Privacy policy

Last updated: August 3, 2026

The short version: Perch collects nothing. No accounts with us, no analytics, no tracking. Your calendar goes from Google to your Mac and stops there.

What Perch does

Perch is a native macOS menu bar app that shows your next Google Calendar meeting and a countdown. It talks to the Google Calendar API directly from your Mac, with a read-only scope. Perch cannot create, edit, or delete events, and there is no Perch server in the middle.

Your Google account

You connect with Google's own sign-in (OAuth 2.0 with PKCE) in your browser. Perch never sees your password. What it keeps:

  • OAuth tokens, stored in the macOS Keychain, on your Mac, encrypted by the system,
  • a local cache of upcoming events, so the menu bar works between refreshes.

Disconnecting in Settings deletes the tokens, and you can revoke Perch's access anytime at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Deleting the app deletes everything.

Data stored on your device

Your settings (display mode, countdown threshold, hidden keywords, per-calendar visibility, notification lead time) live in local preferences on your Mac. Notifications are posted by macOS locally. Nothing is synced anywhere.

Network traffic, in full

Perch's complete list of network connections:

  • Google's calendar API, to fetch your events, every 5 minutes and on wake,
  • the update feed: Sparkle, the standard macOS update framework, checks for new versions. The check carries no account data and nothing about your calendar.

Third parties

No analytics SDKs, no ad networks, no crash reporters phoning home. Google processes your calendar data as your calendar provider, under Google's privacy policy. Perch adds no party to that arrangement.

This website

The app collects nothing; the website is a separate thing, so it gets its own paragraph. perchbird.app uses Umami, a privacy-friendly analytics tool self-hosted by the developer, to count visits and see which buttons get clicked. It sets no cookies, collects no personal data, and cannot identify you. The app itself still talks only to Google and the update feed.

Changes

If this policy ever changes, the date at the top will be updated. Given how little there is to change, don't expect much excitement here.

Contact

Questions? Email hello@perchbird.app.