HostBar
Privacy
What leaves your Mac
HostBar makes exactly two kinds of network call on its own: license validation to Polar (your license key, an activation id, and your Mac's name so the portal list is readable), at most once a day; and update checks, described below. No tracking: no identifiers, no usage events, no crash reports, no account.
Update checks. About once a day, HostBar asks updates.uresk.net whether a newer version exists. The request says which version of HostBar you have and one word for its license state: in trial, licensed, trial ended, or license needs attention. We add that to a daily count per version and state — that count is all we keep. We don't store your IP address or anything else that could tell your Mac apart from anyone else's. Updates themselves still download from GitHub. You can turn off automatic update checks in HostBar › Settings… › Updates › “Check for updates automatically”.
The resolve panel sends DNS queries for the hostname you typed to the DNS servers your Mac is already configured to use, and only when you ask it to. Those are ordinary DNS packets to your own resolvers, not to us.
This website
gethostbar.com uses Google Analytics to count visits. Downloads are served by GitHub; purchases are handled by Polar, whose privacy policy covers checkout.
What stays on your Mac
Your profiles (~/Library/Application Support/HostBar/profiles.json), your license key and trial start (Keychain), and preferences. HostBar reads /etc/hosts, /etc/resolver, and the system DNS configuration to do its job; it writes only its own block in /etc/hosts.
Purchases
Polar is the merchant of record. We see your email and license key; we do not see card details. After you buy, Polar shows you a discount code for our other apps. We send no other email.