Privacy Policy

How Miniowl protects your data and respects your privacy

Overview

This Privacy Policy explains how Journely LLC ("we," "our," or "Company") collects, uses, and protects your information when you use Miniowl, a macOS activity tracking application. We are based in Japan and operate under Japanese data protection laws.

Miniowl is designed with privacy at its core. Most data never leaves your Mac.

What Miniowl Can Access

Miniowl is designed with strict privacy boundaries. Here's what it can and cannot access:

What Miniowl CAN read:

  • App bundle ID and name - Which application is currently active
  • Window titles - The title of the focused window (via macOS Accessibility API)
  • Idle time - Seconds since your last keyboard/mouse input
  • Browser URLs - Current tab URL for whitelisted browsers (Chrome, Safari, Arc, Brave) via AppleScript
  • System events - Sleep/wake/lock/unlock notifications from macOS

What Miniowl CANNOT read:

  • Keystrokes - No global event monitoring or keystroke capture
  • Clipboard - No access to clipboard contents
  • Screen content - No screenshots or screen recording
  • File contents - Cannot read documents, files, or other app data
  • Page content - Cannot read webpage text, forms, or browsing history

Local Data Storage

By default, Miniowl stores all tracking data locally on your Mac at:

~/Library/Application Support/miniowl/

This data includes:

  • Daily activity files (YYYY-MM-DD.mow) in JSON format
  • Compressed historical data (YYYY-MM-DD.mow.gz)
  • Application state (state.json)

No data is sent to any server unless you explicitly opt-in to categorization features.

Optional Cloud Features

If you sign up for our categorization service (optional), Miniowl will send limited activity summaries to our servers every 20 minutes for AI-powered categorization.

Data sent to our servers (only if opted-in):

  • App bundle ID and display name
  • Window title (truncated to 120 characters)
  • URL host and first path segment (for browsers, truncated to 120 characters)
  • Duration of each activity within 20-minute windows
  • Your timezone

We process this data using:

  • Anthropic Claude API for activity categorization
  • Our own servers hosted in Japan for data processing

We do NOT send: Full URLs, page content, file contents, keystrokes, clipboard data, or any data from outside the basic activity tracking.

Account Information

When you create an account, we collect:

  • Email address (via Google OAuth)
  • Basic Google profile information (name, profile picture)
  • Account creation and last login timestamps

We use Supabase for authentication and user management.

Data Retention

  • Local data: Stored indefinitely on your Mac until you delete it
  • Account data: Retained while your account is active
  • Activity summaries: Retained for categorization and service improvement

Your Rights

You have the right to:

  • Access your personal data
  • Correct or update your information
  • Delete your account and associated data
  • Export your data
  • Opt-out of cloud categorization at any time

Age Requirement

You must be at least 18 years old to use Miniowl.

Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or your data, contact us:

Journely LLC
Email: privacy@miniowl.me
Address: Tokyo, Japan

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new policy on this page and updating the "Last updated" date.

Last updated: April 24, 2026