and the list cannot be edited. Notchpals notes which app is in front, and that is all this check needs. It never sees what is inside the app. Where the check fits in breaking a scrolling habit is covered in doomscrolling at work.

Your Mac's health

Whichever Tech care character you have, Juice or Gumdrop, needs the battery level and whether the Mac is charging, how long since the last restart, and how much free space the startup disk has. That is how a battery line comes below 20 percent and not on the charger, and a restart nudge only after a week without one.

Your calendar

Only Schedule characters (Ticky, Biscuit and Honey) use the calendar, and only if you allow it. Notchpals asks during setup, or you can turn it on later in Notchpals Settings > General > Calendar with "Allow Calendar access". Either way, macOS shows its usual permission prompt. You can say no and everything else works the same way.

If you do allow it, Notchpals reads one thing: when your next meeting starts. Never the title, the people or the notes. Events you declined, cancelled events and all-day events are left out. That start time is enough to peek out 3 to 10 minutes before a meeting, which is the only reason it is there.

Bear in mind that the switch macOS offers is broader than what Notchpals uses, because macOS has no setting for "start times only". The limit is in Notchpals itself. You can turn the access off again at any time in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Calendars.

What it never sees

To put the explicit limits in one place:

• What you type or click. Only how long ago you last did.
• What the microphone or camera hear or see. Only whether they are in use.
• Meeting titles, attendees or notes. Only when the next meeting starts.
• What you drank, ate or did. Nothing tracks it. Notchpals only sees your Done.

The same goes for the characters' questions. If Kapi, the Self-care capybara, is in your crew, it asks how you are once a day, some time between 11 AM and 5 PM:

KapiHow are you feeling, really? Not busy. Not fine. The real answer.

The answer stays with you. There is nowhere to type it, only Later and Done, and neither one is reported anywhere.

When it goes online

Notchpals connects to the internet for four reasons:

1. To download characters for your crew.
2. To check your license. The app confirms your license key is valid. One key works on up to 3 Macs.
3. To record the characters you own, so there is a record of which ones you have bought.
4. To check for updates. Once a day.

That is the whole list. The signals in the table above stay on the Mac, where they decide when a character visits. None of them is sent.

Check it for yourself

You don't have to take any app's word for what it does. Two Apple tools help:

• System Settings > Privacy & Security. Each section, such as Calendars, lists the apps that have asked for that kind of access, with a switch for each. It is worth a look now and then for every app on your Mac, not only this one.
• Activity Monitor. Open it from Applications > Utilities and click the Network tab. The Sent Bytes and Rcvd Bytes columns show how much each running app has sent and received. It is a quick way to sanity check anything that lives in your menu bar.

For how the quiet rules use these signals in practice, on calls, in full screen and while you are away, see reminders that know when not to remind you.