Privacy and security
How your focus is going is visible to you and no one else. Below is what iPoki does on your machine, and what it doesn’t — every claim written so it can be checked, rather than so it sounds reassuring.
It isn’t here to judge you
This is probably what you want to know first: how your focus is going is visible to you and no one else.
iPoki doesn’t count your slips back at you. When a session ends, what you see is what you did and what might help next time — not a scorecard.
If you ever want someone alongside you, you have to invite them yourself — and all they can see is how many things you finished. Not what you were doing, and never your screen.
It’s here to help you get back to the thing in front of you, not to watch you on someone’s behalf.
You decide when it’s there
No session means no screen-related processing at all.
- If you don’t start, it isn’t there. iPoki doesn’t sit in the background. No session, no screen-related processing at all.
- The moment a session ends, it stops. No lingering, no “just a bit longer”.
- Timer tasks and checkbox tasks never involve the screen. They count time and record completion. Only a task you explicitly mark as needing company uses it.
- You press start, every time. iPoki never opens a session on its own.
From macOS 15 onwards the system itself re-asks you roughly once a month whether the permission should continue. That prompt comes from macOS, and we don’t work around it.
Places it never looks
iPoki has a private apps list. While an app on that list is in front, screen content is not read at all — not read-then-discarded; the step simply doesn’t happen.
- Deciding whether to skip a window uses only basic information like the app’s name. It never needs to read the screen in order to decide.
- Banking apps, password managers and system login dialogs are on the list by default.
- You can add, edit, clear or export the list at any time.
- When an app on the list is in front, iPoki simply tells you it’s skipping this stretch. It doesn’t pretend to be working.
A glance, then it’s gone
During a focus session, iPoki briefly looks at the window you’re in to tell whether you’re still on task. Once that judgement is made, the glance is gone.
What stays is one sentence — something like “writing the proposal in a document” or “switched to a video site”. Your screen, your text, what you were reading: none of it is kept.
That isn’t a turn of phrase. It’s a hard split in the code: one kind of data never reaches a database or a log; the other is that sentence, which lives on your own machine.
Where data goes
Short version: what it sees isn’t kept; the sentence it writes stays on your own machine.
Two kinds of data, two treatments
What it sees
The picture and text in the current window
- Stored in a databaseNo
- Written to a logNo
- Uploaded to the cloudNo
- Can you delete itIt doesn’t exist to begin with
What it writes
The AI’s one-sentence summary, plus records like time spent
- Stored in a databaseYes — on your own machine
- Written to a logYes
- Uploaded to the cloudOnly for future cross-device sync, and only if you choose it
- Can you delete itView, export or delete any time
About the AI
iPoki’s judgement comes from a third-party AI provider — much like many apps rely on a maps or payments service, this is a capability we don’t build ourselves.
Making the judgement means sending a small amount of the current window over. Once the result comes back, we discard it immediately on our side — no database, no logs. Automated checks enforce this.
That provider has its own data handling rules, and we have a data processing agreement with them. The full detail, including how long they keep things, is in the Privacy Policy.
Beyond that, no third party receives your data. Neither this website nor the app contains third-party analytics or advertising SDKs, and we don’t sell data.
Making it better at helping you start
Some features really do get people moving. Others only look good on paper. Telling them apart has no shortcut — it takes seeing what actually gets used.
So iPoki collects anonymous usage statistics: whether a feature was used, how many times, whether it was switched off. That is all.
- No task content, no screen content, nothing that could identify you. These are plain counts, not a record of you.
- On by default, off with one switch in settings. Turning it off stops it immediately.
- Diagnostic records used for bug hunting stay on your machine and are never uploaded.
The only thing these numbers are for is making the next version better at helping you actually get things done.
Things we deliberately don’t do
Some things we could build. We choose not to.
- No background watching. No session, no observation.
- Nothing for watching other people. iPoki is a tool you use on yourself; installing it on someone else’s device breaks the Terms of Use.
- No forced blocking of any site or app. We keep you company instead of locking you out.
- No data selling, no advertising, no third-party analytics SDKs.
- No labels. iPoki is a general-purpose focus tool. It does not diagnose or treat any condition and cannot replace professional medical care.
Questions: privacy@ipokiapp.com · Security reports: security@ipokiapp.com