Switchi is built to be private by default. Your apps, windows, settings, and usage statistics stay on your Mac — there are no user accounts, no analytics reporting, no trackers, and no ads. The only time Switchi contacts a server is to verify your license and, if you buy, to process your payment. This policy explains what that means in practice.
Switchi does not require an account and does not send your app list, window titles, thumbnails, or usage to any server. There is no telemetry and no analytics reporting: the only usage figures Switchi keeps are the local counters behind the in-app Statistics dialog, described below, which stay on your Mac and are for your eyes only.
Your window and app information is read from macOS at runtime purely to render the palette on your machine, and is never transmitted off your device.
Settings such as your chosen theme, accent color, global shortcut, preview toggle, pinned windows, favorite apps, app exceptions, and window bounds are saved locally on your Mac so the app remembers your preferences between launches.
Switchi also keeps usage counters in a separate local file so the in-app Statistics dialog can show you your own activity — how many times you switched or summoned the palette, how you drove it, and which apps you switched to most. Window titles are never recorded; only per-app counts and the app's own display name are stored. These counters are never transmitted, and the dialog's Reset button erases them.
Those counters are bounded by design rather than growing without limit: the day-by-day series keeps only the most recent 90 days, and at most 200 apps are tracked, with the least recently used row dropped past that. Lifetime totals and the hour-of-day histogram are running counts that stay until you reset them. Nothing you type is stored — when you search, only the number of characters is recorded, never the query itself.
This data never leaves your device and can be removed by deleting the app's local settings.
Accessibility permission is used to enumerate window titles and to raise, minimize, and close windows. Screen Recording permission is optional and only used to generate live window thumbnails. Automation may be requested by the fallback backend.
These permissions are granted by you in System Settings and can be revoked at any time.
To unlock Switchi beyond the free trial you enter a license key. To activate that key and periodically confirm it is still valid, the app sends the license key, a one-way hashed identifier derived from your Mac, and your device name (your Mac's hostname) to our licensing backend and to our payments provider, DodoPayments.
We store a license record — the license key, the purchase email associated with it, its activation status, and the hashed identifier of the Mac it is activated on — so we can enforce the activation limit, let you re-send or move your key, and honor refunds. The hashed device identifier cannot be reversed to identify your hardware, and your window titles, app list, and thumbnails are never sent as part of licensing.
To offer the free trial fairly, the first time you launch Switchi it sends only the hashed device identifier to our backend so the trial period can't be reset by reinstalling. No other information is sent for the trial.
Lifetime license purchases are processed by our payment provider (DodoPayments). Any billing information you enter is handled by the provider under its own privacy policy; we do not receive or store your full payment details. We do receive limited purchase metadata — such as your email and a payment/license identifier — in order to deliver, validate, and support your license.
Questions about privacy? Email us at support@switchi.app.