What happens on your Mac
stays on your Mac.

The short version

Levers changes settings on your Mac when you ask it to, and reads only what it needs to change them and put them back. Nothing about your Mac, your apps or what you do is sent anywhere. There is no account, and there are no analytics in the app.

What Levers reads and changes

Each switch reads the setting it controls, changes it when you flip the switch, and keeps a note of how it was so it can put it back:

• Mac settings: whether desktop icons show, Dock and menu bar hiding, Dark Mode, Night Shift, True Tone, the alert volume, whether the microphone is muted, whether the screen saver runs, and whether the Mac may sleep. To show or hide desktop icons through Finder, Levers restarts Finder.
• Open apps: which apps are open, so Hide Other Apps can hide them and show again only the ones it hid.
• Menu bar icons: with Accessibility allowed, the names and places of the icons in your menu bar, so you can sort them onto shelves and Levers can hide the ones you chose.
• Your wallpaper and pictures: if you choose your wallpaper or a picture of your own as the backdrop, Levers reads that picture to draw it, and remembers where the picture you chose is.
• Headphones: the names, connection state and battery of the Bluetooth headphones paired with your Mac, for the AirPods switch.
• Focus: Do Not Disturb works through two shortcuts you add once to the Shortcuts app. Levers lists your shortcuts’ names to find those two, and runs them.

Keys and clicks

• Lock Keyboard: while it is on, Levers holds back every key press so nothing you wipe reaches an app, and watches only for Esc to unlock. Keys are neither recorded nor kept.
• The clock, while menu bar icons are hidden: macOS ignores clicks on the clock while icons are hidden, so Levers notices a click on the clock and passes it on to open Notification Center. It looks at nothing but where the click was.

What it keeps, and where

Your settings for Levers are saved in macOS preferences. While Recording Mode is on, a small journal of what it changed is kept in ~/Library/Application Support/Levers, so everything can be put back even if Levers or the Mac stops; it is deleted when Recording Mode ends. Your license is kept in your Keychain, with a copy of the signed license file in the same folder. All of it stays on your Mac.

When it goes online

For these things only, and neither carries anything about what your Mac is doing:

• Your license. When you activate, Levers sends our licensing server at apps.fore.studio your key, your Mac’s name (the one in System Settings › General › Sharing), your macOS and Levers versions, and an anonymous ID made from a one-way hash of your Mac’s hardware ID. The name is there so you can tell your Macs apart when you move a license. From time to time Levers sends the key and that ID again to confirm the license is still active, and once more if you deactivate.
• Checking for updates. Levers downloads a short list of versions from statics.fore.studio to see whether a new one is out. The request says only that it comes from Levers and which version you have.

It never sends app names, menu bar items, pictures, settings, or anything you type.

Permissions it may ask for, and why

Each is asked for only when you first use the switch that needs it. Say no, and only that switch stops working.

• Accessibility, to see and hide chosen menu bar icons, to pass on clicks on the clock while they are hidden, and for Lock Keyboard.
• Control of System Events (Automation), to hide the Dock and switch Dark Mode the way System Settings does.
• Bluetooth, to connect your AirPods and show their battery.
• A login item, only if you choose to open Levers at login.

Buying

Payments are handled by Paddle, our merchant of record, under their own privacy policy. From them we receive your email, your name if you gave one, your country, what you bought and when, which is what we need to send your key, keep your license working and help you. We never see your card.

This website

This site uses Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages and buttons people use, so we know what to improve. It records the page, the site that sent you, your browser and device type, your approximate location, and actions such as opening the checkout, picking a number of Macs, opening a question in the FAQ or downloading Levers. It never receives what you type into a form: not your license key and not your email. Google Signals and ad features are off, so none of it is used for advertising.

In the EU, the UK, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, Google Analytics runs without cookies. Everywhere else it sets Google’s own analytics cookies on this site (_ga), which keep for up to two years. You can block them in your browser or with Google’s opt-out add-on; the site works the same either way. Google handles this data under its own privacy policy.

To show the current prices, the site asks our licensing server for them, and it loads Paddle’s checkout only when you click a buy button; from then on, Paddle’s privacy policy covers the checkout. The site is served by Cloudflare, which handles your IP address to deliver the pages, under its own privacy policy.

Your rights

You can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. For a buyer, that is your purchase record and license; deleting it ends the license. We keep purchase records only as long as the law requires for tax and accounting. If you are in the EU or the UK, you can also complain to your data protection authority.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version is posted here with a new effective date.

Questions

Email [email protected]. A person reads every message. Levers is made by Fore Studio, the trading name of Atta Ur Rehman Shah, who is responsible for this data.