Privacy policy

Pier, a Dock replacement for macOS. Last updated November 2026.

The short version

Pier has no server and collects nothing: no analytics, tracking, crash reporting or advertising. The makers of Pier never receive your data. Everything Pier reads stays on your Mac, except the requests described below.

What Pier reads on your Mac

Apps and windows: which apps are running, and (with Accessibility) their windows, menus and unread badges, to draw the bar. With Screen Recording, window thumbnails for hover previews. Thumbnails are kept in memory only.
Files: your Downloads folder and screenshot folder, and file names from the Spotlight index when you search.
Claude Code sessions: the small status files in ~/.claude/sessions, to show when a session needs you.
Your Dock: the macOS Dock's pinned apps, once, if you choose "Use My Dock's Apps" during setup. Pier hides the Dock while it runs and restores your own Dock settings when you quit it.

AI usage (Memory & AI Usage widget)

To show your Claude and ChatGPT plan limits, Pier asks those services for your current usage: api.anthropic.com with the Claude Code sign-in already in your login Keychain, and chatgpt.com with the Codex sign-in in ~/.codex/auth.json. Each token is sent only to the service it belongs to, and is never written, logged or cached by Pier. Without those sign-ins nothing is requested. Remove the widget in Customize Pier… › Widgets and Pier stops making these requests.

Website icons

For Quick Links and search, Pier fetches each link's own icon from that website (its homepage or /favicon.ico) and caches it in ~/Library/Caches/app.newitools.Pier.

Update checks

Pier 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.

Where your settings live

~/Library/Application Support/Pier (groups, widgets, links, tab groups)
~/Library/Application Support/UsageRings/usage.json (the last usage reading)
macOS user defaults: defaults delete app.newitools.Pier (or your own bundle id) removes them.

Changes

Changes to this policy are made in the PRIVACY.md file in Pier's repository, where the history is visible, and posted on this page with a new date.

Contact

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