Privacy Policy

What Spurby reads on your Mac, what leaves it, where it goes, who can see it, and how to delete it.

The short version

  • Spurby reads the text on your screen in the apps you choose. Text only: no screenshots, no screen recording, no keystrokes.
  • Before anything leaves your Mac, Spurby removes card numbers, one-time codes, Aadhaar numbers, and strings that look like keys, tokens or generated passwords.
  • What it reads is stored on Spurby’s server in Mumbai, India. Our server uses Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service to find your open loops in it.
  • We keep it while you have an account. Delete everything removes it from our server within minutes, and from our backups within 7 days.
  • We don’t sell your data, and we don’t show ads.
  • Spurby never sends a message, posts or types for you.

Who we are

This policy explains how Spurby (“we”, “us”) handles your data. It covers:

  • the Spurby app for Mac;
  • Spurby’s server, which the app works with;
  • this website, spurby.co.

What Spurby does

Spurby is a menu-bar app for Mac. With your permission, it reads the text on your screen through macOS Accessibility, in the apps you choose. From that text, it finds your open loops: what you’re waiting on, what you promised, what you’re owed and what’s coming up.

Spurby shows your loops in a panel and in My work. It sends you nudges on your Mac, writes you a weekly letter, and answers your questions in Ask. It can also draft a follow-up for you to copy. Nudges come from the app on your Mac, not through Apple’s push service.

What Spurby reads

  • Only the apps you tick. You choose them in Work apps, during setup and later in Settings. When Spurby finds common work apps on your Mac, it ticks them for you: WhatsApp, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Mail, Outlook, Excel, Chrome, Safari, Notion, Linear and your default browser. Untick any you don’t want read.
  • Only the window in front. Spurby reads the focused window of the app you’re using, while it’s on your screen. It doesn’t read apps in the background.
  • Everything in that window. Every chat and tab in a ticked app is read, personal ones too. Private and incognito windows are read too. Spurby can’t yet tell work from personal.
  • Other people’s messages. Messages other people send you in those apps are read. Spurby doesn’t tell them.
  • Window titles and sites. Spurby reads each window’s title (in a browser, the page’s title) and which site you’re on.
  • Excel workbooks you save. While Excel is ticked, Spurby reads each workbook you save, from the file: the values in its visible sheets (up to 10, hidden rows and columns included), the sheet names and the file’s name. It never sends the file itself, its folder, formulas, comments or macros, and it never changes your files. macOS asks you before Spurby can read files in the folders it protects, such as Desktop, Documents and Downloads.

What Spurby never reads or does

  • It never reads apps you haven’t ticked.
  • It never reads password managers (such as Apple Passwords, Keychain Access, 1Password and Bitwarden), System Settings, or banking and payment apps.
  • It never reads sign-in and account-security pages (such as your Apple, Google or Microsoft account pages), password managers’ web vaults, or bank, card, payment and UPI sites.
  • It never reads password fields, or a field while you’re typing in it.
  • It never reads Spurby’s own server pages.
  • No setting, and nothing our server sends, can turn these on.
  • It never takes screenshots or records your screen. It reads text only, with no text recognition.
  • It never records your keystrokes.
  • It never sends a message, posts, or types into another app. When you click Open, it only brings that app or page forward.
  • A drafted follow-up is a draft: you copy it and send it yourself.

The last 14 days

Spurby looks for loops only in the last 14 days. When our server sorts what Spurby read, it drops messages dated more than 14 days before they were read, before it looks for loops. The text as Spurby read it is still kept with your account (see “How long we keep your data”).

Spurby reads a workbook only when you save it while Spurby is watching it. It stops watching a workbook 14 days after it was last in front.

What Spurby removes on your Mac

Before text is stored on your Mac or sent anywhere, Spurby replaces these with a short marker, such as “[redacted: key]”:

  • card numbers;
  • one-time codes;
  • Aadhaar numbers;
  • strings that look like keys, tokens or passwords;
  • generated passwords, such as Apple’s and Google’s app passwords.

It catches most of these, but not every one. Email addresses, links, phone numbers and other text are not removed.

What leaves your Mac

Spurby sends the following to Spurby’s server, over HTTPS:

  • The text it read, after redaction, with the app’s name, the window’s title, the site (never the page’s full address), when it was read, and where each line sits on screen, so Spurby can tell your messages from other people’s.
  • Workbook values, as described above, after redaction.
  • Your account details from Google (see “Signing in with Google”).
  • What you tell Spurby: what you do, your roles, your company, the names people use for you, how you heard about Spurby, your working days and hours, and your choices for the digest, notifications and the weekly letter.
  • The list of apps Spurby found on your Mac and offers in Work apps (each app’s name and identifier), and which ones you ticked.
  • What you do in Spurby: what you tap on loops and nudges (such as done, snooze or later), your answers to its questions, your questions in Ask and whether an answer helped, the follow-ups you ask it to draft, and how you describe the people it finds (such as a colleague or a vendor).
  • Time across apps: only each ticked app’s total minutes a day. All other time counts as one unnamed “Other”. Sites and chats are never sent.
  • Status: Spurby’s version, your macOS version, counts of what was read and sent in each app, whether Accessibility and notifications are allowed, and how long Spurby was paused. Spurby sends it when it starts and about every 15 minutes. Every request also carries Spurby’s version and your macOS version.
  • A device id that our server gives your Mac when you sign in.

Spurby doesn’t send your Mac’s name, serial number or hardware identifiers. Like any service on the internet, our server sees your IP address when your Mac connects. It doesn’t save it with your data.

What stays on your Mac

  • Text waiting to be sent. Spurby keeps it encrypted, with the key in your Mac’s Keychain, and deletes it once our server has it. If it can’t be sent, Spurby keeps it for at most 7 days.
  • Time per site, for your week view, kept for 90 days. Only per-app totals leave your Mac.
  • The addresses of pages you read, encrypted, so Open can take you back to the exact page. Spurby keeps them for 90 days and never sends them.
  • Your settings, including which apps you ticked, encrypted.
  • Your sign-in, in your Mac’s Keychain.

Signing in with Google

You sign in with Google, in your own browser. Spurby asks Google only for your basic profile: the openid, email and profile scopes. From Google, we get your email address, your name and your Google account id.

  • We keep your email address and your name.
  • We keep your Google account id only as a keyed, one-way hash.
  • We don’t keep Google’s tokens. Spurby can’t see your Gmail, Drive, Calendar, contacts or anything else in your Google account.
  • We never see your Google password.

Each Mac you sign in on gets its own sign-in, kept in its Keychain. Our server keeps it only as a hash.

How we use your data

  • To find your open loops and show them to you, with nudges, the weekly letter, Ask and drafted follow-ups.
  • To run Spurby, keep it secure and fix problems.
  • To check and improve how well Spurby works. We keep the text as Spurby read it so we can improve how our server sorts and understands it, and run the improved version on what was read.

We don’t use your data for advertising, and we don’t sell it.

How Spurby uses AI

Spurby’s server uses Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service to sort the text Spurby read, find your loops and the people in them, draft follow-ups, write your weekly letter and answer Ask. To do that, it sends the redacted text and your questions to Azure OpenAI.

We keep each request to the AI service and its reply with your account’s data, so we can check Spurby’s work. The app on your Mac doesn’t use an AI service itself.

Spurby’s loops, nudges, letters, answers and drafts can be wrong. Check them before you rely on them.

Who can see your data

  • You. Each account is separate. No other Spurby user can see your data, and Spurby has no way to share it with them.
  • The Spurby team. People on our team can access your account’s data to run Spurby, help you, fix problems and check how well Spurby works. For a review, they may copy an account’s data from our server to a team computer.
  • Our service providers, which run parts of Spurby for us:
    • Google Cloud hosts Spurby’s server and database;
    • Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service processes your text, as described above;
    • Google handles sign-in;
    • Google Cloud Storage serves Spurby’s updates;
    • Vercel hosts this website, and PostHog measures how it’s used (see “This website”).
  • When the law requires it. We may disclose data if the law requires us to.

Where your data is stored

Spurby’s server and database run on Google Cloud in Mumbai, India (the asia-south1 region). The database is reachable only from Spurby’s server, not from the internet. The app on your Mac sends your data only to Spurby’s server, over HTTPS.

Your text is also sent to Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service for processing, as described in “How Spurby uses AI”.

How long we keep your data

  • Your account and everything Spurby read: for as long as you have an account. We don’t delete older text automatically.
  • On your Mac: text waiting to be sent, up to 7 days; time per site and page addresses, 90 days.
  • Backups: our database backups and recovery logs keep data for up to 7 days after it’s deleted.

Deleting your data

  • Delete everything, in Settings › Privacy, deletes your account. It signs out every Mac at once and stops all processing. Our server then removes your account and its data within minutes. Our backups keep it for up to 7 days, then it’s gone.
  • On your Mac, Delete everything wipes Spurby’s data and its Keychain items. Your Mac must be online: if our server can’t be reached, nothing is deleted, and you can try again.
  • After deletion, we keep only a record that an account existed: a keyed, one-way hash of your Google account id and the date it was deleted. It holds no name, email address or content.
  • Copies made for a team review aren’t on our server, so Delete everything doesn’t reach them.
  • Removing the app from your Mac doesn’t delete your data on our server. Use Delete everything first, or write to us.

Your choices

  • Untick an app in Work apps, and Spurby stops reading it.
  • Pause stops all reading at once, workbooks included: for an hour, until your next working day, or until you resume.
  • Sign out revokes that Mac’s access on our server and stops it sending anything. It doesn’t delete your data.
  • Remove Spurby’s permission in System Settings › Privacy & Security › Accessibility, or quit Spurby, and it reads nothing.

Security

  • The app sends your data only to Spurby’s server, over HTTPS.
  • Text waiting on your Mac is encrypted, with the key in your Keychain.
  • Each account’s data is kept apart in our database, and the database can be reached only from our server.
  • Sign-in tokens are stored on our server only as hashes.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your data, we’ll tell you as the law requires.

Your rights

You agree to Spurby reading your screen during setup, when you grant the Accessibility permission after Spurby explains what it reads. Depending on where you live, including under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, you can:

  • ask for a summary of your data and how we use it;
  • ask us to correct, complete or update it;
  • delete it, with Delete everything, or ask us to;
  • withdraw your consent, by unticking apps, pausing, removing Spurby’s permission or deleting your account;
  • name someone to use these rights for you if you die or can’t use them yourself;
  • raise a grievance with us, and, if you’re not satisfied, with the Data Protection Board of India.

To use these rights, write to us.

Other people in your conversations

When you tick an app, Spurby reads the messages other people send you there, and they aren’t told. Use Spurby only where you’re allowed to. If your company has rules about apps that read work data, check them first.

Children

Spurby isn’t for children. We don’t knowingly collect their data. If you think a child is using Spurby, write to us and we’ll delete the account.

Updates to the app

Once a day, Spurby checks for a new version by downloading a small file from Google Cloud Storage. It always asks you before it installs one. The check sends nothing from your account, but, like any web request, it shows your IP address to Google Cloud.

This website

This section covers spurby.co.

  • Demo requests. If you ask for a demo, we collect your name, your work email and, if you choose, your industry. We store them in our database and use them only to reply to you. We delete them when you ask.
  • Analytics. We use PostHog to see which pages are visited and what’s clicked. It keeps a random identifier in your browser’s local storage. We don’t use advertising cookies.
  • Hosting. Vercel hosts the website. Like any web host, it sees your IP address when you visit.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we’ll post the new version here. If a change matters, we’ll tell you in Spurby or by email before it takes effect.

See also our Terms of Service.