Nothing to hide.

The app

What stays on your Mac

• To decide what to play or pause, Pauseidon looks at what’s playing in Music, Spotify, Podcasts, Chrome, Brave and Safari: titles, artists, albums and progress, and for browser tabs the page’s title and address. It keeps this in memory while it runs.
• It remembers when each thing last played, so the picker can put what you paused last first. It keeps up to 50 of these in its preferences on your Mac, as short identifiers like “music” or a browser tab’s ID, not titles.
• It writes a log to ~/Library/Logs/Pauseidon.log to help diagnose problems. The log can include the titles of what you’ve played. It never leaves your Mac unless you choose to send it to me, and you can delete it at any time.

What it sends over the internet

For artwork in the picker:

• Apple. When Music doesn’t have the cover for a track, Pauseidon searches Apple’s public iTunes catalogue using the artist, the album and, if needed, the track name. For a Podcasts episode, it searches Apple’s podcast directory using the episode title, to find the show’s name and artwork. Each search includes your Mac’s region (for example “US”), so Apple searches your country’s catalogue. Pauseidon searches for each album or episode at most once while it’s running. These requests are covered by Apple’s privacy policy.
• Where the artwork lives. It downloads cover images and video thumbnails from wherever they’re already hosted, such as YouTube’s image servers for a YouTube video, Spotify’s for a Spotify track, or the website you’re watching. As with any image, the server can see your IP address.

These requests carry no cookies or identifiers.

Updates. From version 0.2, Pauseidon checks pauseidon.com for a new version once a day, and downloads it from downloads.pauseidon.com if you choose to install it. The check sends nothing about you or your Mac beyond what any web request does: your IP address, and the app’s name and version.

In your browser

Once you turn on JavaScript from Apple Events, Pauseidon runs small scripts in your Chrome, Brave and Safari tabs. They read the state of the video and audio on the page (playing, paused, muted, how far in), the page’s title, address and preview image, and they play or pause media when you ask. In Safari, Pauseidon also stores a random tab ID in the page’s session storage so it can find the tab again; the browser deletes it when you close the tab. The scripts don’t read what you type, your cookies, or anything else on the page.

Permissions

• Accessibility, to catch the play/pause key before macOS does, and to read and control the Podcasts player. It acts only on the play/pause key.
• Automation, to ask Music, Spotify, Chrome, Brave and Safari what’s playing, and to play or pause them.

The free trial and buying a licence

• The trial. On first launch, the app asks pauseidon.com for a 7-day trial. It sends a scrambled ID of your Mac (a one-way hash of its hardware ID, not the ID itself or its serial number), so reinstalling doesn’t restart the trial. I keep that ID and the trial’s dates, and nothing else. I get a private Discord message when a trial starts, with nothing about you or your Mac.
• Paddle runs checkout as the merchant of record. It collects your email address, payment details and country (for tax) under Paddle’s privacy policy. I never see your card details.
• Your licence. When you buy, Paddle tells me about the order and the email address you used. I keep your email, the order number and your licence, so I can send it again if you lose it and handle refunds. The licence is emailed to you through Bento, the same service as the beta emails. I get a private Discord message about each sale, with the amount but nothing about you.
• Checking your licence. The app checks your licence on your Mac, without going online. About once a week it asks pauseidon.com whether the licence has been refunded, sending only the licence’s ID. If it can’t reach pauseidon.com, it carries on as before.

This website

• No cookies, analytics, ads or third-party scripts. Fonts and videos are served from this site.
• It’s hosted on Cloudflare, which handles each request and processes technical details such as your IP address to deliver and protect the site. See Cloudflare’s privacy policy.

Joining the beta

If you sign up on the beta page, what you enter (your email address, and any answers about your Mac, the apps you use and how you heard about Pauseidon) goes to Bento, the service I use to send email. I use it only to invite you to the beta and tell you when Pauseidon launches. Every email has an unsubscribe link, and you can ask me to delete your details at any time. See Bento’s privacy policy. I also get a private Discord message about each sign-up, showing your answers but only the first letter of your email address and its domain.

Removing everything

What I keep, and only if it applies to you:

• If you joined the beta: what you entered, in Bento.
• If you’ve run Pauseidon 0.2-beta.6 or later: your Mac’s scrambled ID and the trial’s dates.
• If you bought a licence: your email, the order number and the licence. Paddle keeps its own records of the order.

Email support@pauseidon.com and I’ll delete them. Once a licence’s record is gone, I can’t send it to you again. To remove what Pauseidon keeps on your Mac, including your licence and trial, quit it, move it to the Trash, and delete ~/Library/Logs/Pauseidon.log and ~/Library/Preferences/com.adamwills.pauseidon.plist.

Changes and questions

If Pauseidon starts sending or keeping anything new, this page will say so before the release that does it, and the date at the top will change.

Pauseidon is made by Adam Wills, trading as Adam Wills Development. Questions are welcome at support@pauseidon.com.