Privacy policy

Last updated 26 October 2026

machen is a free, open-source app for the Mac menu bar that shows your Google Calendar events and Google Tasks and lets you change them. It's made by Bernhard Rieder (berno.rieder@gmail.com). This policy explains what data machen accesses, what it does with it, and how you can remove it.

In short: machen runs entirely on your Mac and talks directly to Google. There's no machen server. The developer doesn't receive, collect or store any of your data.

Google user data machen accesses

When you connect a Google account, machen asks for these permissions. You can see them on Google's sign-in screen, and machen asks for nothing else.

Permission	Data	Why
See the list of Google calendars you're subscribed to `calendar.calendarlist.readonly`	Each calendar's name, colour, your access level, whether it's shown in Google Calendar, its default reminders, and its id. Your primary calendar's id is your account's email address.	To list your calendars, colour their events, know which ones you can edit, show reminders for events that use the defaults, and name the account in machen.
View and edit events on all your calendars `calendar.events`	Each event's title, time, location, description, colour, reminders, video call link, link to Google Calendar, and whether you've declined it. Not the guest list.	To show your events, and to add, change, move or delete events when you do so in machen.
Create, edit, organize, and delete all your tasks `tasks`	Your task lists' names, and each open task's title, notes, due date, position and parent task.	To show your open tasks, and to add, change, complete or delete tasks when you do so in machen.

How machen uses this data

To show your calendars, events, task lists and tasks in the app.
To send the changes you make in machen to Google.
To show the reminders you've set in Google Calendar as notifications on your Mac.

machen doesn't use your data for anything else. It doesn't use it for advertising, doesn't sell it, and doesn't use it to develop, improve or train AI or machine learning models. No person reads your data.

Where your data is stored

Only on your Mac:

Sign-in: the sign-in tokens Google issues for each connected account are kept in the macOS Keychain.
Offline copy: the calendars, events and tasks machen loaded last are kept in a file in your user folder (~/Library/Application Support/io.github.bernorieder.machen/) that only your user account can read, so machen can show them right away and while you're offline.
Notifications: upcoming reminders are scheduled with macOS so they appear on time. machen removes them when it quits.
Settings: your choices in machen, such as which calendars to show, are kept in the app's preferences on your Mac.

All communication with Google uses encrypted connections (HTTPS).

Sharing

machen doesn't share or transfer your data to anyone. It sends data only to Google, and only to show and change your own calendars and tasks. machen contains no analytics, crash reporting, advertising or tracking.

Removing your data

Remove an account: in machen, open Settings → Sources and click Remove next to the account. This revokes machen's access to that Google account and deletes its sign-in and its data from your Mac. Removing the last account also deletes the offline copy.
Revoke access at Google: at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions.
Uninstall: remove your accounts as above, then move machen to the Trash. To remove its settings too, delete ~/Library/Preferences/io.github.bernorieder.machen.plist.

Limited Use

machen's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Changes to this policy

If machen starts handling data differently, this page will be updated first, with a new date at the top. The history of this page is on GitHub.

Contact

Questions about this policy or about your data: Bernhard Rieder, berno.rieder@gmail.com.