Privacy Policy
Essentials is a local-first Safari extension. This document tells you exactly what data the app touches, where it lives, and what we — the developers — can and cannot see.
The short version
- The Essentials extension collects nothing. No analytics, no crash reporting, no remote logging. (This marketing site uses privacy-friendly analytics — see below.)
- Your essentials live on your Mac and, if you opt in, in your private iCloud storage container.
- iCloud sync runs through your Apple ID. We never receive a copy.
- The extension does not see the pages you browse. It only activates when you click its toolbar icon.
What is stored, and where
When you add a site to Essentials, the extension records the URL, a title (which you can edit), and the position in your grid. The app also stores your space metadata (name, two-letter label, color), your layout settings (rows, columns, click behavior), and a local cache of the favicons it has fetched. That data lives in:
- Safari's local extension storage on your Mac.
- If iCloud sync is enabled in Settings → Sync, your private iCloud storage container. We have no access to this container — only you do, through your Apple ID. Favicon images are kept locally only and are not synced.
We never receive a copy.
Browsing data
Essentials does not run scripts on the pages you visit and does not read page content,
cookies, or form data. It uses Safari's tabs API and broad host permission to
do three things: open or focus the tab matching an essential when you click it; show the
active or loaded state of each tile; and offer "Add current tab" and "Add to Essentials"
from Safari's right-click menu. None of this information leaves your Mac.
Network
The extension makes outbound requests for one purpose only: fetching favicons for sites you
add. It first tries the site itself; if that fails, it falls back to Google's public favicon
service at www.google.com/s2/favicons, which returns the icon Google has on
file for that domain. Both requests go directly from your Mac to those hosts — never through
our servers, because we do not run any.
App Store purchase
Apple processes the one-time purchase. The app does not read, store, or transmit your purchase receipt — Apple does not share it with us, and we do not ask for it. If you contact us at [email protected], we will see the email address you choose to write from — and only that.
Website analytics
This marketing site (essentialsforsafari.app) uses
Umami, a privacy-friendly analytics tool we
self-host on our own infrastructure. It does not set cookies, does not store IP addresses,
and does not track visitors across sites — we use it only to see which pages get traffic.
The Essentials extension itself does not load Umami or any other analytics.
Children
Essentials is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect data from them. Since we do not collect data at all, this is automatic.
Changes to this policy
If we ever change what the app does, we will update this page and note the change in the changelog. There is no mailing list for us to email; the extension is the contract.
Contact
Questions? Write to [email protected]. A real person will reply.