Privacy policy

This website

These pages set no cookies, and they run no analytics, ads or tracking scripts. They load nothing from anyone else: even the fonts come from this site.

Like any website, the server that delivers these pages sees your IP address in order to deliver them.

If you write to [email protected], your message goes to the mailbox of the person who makes Breaky, who reads it to answer you.

Breaky for Mac

On your Mac

Breaky writes down your minutes: when you worked and when you rested. Three switches in Settings, under Watching, add more:

• Which apps you use, and for how long. For code editors and terminals, also the folder a window was working in, and for a git repository its root and remote address, so a project can be named.
• What you’re working on: the titles of the windows you had open. A title is the only place a project name can be read from.
• What runs while you look away: agents, builds and other work that keeps going when you step away.

An app you make private is recorded as time only. Its titles and folders are never written down.

Your record is one file on your own disk: ~/Library/Application Support/Breaky/breaky.db. It is the only copy, so it is worth keeping FileVault on (System Settings → Privacy & Security) and a copy of your own. Time Machine already takes that file if you have it switched on.

Beside it, in the same folder, Breaky keeps a few small files of its own: your settings, your licence, the key for a paired iPhone and a short log of its own errors.

What leaves your Mac

Two requests, and neither one is about your work.

• The licence check. Your licence key and a label for this Mac go to Polar, who sold the key, so it can be checked. Breaky asks on its own at most once a day, and also when you add a key, press Check now or remove this Mac. The label is this Mac’s name plus 8 characters of a number Breaky made up for itself.
• The update check. Which version you are on and that you are on a Mac go to updates.getbreaky.com, to ask whether a newer Breaky exists and to download it when there is one. Every 4 hours.

Like any request on the internet, both carry your IP address to the server that answers them.

That is the whole list. No minutes, no app names, no window titles, no errors. There is nothing to sign up for, no analytics company and no ad network. Nothing about you is sold, and nothing is handed on.

How long it is kept

As long as you keep it. Breaky deletes nothing behind your back and nothing expires: there is no sweep, no year and no archive, because there is nowhere else for any of it to be.

What you can do

• Save a copy. Your licence → Backup → Save a copy. One file, everything Breaky recorded, yours to keep.
• Bring it back. Your licence → Backup → Restore from a copy. Days this Mac already knows are left as they are.
• Forget your iPhone. Settings → Your iPhone → Forget, and the two stop talking.
• Move to another Mac. Your licence → Details → Remove this Mac. Your key then opens a different one, and the record stays on this Mac.
• Delete all of it. Quit Breaky, drag it to the bin, and remove ~/Library/Application Support/Breaky. There is no copy anywhere else, and nobody to ask. One date stays in your Mac’s Keychain on purpose: the day your trial started, so reinstalling does not start it again.

Breaky for iPhone

On your iPhone

Breaky asks for no name, no email and no password. Everything it keeps stays on your iPhone:

• The minutes in each app. iPhone’s Screen Time counts them, and Apple draws them inside Breaky in a sealed view that Breaky itself cannot read from.
• Your limits and your day line.
• Which apps you picked, sealed by iPhone so they can be shown only on your phone.
• Your Mac’s sittings, as your iPhone heard them.

Only you read it, on your iPhone. Nothing about you is collected, sold or used for ads.

What leaves your iPhone

Nothing goes to a server. Breaky keeps no copy anywhere else, so there is nothing to delete anywhere else either. If you pair a Mac, a few facts cross to it over Bluetooth, and only to it: they are listed under Your Mac and your iPhone together.

What you can do

• Stop the link. Unpair your Mac in Breaky’s Settings.
• Take it all back. Delete Breaky from your iPhone and what it kept goes with it, apart from two small items in iPhone’s Keychain: the day your trial started, so reinstalling does not start it again, and the key it shares with a Mac you have not unpaired.

Your Mac and your iPhone together

If you pair them, the two talk straight to each other over Bluetooth, a few metres apart. Nothing goes through a server on the way, because there is no server.

What crosses:

• From the Mac: whether you are working or resting and since when, today’s work and rest times, the numbers your line and your break are set to, whether the Mac’s licence is good, and the Mac’s name.
• From the iPhone: a break you ask for and back to work, the minutes you worked in your work apps on the phone (never which app, never how long in each), and a name for the phone so the Mac can show it.

Never a window title, an app name, your licence key or your email.

Anyone nearby can see the word “Breaky” and, if they ask for it, your Mac’s name, the one macOS already shows. The messages between the two are signed, so no other device can pass itself off as your Mac or your iPhone. They are not encrypted yet: a device nearby can read whether you are working right now and since when, and someone with radio tools could read the times your Mac sends your iPhone. The next update encrypts them with a key only your Mac and your iPhone share.

Payments

Breaky for Mac, through Polar

Breaky for Mac is sold by Polar, as merchant of record. Buying it means giving Polar an email, a name and a card. Polar holds that purchase under their own privacy policy, the same as any other shop you buy software from.

On your Mac, Breaky keeps the key, which activation it is, this Mac’s label and when it was last checked. Your email and your name come back in Polar’s answer, and Breaky neither reads them nor writes them down.

Breaky for iPhone, through Apple

The subscription is bought, billed and renewed by Apple, under Apple’s own terms and privacy policy. Breaky never sees your card or your Apple ID. It asks the App Store on your iPhone only whether the subscription is active and when it renews or ends, and the day you first downloaded Breaky, which starts your trial.

Contact

Breaky is made by one independent developer, an individual resident in Turkey. Write to [email protected] about your own data or about anything on this page.

This is the whole of it. If a line here is wrong, that is a bug, and we would rather hear about it than have you believe it.