Privacy policy

The short version

Halo has no server and collects nothing: no accounts, analytics, tracking, crash reporting or advertising. The makers of Halo never receive your data. What Halo reads stays on your Mac, except the requests listed under "Network", each made only while the module that needs it is on. Customize Halo turns any module off, and that stops its work.

What Halo reads on your Mac

• Now Playing: the current track, artist, artwork and position from macOS's media system (through the bundled open-source mediaremote-adapter), and shuffle and repeat from Music and Spotify by AppleScript (macOS asks once per app).
• Notifications and alerts: Halo does not read your system notifications. Agent alerts come only from files that the Claude Code / Codex hook script writes into ~/Library/Application Support/Halo/agent-inbox; Halo deletes each file once shown.
• Focus: the Focus mode name from the system's Focus files, only if you grant Full Disk Access.
• Location: your approximate location for local weather, only if you allow it (or a city you type instead).
• Devices: battery levels of your Mac and Bluetooth audio devices, and the sound output. Per-app volume taps an app's audio only after you change that app's volume, to play it back louder or quieter; nothing is recorded or saved.
• Keys: with Accessibility, one event tap sees the volume and brightness keys only, never typing.
• Files you drop on the notch: Halo keeps their paths (tray.json), never their contents.
• Notes you type stay in ~/Library/Application Support/Halo/notes.json.

Display, keyboard and sleep

• Brightness: the built-in display through macOS, external monitors over DDC/CI (the monitor's own brightness setting), and the keyboard backlight. Halo only changes these when you move a slider or press a key.
• Keep Awake holds a standard macOS "prevent sleep" assertion while on. Closed Lid (off unless you turn it on) runs sudo -n /usr/bin/pmset -a disablesleep 1 and 0, only through a sudoers rule you add yourself; Halo never asks for your password or edits sudoers. A journal, a watchdog and a small launch agent (~/Library/LaunchAgents/app.newitools.halo.keepawake-backstop.plist) put sleep back if Halo quits or crashes.

The iPhone link

The Mac and the iPhone find each other on your local network (Bonjour) and talk directly, encrypted end to end after you pair them with a 6-digit code shown in the notch. Files, links, text, the clipboard and Now Playing go only between your paired devices, never through a server. Pairing keys are kept in each device's Keychain. Files from the phone land in your Downloads folder. Halo answers a clipboard request from the phone with your Mac's clipboard, and writes the phone's clipboard when you send it.

Network

Halo connects to these services, without any identifier of yours beyond what a normal web request carries:

• lrclib.net: lyrics for the current song (title, artist, album, length).
• itunes.apple.com: album artwork for the current song, and App Store versions for Updates.
• www.youtube.com / i.ytimg.com: artwork for a browser video when the iTunes lookup finds none (the video's title).
• open-meteo.com (forecast, air quality, city search): weather for your coordinates rounded by the service, or the city you typed.
• Halo's own updates: Halo checks newitools.app for updates about once a day. The request includes the app and macOS version. Only the number of checks per version is counted; nothing that identifies you is stored.
• Updates (off for new users): Homebrew, npm and the apps' own Sparkle update feeds, to find and install updates.

Where your settings live

• ~/Library/Application Support/Halo (notes, tray, weather cache, agent inbox, the Closed Lid journal and script)
• ~/Library/Caches/app.newitools.Halo (lyrics), ~/Library/Logs/Halo (diagnostic logs, rare events only)
• Keychain: app.newitools.halo.link (iPhone pairing)
• macOS user defaults: defaults delete app.newitools.Halo removes them.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted on this page with a new date, and the change is visible in the repository history.

Contact

Questions: hello@newitools.app, or open an issue on GitHub.