Privacy Policy
Pokoe is a free macOS menu bar app that routes your media keys to the music player you choose, built by Stijn Hanegraaf (The Netherlands). Privacy is not a feature of Pokoe, it is the starting point. The app was designed to keep everything on your Mac and to collect nothing.
What data Pokoe collects
Nothing. Pokoe has no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no account, and no sign-up. Player detection scans your installed apps locally. Now playing metadata (track, artist, artwork) comes from macOS's own now playing service and never leaves your Mac. Pokoe keeps no history of what you play.
When Pokoe uses the network
Three narrow cases, none of which involve personal data:
- Cover art lookup. When your player does not provide artwork, Pokoe asks Apple's public artwork service for a cover image using only the track and artist name. No identifiers are sent.
- Update checks. Pokoe uses Sparkle to check a static file on this website for new versions. This is a standard web request; no personal data or system profile is sent.
- SoundCloud and YouTube in a browser. If you choose either as your player, Pokoe controls an existing soundcloud.com or youtube.com tab in your browser. This happens locally on your Mac; Pokoe never opens a browser on its own.
The legal basis for these requests is legitimate interest (GDPR Article 6(1)(f)): they are required for the feature you asked for, and they are the minimum needed.
Permissions
Pokoe asks for one required macOS permission: Accessibility, which is what lets an app read media key presses. It cannot read your screen or your files with it. Some players are controlled through AppleScript, so macOS may also ask for a per player Automation permission the first time Pokoe talks to that player. If you allow it for a browser, Pokoe looks only for tabs on soundcloud.com and youtube.com, and that filtering happens inside the browser itself, so the addresses of your other tabs are never handed to Pokoe at all. Denying either never sends anything anywhere; the app simply does less until you change your mind.
Purchases
There are none. Pokoe 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
stijnhanegraaf.com serves the download, the update feed, and this page. It sets no cookies. To understand how many people visit and how many download Pokoe, the site uses Umami, a privacy-focused analytics tool: it is cookieless, collects aggregate counts only (page views, referrers, downloads), stores no personal identifiers, and cannot follow you across other sites. The site is hosted on Cloudflare, which processes standard server requests as an infrastructure provider under its own privacy policy.
Third party services
- Sparkle (open source update framework, feed hosted on this site)
- Apple's artwork service (cover art lookup)
- Cloudflare (website hosting)
- Umami (cookieless website analytics, this website only, never the app)
International data transfers
Pokoe itself transfers no data. Apple, Cloudflare, and Umami may process requests outside the EEA under the safeguards described in their respective privacy policies.
Data retention
Pokoe retains no data about you. Your preferences (like which player you picked) live in a local settings file on your Mac and are deleted when you delete the app.
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 Pokoe holds no personal data about you.
Children's privacy
Pokoe 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 Pokoe page.
Contact
Questions about privacy or anything else: Email Stijn. Pokoe is made by one person, so your mail lands straight with the developer.
Last modified: August 4, 2026