Privacy Policy

Pulse is a personal wellness and productivity application. Its sole purpose is to help you understand how you spend your time across your Mac and iPhone so you can build better focus habits. Pulse is built with a privacy-first, on-device architecture. We do not operate servers, do not collect telemetry, and have no access to your data.

1. Purpose and Intended Use

Pulse exists to help individuals improve their personal productivity and digital wellbeing. The application provides focus scoring, work session detection, screen time awareness, and distraction tracking. Pulse is designed exclusively for personal self-improvement use by the device owner. It is not a surveillance tool, employee monitoring tool, or parental control application.

2. What Data Pulse Collects on macOS

The Pulse macOS application captures the following data locally on your Mac to provide productivity insights:

• Active application names, bundle identifiers, and window titles — used to identify what you are working on and classify activity into categories (deep work, communication, browsing, learning). This data is read from the macOS window server and Accessibility API and never leaves your device.
• Screen content via on-device optical character recognition (OCR) — Pulse periodically captures a screenshot and extracts visible text using Apple's Vision framework, entirely on-device. OCR text is used to detect meaningful workflow changes and enrich session context. Screenshots are stored locally and automatically rotated after a configurable retention count (default: 50).
• Accessibility tree text — for supported applications (web browsers, code editors, chat apps), Pulse reads visible interface text and the currently focused element via the macOS Accessibility API.
• Browser URLs and tab titles — for supported browsers, Pulse captures the active tab URL and title to classify web-based activity. URLs matching configurable privacy filters (banking sites, health portals, sensitive domains) are automatically excluded from capture.
• Periodic screenshots — stored as image files on your local filesystem for your personal reference only. Older screenshots are automatically deleted. Screenshots are never transmitted, uploaded, or included in any database.
• System idle time — time since last keyboard or mouse input, used to distinguish active work from inactive periods. Idle time is excluded from focus score calculations.
• Computed session metrics — focus scores, session durations, app usage statistics, and daily/weekly summaries are derived entirely from the data above using on-device algorithms.

3. What Data the Pulse iOS Companion Collects

The Pulse iOS companion is a personal wellness tool that uses Apple's Screen Time API (DeviceActivityFramework, FamilyControls, and ManagedSettings) to help you understand and manage your phone usage during work hours.

• Opaque application tokens only — Pulse uses Apple's Screen Time API, which provides cryptographically opaque tokens to represent applications and websites. Pulse never receives, decodes, stores, or transmits the actual names, bundle identifiers, or URLs of apps or websites you use on your iPhone.
• Aggregate usage duration thresholds — Pulse registers usage thresholds through Apple's DeviceActivityMonitor extension to detect when you exceed configured screen time limits.
• Phone pickup events — Pulse records when and how often you pick up your phone during designated work hours.
• User-selected app categories for monitoring — you choose which categories of apps to include in focus tracking. Pulse cannot monitor apps or categories you have not explicitly selected.
• Session interruption events — when phone usage occurs during an active focus session on your Mac, Pulse records the interruption duration to calculate its impact on your productivity.

All Screen Time data processing happens entirely on your iPhone within Apple's sandboxed extension environment. The DeviceActivityMonitor extension runs in a restricted 6 MB sandbox that cannot make network requests, cannot access shared storage, and cannot transmit data off-device.

4. Where Your Data Is Stored

All data collected by Pulse is stored locally on your devices:

• macOS data is stored in a SQLite database on your local filesystem. No cloud backup or sync is performed.
• iOS Screen Time data remains within the app's sandboxed container on your iPhone. Aggregate focus metrics may be synced to the macOS app over your local network.
• Screenshots are stored as image files on your Mac's local filesystem and are not included in any database or sync mechanism.

Pulse does not operate cloud servers, remote databases, or any server-side infrastructure. Your data exists only on hardware you physically control.

5. What Pulse Does Not Do

• No data sale or sharing — Pulse does not sell, license, rent, or share your data with any third party.
• No advertising — Pulse contains no advertising SDKs, ad networks, or tracking pixels.
• No analytics or telemetry — Pulse does not contain crash reporting, usage analytics, or A/B testing frameworks.
• No MDM or configuration profiles — Pulse does not install or require any MDM profiles, VPN configurations, or root certificates.
• No VPN or network interception — Pulse does not intercept, inspect, or log network traffic.
• No keylogging — Pulse does not capture keystrokes or keyboard input.
• No cross-device tracking identifiers — Pulse does not generate or transmit any identifiers for cross-app or cross-device tracking.
• No cloud accounts — Pulse does not require user accounts, login credentials, or email registration.
• No off-device Screen Time data transmission — Screen Time tokens never leave your iPhone.

6. User Control

• macOS permissions — Accessibility and Screen Recording permissions can be revoked at any time in System Settings > Privacy & Security.
• iOS Screen Time authorization — you can revoke Pulse's Screen Time access at any time in Settings > Screen Time.
• Monitoring scope — on iOS, you explicitly choose which app categories to include in focus monitoring.
• Data deletion — you can delete all Pulse data at any time. On macOS, remove the local database file. On iOS, deleting the app removes all locally stored data.
• Pause or quit — you can quit Pulse at any time to stop all data capture immediately.

7. Apple Screen Time API Technical Details

The Pulse iOS companion uses Apple's official Screen Time frameworks under the individual authorization model introduced in iOS 16.

• Application identifiers are cryptographically opaque tokens that Pulse cannot decode.
• The DeviceActivityMonitor extension runs in an isolated 6 MB sandbox with no network access.
• All Screen Time UI rendering is performed by Apple-provided SwiftUI views in a separate process.
• Authorization is requested via AuthorizationCenter.requestAuthorization(for: .individual).

8. Network Activity

Pulse makes zero network requests to external servers. The only network activity is local device-to-device communication between the macOS and iOS applications on your local Wi-Fi network, using encrypted transport.

9. Permissions Required

• Accessibility (macOS) — to read window titles and visible interface text.
• Screen & System Audio Recording (macOS) — to capture periodic screenshots for on-device OCR.
• Screen Time / Family Controls (iOS) — to access aggregate screen time data via Apple's DeviceActivityFramework.
• Local Network (iOS) — to communicate with the Pulse macOS app on your local Wi-Fi.

10. Data Retention and Deletion

Pulse retains data according to a configurable retention period (default: 30 days). Screenshots are rotated on a count basis (default: 50 most recent). You can delete all Pulse data at any time by removing the database file (macOS) or deleting the app (iOS). Because Pulse operates no servers, there is no server-side data to request deletion of.

11. Data Pulse Does Not Collect

• Passwords, credentials, or authentication tokens
• Email content, message body text, or chat message content
• Keystrokes, keyboard input, or text entry events
• GPS location, geolocation, or movement data
• Contacts, address book entries, or phone numbers
• Calendar events, reminders, or scheduling data
• Photos, videos, or media library contents
• Biometric data (Face ID, Touch ID, fingerprint data)
• Health, fitness, or medical data
• Financial information, payment data, or transaction history
• Device advertising identifiers (IDFA/IDFV)
• Clipboard contents
• Microphone audio or camera video
• Specific app names or URLs from the iOS Screen Time API

12. Third-Party Services and SDKs

Pulse does not integrate with any third-party services. All processing is performed entirely on your devices. The application's complete dependency list consists of Apple system frameworks and locally bundled open-source libraries.

13. Data Security

All Pulse data is protected by your device's built-in security: FileVault on macOS, hardware-level encryption on iOS, device passcodes, and biometric authentication. Local network communication uses encrypted transport.

14. Children's Privacy (COPPA)

Pulse is not directed at children under the age of 13. It operates exclusively under Apple's individual (personal) authorization model.

15. Compliance

• GDPR (EU) — Pulse does not process personal data on any server. All data remains on the user's device.
• CCPA/CPRA (California) — Pulse does not sell or share personal information with third parties.
• Apple App Store Guidelines (5.1.1, 5.1.2) — Data is collected only with explicit user consent and used solely for the app's stated functionality.

16. Changes to This Policy

If this privacy policy is updated, the revised version will be posted at this URL with an updated effective date.

17. Contact

If you have questions about this privacy policy, contact us at pillicdj@gmail.com.

Effective date: May 6, 2026