GlanceGlance processes window previews, titles and browser tabs locally. It does not upload your screen content or browsing activity.
Previews and photos
Previews are held in memory, with no application-managed screenshot cache on disk. Locking the Mac or sleeping pauses capture and hides previews, while the bounded cache keeps the last images for when you return. Images may be evicted under memory pressure. Switching user sessions, quitting Glance or detecting Accessibility or Screen Recording permission revocation clears them. macOS manages swap and crash reporting, so this is not a guarantee that pixels never reach disk.
A background photo you choose is saved as a local PNG copy. Remove My Image deletes that copy; your original and backups are unaffected.
Sections marked “coming soon” describe planned features that are not included in the current download.
Your pinned apps — coming soon
Pinned saves your page names, app identities and chosen order locally on your Mac. Hiding Pinned or Always Here keeps that arrangement for next time. Window titles, browser tabs and preview images are not saved as part of it.
Notification badges come from the existing app badges in your Dock. Glance reads them while its previews are visible, keeps them in memory, and clears them when the previews close. It does not read Notification Centre messages.
Optional iCloud sync — coming soon
In builds that support iCloud sync, you can choose to sync named setups through your private iCloud database using your Apple account. This sends page names and order, app names and bundle identifiers, Pinned and Always Here membership, and selected appearance and behaviour preferences to Apple’s CloudKit service. Setup records use an encrypted data field. This does not mean Advanced Data Protection is enabled on your account; Apple’s iCloud settings and policies apply.
Glance does not upload window previews or titles, document information, browser-tab titles or addresses, notification badges, imported photos, or local file paths. Each Mac keeps its own setup selection, section visibility, shortcuts, permissions and display layout. Turning sync off keeps local setups and does not delete the copies already in iCloud. In Settings you can explicitly delete an inactive setup; the deletion reaches iCloud when sync is enabled and available. Other Macs using it keep their current arrangement and disconnect. Local recovery copies and user-exported backups remain on the Mac. Offline changes stay saved on the Mac; sync resumes when available. Glance does not run a server for your setups.
Founders licences — coming soon
Early installations are recognised locally from existing Glance preferences. Founders receive a lifetime licence, including future versions, without creating an account. The licence contains a random identifier, grant date and status. It is saved locally, with a Keychain copy, and you can export a personal backup for another Mac. No licence or installation identity is sent to us to make this recognition.
Support information — coming soon
About Glance lets you review and copy a short support summary. It contains version and permission status, with no screenshots, window titles, browser history or licence keys. Nothing is uploaded by copying it.
Website icons are your choice
Website icons are off by default, separately from browser-tab support. Enabling them contacts sites in your tabs, including private tabs, outside your browser’s privacy controls. Requests omit cookies and saved credentials, strip tab URL paths and queries, and reject cross-origin icon links and redirects.
You control updates
Manual update checks are available in Settings and the menu. Daily checks require consent. You choose whether to install an update. Signed feeds and archives are verified before extraction.
Update checks contain no installation identifier, window data, browsing data or system profile. Remote release-note HTML is disabled.
The website
The site’s fonts, images and scripts are served from the same website. Viewing the page does not load Google Fonts or third-party analytics.
Download totals, without visitor tracking
This website uses no analytics cookies or third-party tracking scripts. We count full Glance installer responses served, grouped by day and release. Partial and interrupted transfers are recorded separately. These are transfer totals, not unique people or installations; repeat downloads can count again.
To calculate totals reliably, the server temporarily keeps anonymised transfer records containing the package path, time, response status and byte count. IP addresses, request headers, cookies, referrers and query strings are removed before these records are written. Records rotate daily under a seven-day retention policy; aggregate daily counts remain. Update-feed checks and page visits are not counted.
The server necessarily receives connection information to deliver files. This does not remove information handled independently by the hosting provider or operating system.
Permissions
You control Accessibility, Screen Recording and Automation permissions in macOS System Settings. Moving from a development build to the signed release may require granting permissions again.