Privacy

In short: LidOwl keeps photos on your Mac and in your own private iCloud. There is no LidOwl account, no LidOwl server, and no advertising or analytics. We, the people who make LidOwl, cannot see your photos or your data.

What LidOwl does

LidOwl is a Mac app with an iPhone companion. While you have armed it, LidOwl takes one photo with your Mac's built-in camera when the Mac wakes or its lid opens, and sends that photo to your iPhone. It photographs whoever opens the Mac, including you. The Mac's green camera light turns on whenever it takes a photo.

Use LidOwl only on Macs you own, and make sure people who share or use your Mac know it is there.

What LidOwl stores, and where

• Photos and their details (time, which Mac, the kind of wake, whether the screen was locked, how long the photo took). Stored on your Mac, in the app's own folder, and in the private database of your iCloud account using Apple's CloudKit. Only your Apple ID can read your private iCloud database.
• A log of wakes on your Mac, so you can see what happened and when. It stays on your Mac.
• Your Mac's arm state and name, in your private iCloud, so your iPhone can show it and arm or disarm it.
• Your settings, such as the Wi-Fi network names you choose for arming and disarming. These stay on your Mac.

What LidOwl uses, and why

• Camera, to take the photo while LidOwl is armed. Never otherwise.
• Location access, for the Wi-Fi name only. macOS only tells apps the name of the Wi-Fi network if they have location access. LidOwl asks for it only if you set up Wi-Fi rules, uses it only to read the network name, and never reads or stores your location.
• Notifications on your iPhone, to show you new photos. Apple delivers them through iCloud.
• iCloud, to move photos and the arm state between your own devices.

What LidOwl does not do

• No accounts, sign-ups or email addresses inside the apps.
• No LidOwl servers. Your data goes only to your own iCloud.
• No advertising, tracking, analytics or crash-reporting services.
• No selling or sharing of data with anyone.
• No microphone, contacts, photo library or files outside its own folder.

Deleting your data

Delete a photo in the iPhone app to remove it from iCloud. The Mac keeps its own copy until you delete it from the captures folder, which LidOwl opens for you from its window. LidOwl keeps the newest 200 photos on the Mac and removes older ones on its own. Deleting the apps removes their data from your devices. To remove everything from iCloud, delete the photos in the iPhone app. If LidOwl is listed under System Settings › your name › iCloud › Manage on your Mac, you can delete its data there too.

This website

lidowl.com sets no cookies and loads nothing from other companies: no fonts, scripts or trackers from third parties. It is hosted on Cloudflare, which may keep standard server logs, such as IP addresses, for security and to run the service.

Children

LidOwl is not directed at children and collects no data about anyone for us. Photos it takes stay in the owner's own iCloud.

Changes

If this policy changes, we will update this page and the date at the top.

Contact

Questions about privacy: [email protected].