← Ember

Privacy Policy

Ember is a free macOS menu bar app that shows which of your AI coding agents needs you, and which dev servers are running in your repositories, built by Stijn Hanegraaf (The Netherlands). Privacy is not a feature of Ember, it is the starting point. Everything the app knows lives on your Mac, and none of it is collected.

What data Ember collects

Nothing. Ember has no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no account, and no sign-up. It does not read what your agents write, the prompts you send, or the files they touch. It reads only the state each agent reports through its own hooks (started, working, waiting on you, stopped), the name of the repository a session runs in, and which terminal window it belongs to. That state is written as small JSON files in your Library folder and stays there.

How the hooks work

When you press Install for an agent in Settings, Ember adds entries to that agent's own hooks file (for example the settings file Claude Code keeps in your home folder), after backing the file up. Those hooks point at a small helper inside the app that records the session's state locally. Remove takes the entries out again. The helper never sends anything anywhere, never prints to your terminal, and always exits cleanly, so a failing hook can never break the session it reports on.

Dev servers

While the panel is open, Ember asks macOS which processes are listening on local ports and keeps only the ones running inside a git repository. That scan stays entirely on your Mac and stops the moment the panel closes. Clicking a server opens it in your browser; Kill sends the process the same signal Ctrl-C would. Ember keeps no record of what ran.

When Ember uses the network

One narrow case, which involves no personal data:

The legal basis for this request is legitimate interest (GDPR Article 6(1)(f)): it is required to keep the app up to date, and it is the minimum needed.

Permissions

Ember needs no permission to do its job. It does not ask for Accessibility, Screen Recording, or access to your files. Two optional permissions can come up: macOS may ask for a per app Automation permission the first time you click a session row, because bringing a terminal tab forward is done through AppleScript, and it asks once for Notifications if you turn on the banner for when an agent needs you. Denying either never sends anything anywhere; the app simply does less until you change your mind.

Purchases

There are none. Ember is free, has no subscriptions, and is not distributed through the App Store. It ships from this website as a notarized, Developer ID signed download, so no payment processor or store account is involved at any point.

This website

This website uses Google Analytics 4 to understand visits, traffic sources, download-button clicks, other link clicks, CV openings, demo interactions, FAQ openings and scroll depth. Analytics loads automatically on public pages unless a supported browser privacy signal or an existing analytics opt-out is detected.

Google Analytics uses first-party cookies to recognise a browser and measure sessions and repeat visits. The site configures analytics cookies with a 180-day lifetime and disables automatic lifetime extension. Google Analytics event and user data has a 14-month retention setting; aggregate reports may be kept longer.

Advertising storage, advertising data use and ad personalisation are disabled. Google signals and user-provided data collection are off. We do not send email addresses, phone numbers, form contents, account IDs or other intentionally identifying details as event data. Query strings and fragments are removed, except for bounded campaign labels used to understand traffic sources. Google may derive device and approximate location information from standard requests.

The site respects Do Not Track, Global Privacy Control, Google's analytics opt-out flag and any saved refusal from its previous consent panel. You can use these browser controls or Google's Analytics opt-out browser add-on to prevent collection. See Google's privacy policy for its data handling.

A download event records a click on a download link. It does not confirm that a transfer finished or that an app was installed. Browser caching, blockers and network failures can affect measurement. Pokoe, Ember and Uang do not contain this website's analytics.

Google Search Console provides reports about this site's appearance in Google Search, including search terms, impressions and clicks. It does not require a visitor tracking script on this website. Umami is disconnected.

The website also keeps daily aggregate counts on its own backend for its reporting app. These cover public page and initial download requests, clicks, demo use, FAQ openings and scroll depth. The backend totals contain fixed categories without visitor IDs, stored IP addresses, browser fingerprints, full referral URLs or query strings, and are retained for up to 400 days. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control suppress these counts too. Cloudflare continues hosting the site and processing ordinary requests, including downloads and update feeds, under its privacy policy. Google and Cloudflare may process information outside the EEA; their policies explain applicable safeguards.

Third party services

The agents Ember watches (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Copilot CLI, Grok Build) are third party tools with their own privacy policies. Ember does not change what they collect or send; it only reads the state they report locally.

International data transfers

Ember itself transfers no data. Cloudflare and Google may process requests outside the EEA under the safeguards described in their respective privacy policies.

Data retention

Ember retains no data about you. Your preferences (the icon style, the alerts you turned on) live in a local settings file, and the per session state files live in your Library folder; a session's file is removed when the session ends, and all of it goes when you delete the app. The hook entries Ember added to an agent's settings stay until you press Remove in Settings or delete them yourself.

Your rights under the GDPR

You have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict, object to, and port personal data, and to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority (in the Netherlands: the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens). In practice there is nothing to exercise these rights against, because Ember holds no personal data about you.

Children's privacy

Ember collects no data from anyone, including children under 16.

Changes to this policy

Updates will be posted at this URL with a new date below. If something material changes, it will be called out on the Ember page.

Contact

Questions about privacy or anything else: Email Stijn. Ember is made by one person, so your mail lands straight with the developer.

Last modified: September 11, 2026