Privacy

Desktop Ducky collects nothing.

Last updated 25 July 2026

No account. No sign-in. No analytics, no telemetry, no tracking, no ads. The app makes no network connections to report on you, and it never sends anything about you anywhere. It talks to the network for exactly two things, both described below: license activation and, unless you turn it off, a check for new versions. This isn’t a “we respect your privacy” promise wrapped around a data pipeline — there is no pipeline. It’s a duck.

What stays on your computer

Everything the app remembers lives locally, in one per-app folder: on macOS ~/Library/Application Support/DesktopDucky/, on Windows %LOCALAPPDATA%\DesktopDucky\. That’s your settings (the look you chose, volumes, panel positions), your license key, the little phone toy’s chat transcript, the license-agreement receipt, and — only if a crash ever happens — a crash.log you can send us. Pages you type on the typewriter toy are saved only when you explicitly save one, to a folder you pick. None of it ever leaves your machine. Deleting the app leaves that folder behind (so a reinstall remembers you) — delete the folder too and every trace is gone. If you enabled Launch at Login, flip it off in Settings first (or remove the app’s login item in your OS settings).

The Screen Recording permission

The Screen water mode ripples your actual desktop. To do that, macOS requires the app to hold Screen Recording permission, which the system prompts you to grant on first use. Here’s exactly what happens with it:

• The captured image of your screen is used only to draw the water’s refraction, in the moment, on your machine.
• It is never saved to disk, transmitted, uploaded, or shared. In memory it lives in locked, wiped-after-use buffers.
• The app excludes its own window from the capture wherever the OS supports that (everywhere except Windows 10 releases older than version 2004), and there is no “recording” in the sense of a saved file.
• Don’t want it? Don’t grant the permission, or don’t use the Screen water modes — everything else works without it.

The typing desks

Summon the typing keyboard or the typewriter and the duck types along with you — that’s the toy: while a desk is out, the app reads which keys you press system-wide (it does not need to be the focused app) and pecks the matching keys, and the typewriter prints the matching characters on its page. All of it stays on your screen, on your machine. Two guardrails: when a password field has focus anywhere on your system, the duck looks away — keystrokes are dropped entirely, not even masked; and nothing typed is ever written to disk unless you deliberately save a typed page. Put the desks away and the app stops reading key identity entirely — all that remains is an anonymous count of key presses (never which keys), which is all it ever reads while no desk is out.

Buying it

Payment is handled entirely by Lemon Squeezy, our payment processor and merchant of record. When you buy Desktop Ducky, your card and billing details go to Lemon Squeezy, not to us — we never see or store your payment information. Lemon Squeezy processes the payment and sales tax under its own privacy policy, then sends us only what we need to deliver your purchase: your email address and an order confirmation, so we can send your download and license key.

We use your email only to deliver the app, your license key, and important notes about your purchase (like a critical update). No marketing lists, no selling your address, ever.

License activation

When you enter your key, the app sends that key to Lemon Squeezy over HTTPS to confirm it and register the activation, and every few days it quietly re-confirms the key is still good. The activation is labelled with your computer’s operating system and a short anonymous code (for example Windows-3F2A) so you can tell your own computers apart if you ever move the license — your machine’s actual name is never sent. That’s the whole exchange: no usage data, no settings, nothing about what’s on your screen.

Checking for new versions

Once a day while it runs (and once at launch), an activated app asks GitHub — where our downloads are hosted — whether a newer Desktop Ducky exists. Like any web request, that carries your IP address, and the app identifies itself with the version you’re running (so the answer can be compared against it); GitHub logs requests under its own privacy policy. Nothing else is sent — no key, no settings, nothing about you. If you accept an update, the new build downloads from the same place. Don’t want any of this? Turn off “Check for updates automatically” in Settings → About and the app touches the network for updates only when you ask it to check by hand.

This website

This site is a handful of static files. It sets no tracking cookies and runs no advertising or cross-site trackers. The one third-party script it can load is Lemon Squeezy’s checkout — and it loads only when you head for the buy button, not on a page view.

If this ever changes

If a future version ever adds anything optional — say, crash reports to help fix bugs — it will be strictly opt-in, off by default, clearly explained, and described here before it ships. The default will always be: the duck keeps to itself.

Questions? Email hello@desktopducky.com.