Known waters

Privacy

Last updated 2026-07-15

The short version: Runbay runs on your Mac, keeps your data on your Mac, and phones home for exactly two things — checking your license and checking for updates. No telemetry, no analytics, no account. The long version is below, in plain language.

1. The app collects no telemetry or analytics

Runbay has no telemetry and no analytics. Your containers, logs, stats, and the on-disk cache all live on your Mac and never leave it. There is no usage metering, no crash-reporting service, no product analytics, and no hosted agent compute on our side. The built-in MCP server listens on a local Unix socket or localhost TCP only.

If we ever add on-device diagnostics, it will be Apple's MetricKit (aggregated, on-device) and it will be opt-in — off unless you turn it on. We are not doing that today.

2. License validation (Polar)

If you activate a commercial license, the app validates it directly against Polar's public customer-portal API, using only a public organization identifier. That request carries no personal information and no account — it exists solely to check, activate, or deactivate a license key. There is no Runbay license server, no account database on our side, and nothing about your usage is reported anywhere. Free personal use makes no license call at all. Payments and invoicing are handled by Polar as Merchant of Record — see the licensing terms.

3. Update checks (Sparkle)

The app uses Sparkle to check for updates by fetching a static appcast (https://runbay.app/appcast.xml) from our website. Like any web request, that fetch carries your IP address and the current app version so Sparkle can tell whether a newer signed build exists. It carries no identifiers, no license data, and nothing about your containers. Updates are cryptographically signed; you can turn automatic checks off in Settings ▸ General.

4. This website

runbay.app serves static pages with no analytics, no cookies, and no third-party trackers — every page is self-contained, with no external fonts, CDNs, or beacons. Standard web-server request logs (IP, timestamp, requested URL) may exist at the hosting layer for security and reliability, as with any website; we do not build profiles from them. If we ever add site analytics, it will be a cookieless, privacy-preserving option that collects no personal data — and we will update this page before doing so.

5. Nothing is sold or shared

We do not sell, rent, or share your data with anyone. There is no third party receiving your data from the app, because the app sends no personal data anywhere in the first place.

Questions about any of this? Email [email protected]. If a claim here is ever wrong or out of date, that's a bug we want to fix.