Privacy policy · AwayLock

The short version

No account, analytics, telemetry, crash reporting, ads or cloud service, in the app or on this site.
The app keeps your settings and one device ID on your Mac. Nothing about you is sent anywhere.
Auto-unlock is off by default. If you turn it on, your password stays in this Mac’s Keychain.
The app goes online only to check for updates. This site sets no cookies.

The AwayLock app

AwayLock is a macOS menu bar app that locks your Mac when a Bluetooth device you carry moves away. Everything it keeps stays on your Mac. The source is public on GitHub, so you can check every claim here.

Settings

Saved in macOS user defaults under app.awaylock.mac:

Setting	What it is
Device ID	The identifier macOS assigns to the device you picked. It is generated on your Mac and is not the device’s hardware Bluetooth address.
Device name	The name the device broadcasts, for example “Alex’s Apple Watch”, shown in Settings and the menu.
Apple device	Whether the device is an Apple device, which changes how its signal is read.
Lock distance, away delay, signal mode	The lock settings you choose.
Lock when signal is lost, keep awake while near, auto-unlock, start at login	Your on/off choices.
Untrackable devices	IDs of devices that stopped broadcasting or changed address, so the picker hides them.
Update settings	Whether to check for and download updates automatically, and when it last checked.

Your login password (only with auto-unlock)

Auto-unlock is off by default. If you turn it on:

Before it is saved, the password is checked against your macOS account on this Mac. A wrong entry counts toward your account’s failed login limit, like a wrong entry on the lock screen.
It is saved in the Keychain so it can be read only while this Mac is unlocked and only on this Mac (kSecAttrAccessibleWhenUnlockedThisDeviceOnly). It does not sync to iCloud Keychain.
It is used only to type into the macOS lock screen, after a lock AwayLock made. AwayLock checks the screen is locked right before typing.
It is never written to settings or logs, and never sent anywhere.
Turning off auto-unlock deletes it from the Keychain.

Logs

AwayLock writes diagnostics to the macOS system log under app.awaylock.mac: signal strength readings, why a lock happened, and Bluetooth connect and disconnect times. They never include your password. The log stays on your Mac, macOS deletes old entries on its own, and AwayLock doesn’t send it anywhere. To read it:

log show --last 1h --predicate 'subsystem == "app.awaylock.mac"'

Bluetooth

While the device picker is open, AwayLock lists nearby Bluetooth devices by name and signal strength so you can choose one. Devices you don’t choose are not saved, except IDs in the untrackable list above.
After you pick a device, AwayLock only reads that device’s signal strength, from its broadcasts or by connecting to it. When it connects, it lists the device’s Bluetooth services to tell that the link is up. It reads no data from the device: no health, notification, message or location data.
AwayLock never talks to iCloud. Apple devices are followed through macOS’s own Bluetooth support.

Network

AwayLock makes one kind of network request: the update check.

Once a day if update checks are on, or when you choose Check for Updates…, the Sparkle updater sends one HTTPS request to https://awaylock.app/appcast.xml, which redirects to the latest release on GitHub.
The request carries what any web request carries: your IP address and a User-Agent with the app’s name and version. Sparkle’s system profile reporting is off, so no hardware or system details are sent.
If you install an update, it is downloaded from GitHub Releases.
Cloudflare (which hosts awaylock.app) and GitHub can log these requests under their own privacy policies. The developer runs no analytics on them.

Links in the About window (GitHub, GitHub Sponsors, PayPal) and the Language & Region button only open your browser or System Settings when you click them.

Permissions

Permission	Why	Required
Bluetooth	To read your device’s signal strength	Yes
Accessibility	To type your password on the lock screen	Only for auto-unlock
Login item	To start AwayLock when you log in	Only if you turn on start at login

Removing your data

Turn off auto-unlock in Settings, which deletes the saved password. Or delete the app.awaylock.mac item in Keychain Access.
Quit AwayLock and move it to the Trash.
Remove its settings:
```
defaults delete app.awaylock.mac
```
Optionally, remove Bluetooth and Accessibility access in System Settings → Privacy & Security.

This website

awaylock.app is a static site. It has no accounts, forms, analytics, ads or tracking scripts.

Hosting. The site runs on Cloudflare. Like any web host, Cloudflare receives your IP address, browser User-Agent and the page you asked for in order to serve the page and protect the site from abuse, and handles that data under its privacy policy.
Fonts. On systems without Apple’s San Francisco font, text is set in Inter. The page loads Inter from Google Fonts, so your browser sends your IP address and User-Agent to Google when it fetches the font. See Google’s privacy policy.
No cookies. The site sets none. If you choose Light or Dark appearance, that choice is saved in your browser’s local storage as theme so the next visit matches. It never leaves your browser. Pick System to clear it.
Downloads. /download and /appcast.xml redirect to GitHub, which serves the file under its privacy statement.
Other sites. Links to GitHub, GitHub Sponsors and PayPal take you to those sites, which have their own policies.
Email. If you write to hello@awaylock.app, your address and message are used only to reply to you.

Everything else

Children

AwayLock and this website collect no personal data from anyone, including children.

Changes

Changes to the app’s policy are tracked in the history of PRIVACY.md on GitHub. This page shows the date it was last updated at the top.

Contact

Questions: open an issue or email hello@awaylock.app. For security problems, please don’t open a public issue. See the security policy.