Privacy Policy

Effective 2 November 2026 · Paste Tense for Mac, pastetense.app and decryptor.pastetense.app

• Who we are
• The app
• Apple
• The website
• The decryptor
• Email
• Legal bases
• Your rights
• Changes

Who we are

Paste Tense is made by an independent developer ("we", "us"). For the little personal information this policy covers — the emails you send us and the website's request data described below — we are responsible for it. For anything about this policy, write to support@pastetense.app.

The Paste Tense app

What we collect: nothing

The app has no account, no server, no analytics, no telemetry, no advertising and no third-party code. It contains no networking code, and it runs in Apple's App Sandbox without the network entitlement, so macOS itself blocks any connection it might attempt. No information about you or your use of the app reaches us through the app.

What the app keeps on your Mac

To do its job, the app stores information on your Mac only, where you can see and delete it:

• Your history — the text you copy and copies of files you copy in Finder — in the folder you choose, as one file per week, and in the backup folder if you choose one. While encryption is off these files are readable text; while it is on, each item is encrypted, though the files still show how many items were copied on which days and their sizes, and copied files' names, sizes and folders stay readable — including the date, time and app if your folder layout uses them.
• Items waiting to be saved — briefly, in the app's private container on your Mac, until they are safely written to your folder.
• Settings — your preferences, the folders you chose, the apps you excluded and your pinned items (stored as an item's identifier and week, never its text).
• Encryption keys — if you turn encryption on, a key file in your folder holding the key only in wrapped (encrypted) form and, if you unlock with your Mac login, an item in this Mac's Keychain.
• In memory while the app runs — the week you are viewing and, while your history is unlocked, the weeks you open or search. They are never written to disk and are cleared when you lock.
• Decrypted copies you ask for — when you open a decrypted week or copy back an encrypted file, a readable copy goes in the app's private temporary folder and is deleted after 10 minutes or when you quit. A decrypted copy or recovery key you save goes where you choose, and stays until you delete it.

The app refuses items that other apps mark as concealed or temporary (as many password managers do) before reading them, and skips copies from apps you exclude. It never puts clipboard content into its logs, error messages or notifications. Not every secret is marked, though: text that no app marked is recorded like any other copy.

Copies you make on your iPhone or iPad can reach your Mac through Apple's Universal Clipboard, which macOS handles. Paste Tense records them like any other copy unless you turn off Record copies from iPhone and iPad in its settings.

If you put your folder in a cloud service such as iCloud Drive, that service — not Paste Tense — uploads the files, under its own privacy policy. Backup tools such as Time Machine may also copy them.

Deleting everything

Because everything is on your Mac, you delete it yourself, and nobody else keeps a copy: delete your archive folder and your backup folder (including the key file paste_tense_key.ptkey), and any decrypted copies or recovery key file you saved. Then move Paste Tense to the Bin (or Trash) and delete its container folder (in Finder, Go › Go to Folder… › ~/Library/Containers, the folder named Paste Tense), which holds its settings and any items waiting to be saved. If you used Mac-login unlock, you can also remove the item named “Paste Tense archive key” in Keychain Access. Copies in iCloud Drive, Time Machine or other backups are kept by those services until you remove them there.

Purchases and Apple

Paste Tense is sold through the Mac App Store. Apple handles the purchase, payment, downloads, updates and refunds under Apple's Privacy Policy. We never see your payment details. Apple gives developers sales and download reports; they do not include your clipboard, your files or your history, and we do not use them to identify you.

If you have chosen, in macOS, to share crash and usage data with app developers (System Settings › Privacy & Security › Analytics & Improvements), Apple may share crash reports about Paste Tense with us. macOS makes these reports, not Paste Tense, and they describe where the app failed rather than what you copied; Paste Tense keeps clipboard content out of its own errors and logs. We use them only to fix bugs. You can turn this sharing off at any time in the same place.

The website, pastetense.app

The site sets no cookies, uses no analytics or tracking, shows no advertising and loads nothing from any third party — no web fonts, scripts, images or embeds from anyone else. Its security policy tells your browser so. The Cookies page has the details.

The site is hosted by Cloudflare, Inc. To deliver pages and protect the site from abuse, Cloudflare processes the standard information every web request carries, such as your IP address, browser type, the page requested and the time. Cloudflare handles this under its own privacy policy, and may process it in countries other than yours, under safeguards such as the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. Cloudflare's dashboard can show us aggregate traffic figures and, for requests its security features block, details such as the IP address; we use these only to keep the site running and secure, we keep no visitor logs of our own, and we do not combine this information with anything else.

The decryptor on the web

The decryptor at decryptor.pastetense.app, hosted by Cloudflare like this site, runs entirely inside your browser tab. The files you open and the password or recovery key you type are never sent anywhere: the page's security policy makes the browser refuse every connection from it, and it stores nothing (no cookies, no browser storage). Cloudflare sees only that the page was requested, as with any web page. The copy you can save from the app is the same page and works offline. The old address, pastetense.app/decryptor/, forwards there.

When you email us

If you write to us, we receive what you send — your email address, your message and anything attached — and our email providers — Cloudflare Email Routing, which forwards it, and our mailbox provider — process it to deliver and store it, possibly in countries other than yours, under safeguards such as the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. We use it only to answer you and to follow up on your message, and we delete it within 12 months after our conversation ends, unless you ask us to delete it sooner. Please never send clipboard contents, passwords, recovery keys, key files or history files. We do not need them to help you.

Legal bases (European Union and United Kingdom)

Where the GDPR or the UK GDPR applies, we rely on our legitimate interests in delivering the website and keeping it secure for the request data described above, and on answering your request (or our legitimate interest in doing so) for emails you send us. We make no automated decisions about you and do no profiling.

Children and your rights

The app collects no personal information from anyone, including children. Our websites are not directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly receive their information. Depending on where you live — for example under the GDPR in the European Union and the United Kingdom, or the CCPA in California — you may have rights to access, correct, delete or receive a copy of personal information about you, to object to its use, and to complain to a data protection authority. Because the app sends us nothing, there is nothing about your use of it for us to access or delete; for emails you sent us, write to support@pastetense.app. We do not sell or share personal information, and we do not use it for targeted advertising.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we will publish the new version here with a new effective date, and describe significant changes in the app's release notes.

Questions: support@pastetense.app. All our policies are listed on the Legal page.