Halo › Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy
Halo has no account and keeps what you do on your Mac. This page lists everything that does leave it, from the app and from this website, and who receives it.
Who I am
Halo is made by Otabek Abdiraimov, an independent developer in Uzbekistan (LinkedIn). I'm the one responsible for your data under this policy. Questions or requests: support@halo-mac.com. There is no separate data protection officer.
What stays on your Mac
Notifications, the files on your shelf, what's playing, your calendar, your monitor settings, and Claude Code's and Codex's activity (read from files those tools write on your Mac) are read and shown on your Mac. Halo never sends them anywhere.
What the app sends, and to whom
Halo connects to the internet for five things:
- Update checks, only if you allow them. Halo asks halo-mac.com whether a new version exists (Sparkle). The request carries the Halo version.
- Lyrics. The title and artist of the playing song go to LRCLIB to look up lyrics. Turn Lyrics off in Settings and Halo never does this.
- Groq dictation, only if you choose Groq and add your own API key. What you dictate goes to Groq to become text, under your account and Groq's terms. Apple's dictation, the default, runs on your Mac once macOS has downloaded your language; until then Apple processes it on its servers.
- License activation. When you enter your key, Halo sends it and your Mac's name to Lemon Squeezy, and checks the key with them once a week.
- Anonymous usage, if you leave "Share anonymous usage" on. Once a day Halo sends Pulse, analytics I run on my own server (Halo before 2.1.5 sent Umami), which features are on, how often the island opens and which tabs you use, plus a note when you activate a key. It comes with a random ID, which Pulse hashes before storing, and the app version, never your name, email, license key, files or what you listen to. Turn it off any time in Settings › General.
When you buy
Lemon Squeezy is the merchant of record: they take the payment, handle tax and send your receipt and key, under their own privacy policy. I never see your card. From Lemon Squeezy I receive your name, email, country and order details, which I use to deliver your key and answer support. A notification about each order reaches me through a Telegram bot. Pulse, my own analytics, also records each order's ID, the site that sent you (see below), the product, the amount and your country; your email only as a one-way hash, to count repeat buyers, and never your name.
This website
- Hosting. The site runs on Vercel, which processes your IP address and browser details to serve pages.
- Visit counts. Pulse, analytics I run on my own server, counts visits without cookies and never stores your IP address. DataFast sets a first-party cookie to tell visits apart. Neither identifies you. Requests from search engines and AI crawlers are reported to DataFast by the server; human visitors aren't.
- Where you came from. The site keeps the first site or link that brought you in your browser's local storage and adds it to the checkout link, so I know which channel led to a sale. It never leaves your browser unless you open the checkout.
- Affiliate links. If you arrive through a creator's referral link, Lemon Squeezy's affiliate script stores a referral ID in a cookie so the creator gets credit, and the site keeps that creator's code in local storage for 30 days so it also applies on shedi.app, my other app's site, which shares the same store.
- Fonts and scripts load from Google Fonts and jsDelivr, which see your IP address when your browser fetches them.
If you write to support, I keep the conversation to help you and to remember earlier issues.
Why I'm allowed to use it
For readers in the EU, UK and similar places, these are the legal bases under the GDPR (Article 6):
- To deliver what you bought (contract): license activation and checks, order details from Lemon Squeezy, and support for your purchase. Without your license key the paid features can't be unlocked; everything else on this page is optional.
- Legitimate interest in running and improving Halo: anonymous usage, update checks, hosting, visit counts, the channel that led to a sale, affiliate credit, and support email that isn't about an order. You can object at any time: the "Share anonymous usage" switch stops usage at once, and for anything else, email me.
- Your choice: lyrics and Groq dictation only run when you turn them on, and stop when you turn them off.
- Legal obligation: keeping order records for tax.
Who receives it, and where
Lemon Squeezy (payments, licenses and affiliates), Contabo (the server my own analytics, Pulse, runs on), Umami (usage counts from Halo before 2.1.5), DataFast (visit counts), Vercel (hosting), LRCLIB (lyrics, if on), Groq (dictation, if you choose it), Telegram (order notifications), Google Fonts and jsDelivr (fonts and scripts), and my email provider (support). Each handles data under its own policy. These services, and I, are outside the European Economic Area, mostly in the United States, so your data leaves the EEA; the services rely on their own safeguards for such transfers, such as the EU's Standard Contractual Clauses.
How long I keep it
Order records stay as long as tax law and your license need them. Support email stays until you ask me to delete it. Usage and visit counts are kept in aggregate.
Your rights
You can ask for a copy of what I hold about you, or for it to be corrected, deleted or handed to you in a portable format, and you can object to or ask me to limit its use, by emailing support@halo-mac.com. I'll answer within 30 days. Where I rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time; that doesn't affect what happened before. Deleting your order record also ends support for that license key. If you're in the EU or UK, you can also complain to your data protection authority.
Children
Halo isn't aimed at children under 13, and I don't knowingly collect anything from them.
Changes
If Halo starts sending something new, it's added here and to the FAQ before the release that does it, and the date at the top changes.