Privacy

No accounts, no tracking.

Last updated 26 October 2026

The short version

The Desk Vinyl app collects nothing about you or your listening. It has no accounts, no analytics and no tracking. It sends only what it needs to work: a license check if you buy Desk Vinyl Pro, a check for updates, and song and album names to Apple's iTunes Search API to look up album details (only with Pro and a large widget placed) and, if you turn it on, whether a song is a single. With Spotify it also downloads album covers to show on the record. None of it carries an account or a record of your listening, and nothing else is collected.

Desk Vinyl is made by Amit Rand, who is responsible for this policy (the “controller” under data protection law). Contact: Email us.

What the app reads

Desk Vinyl asks Spotify or Apple Music, on your Mac, for the current track's title, artist, cover, and play, shuffle and repeat state. macOS asks your permission for this once per player (Automation). This information stays in the app's own container on your Mac so the widget can draw it. It is never sent to us or to anyone else.

Desk Vinyl also reads your current desktop wallpaper image, to suggest decks that match it, and keeps the photo you choose for a slipmat; both stay on your Mac. It also keeps a private list of the albums you play (album, artist, first play date, play count) on your Mac, for etchings and ring wear. It is never sent anywhere.

Photo Slipmat (Desk Vinyl Pro). If you choose a photo for your slipmat, Desk Vinyl reads only that one photo, the one you pick or drop in. It doesn't ask for access to your Photos library. It keeps a small cropped copy, and a larger one for cropping again, in the app's own container on your Mac so the widget can draw it. The photo is never uploaded or sent to us or anyone else. Remove Photo deletes the copies. If you share a card while a photo slipmat is on, the card shows it, because it's part of your deck. You see the card before you share it.

What the app sends

• License checks (Desk Vinyl Pro only). When you enter a license key, and occasionally afterwards, Desk Vinyl contacts Polar's license API with two things: your key and a label for this Mac (its model and the month, such as “MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021) · Oct 2026”, never its name), so the license can be activated on one Mac at a time. Polar stores that label with your license so you can manage activations, and we can see it too. Desk Vinyl's Polar organization id and, once activated, this Mac's activation id go along with each request. Nothing else is included.
• Album covers. To put the cover on the record's label: for Spotify, Desk Vinyl loads the image from Spotify's image server, like any web image, and nothing about you is sent with it. For Apple Music, it reads the cover from the Music app on your Mac, and nothing is sent.
• Album details (iTunes Search API). Only with Pro and a large widget placed, for the large widget's liner notes, Desk Vinyl sends the artist and album name of each new album you play to Apple's iTunes Search API to find the album's year, label and tracklist. Each album is looked up once and the answer is kept on your Mac.
• Singles as 7-inch (off unless you turn it on). If you turn on “Singles as 7-inch” in Customize, Desk Vinyl sends each new song's artist and title to Apple's iTunes Search API to check whether it's a single. With it off, nothing is sent.
• Update checks. Desk Vinyl checks for new versions with Sparkle, which contacts the update feed at deskvinyl.com and downloads updates from GitHub, which sees your IP address. The app itself is also downloaded from GitHub. The request shows the server your IP address and your versions of Desk Vinyl and macOS, and nothing else. Desk Vinyl asks once whether to check automatically (about once a day); if you say no, it checks only when you choose Check for Updates in the menu bar.

These lookups go to Apple like any web request, without an account. Desk Vinyl never sends your library or any usage data, and never sends anything about your listening to us.

Buying Desk Vinyl Pro

Purchases are handled by Polar as merchant of record. To take payment, prevent fraud and email your license key, Polar processes your payment details, email address and IP address under its own privacy policy. We never see your card details. Polar shares your email address and order details with us so we can help with your license, refunds and support.

Support

If you email us, we receive your email address and what you write. The email Desk Vinyl starts for you includes your app and macOS versions and whether Pro is active. Copy Diagnostics puts a report on your clipboard (versions, settings, about 30 minutes of recent app log lines and crash-report file names, never your license key). It is sent only if you paste it into an email. We keep support emails only as long as needed to help you, and delete them when you ask.

Legal bases, retention and transfers

We process your data to carry out our contract with you (license checks, your purchase, refunds and support) and for our legitimate interest in keeping the app up to date and secure (update checks). The app stores its data only on your Mac, and you can delete it at any time. Polar keeps purchase records for as long as the law and its privacy policy require, and we keep the order details Polar shares with us only as long as we need them for support, refunds and our own records. Polar, GitHub and Apple are based in the United States, so your data may be transferred there under those companies' own safeguards. See Apple's privacy policy for the iTunes lookups.

Your rights

You can ask us for access to the personal data we hold about you, and for its correction or erasure. You can also object to our processing, and you can complain to your local data protection authority. To use any of these rights, email us.

This website

This site sets no cookies and runs no analytics or advertising scripts. Its fonts and images are served from this site, not from third parties. Like any web server, the host may keep standard access logs (such as IP addresses) for security.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or want your purchase details deleted? Email us.