Last updated: 19 May 2026
Your block lists, focus sessions, statistics, and lock configurations stay on your Mac — they are never uploaded. To use AI features or pay for a subscription you create an account; we then store your email, display name, optional age range, and your subscription state. If you enable the FocusDragon AI focus assistant, a downscaled, compressed screenshot of your active display plus a short text snippet are sent at short intervals (while a block is running) to our server and onward to third-party model providers under strict no-training, ≤30-day-retention contracts for classification. Neither provider trains on those inputs; both retain inputs for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring, then permanently delete them. FocusDragon never stores screenshots on its own servers. You can export or delete everything we hold about you at any time from Settings → Account → Delete account, or by emailing privacy@focusdragon.app.
When you sign in (Google or Apple sign-in, via our authentication partner), we store your email address, display name, and an optional age range you choose during onboarding. This is held by our authentication partner on EU-hosted infrastructure. It is used only to: (1) identify you across devices, (2) attach your subscription entitlement to a stable identity, and (3) personalise the in-app greeting. Auth tokens (refresh tokens) are kept on your Mac in macOS Keychain; an HTTP-only session cookie is set on the website when you sign in there to complete checkout.
If you upgrade to FocusDragon Pro, AI Focus, or AI Focus Max, payment is handled entirely by our payments partner. Our payments partner collects and stores your card number, billing address, and any other payment-method information directly. We never see your card number. We store only: a customer ID linking your account to your billing record, your active subscription status, the tier you're on, and the expiry date of your current period. Receipts and chargeback records are retained by our payments partner for 7 years to satisfy accounting law (we cannot delete them earlier even on request).
Every block list, every lock configuration, every focus-session log, every minute of statistics, your taskContext, the blocks you've created — all of this is stored in macOS Application Support and never leaves your computer. The one exception is the optional FocusDragon AI focus assistant, which sends a downscaled, compressed screenshot plus a short text snippet to FocusDragon AI on each check (see the next two sections). FocusDragon's own servers never write the screenshot to disk and never store it.
If you enable the FocusDragon AI focus assistant and you are on a paid plan (AI Focus or AI Focus Max), at short intervals while a focus block is running we capture: (1) a downscaled, compressed screenshot of the main display; (2) a short snippet of the active tab's visible text (up to 1,200 characters) when the front app is a browser; and (3) the bundle ID and window title of the active app. These are sent to FocusDragon's server. Our server (on EU-hosted infrastructure) verifies your subscription, increments your monthly usage counter, then forwards the payload to FocusDragon AI for classification. FocusDragon AI runs on third-party model providers under strict no-training, ≤30-day-retention contracts; a backup provider under the same contract is used automatically if the primary is unavailable. The provider returns a verdict and the screenshot is then discarded by our server in the same function call — FocusDragon never stores screenshots on its own servers and never trains any model on them. Provider API terms guarantee that API inputs are not used to train any model; providers retain inputs for up to 30 days for abuse and safety monitoring, then permanently delete them. We do log per-user monthly call counts (a single integer) for quota enforcement and abuse prevention. The polling rate slows automatically as you approach the monthly allowance.
To avoid re-billing the same situation twice, our server keeps a short-lived classification cache keyed on a hash of (URL or app bundle ID, your task context, screenshot perceptual fingerprint). The cache stores only the verdict (focused / distracted / unclear) and a TTL of 30 days — never the screenshot, never the page text, never the URL in clear. After 30 days the row is automatically deleted. The cache lives on EU-hosted infrastructure. On your Mac, the perceptual hash and last verdict are kept in-memory only and never persisted to disk — they evaporate the moment the app quits.
If you buy the bring-your-own-key add-on ($15 lifetime) and configure your own API key, the Mac app sends screenshots and snippets directly from your computer to the provider, signed with your key. Our servers see nothing in this case. Your traffic, your contract with the provider, your bill.
Whichever path you use, the browser extension never reads body text from: banking, payments, brokerage, email, identity / authentication, password manager, or healthcare sites. On those domains only the URL and tab title flow. It also never reads body text from incognito / private browsing tabs. The exclusion list is hard-coded — you can't accidentally opt out of it. Screenshot capture is also gated on a focus block being active — outside of a running block, the AI layer captures nothing.
If you do not enable the AI focus assistant, the Chrome / Safari / Firefox extensions read only the URL of pages you visit and match them against your block list. No page body text, no DOM, no cookies, no form contents — just the URL string. The extension communicates with the local FocusDragon app on your Mac via the browser's native-messaging channel; it does not make network requests to any server we operate.
Our hosting partner keeps standard HTTP access logs for FocusDragon's server and focusdragon.app for up to 30 days. These contain timestamp, IP address, request path, response code, and user-agent — used for debugging and abuse prevention. They are not joined to your account or used to profile you.
focusdragon.app uses two cookies, both first-party: an HTTP-only session cookie when you sign in (so checkout / portal flows work), and a short-lived `fd_post_auth_redirect` cookie that remembers where to send you after sign-in. There are no third-party marketing cookies, no advertising pixels, no third-party analytics on the site.
Inside the Mac app you can opt in to anonymous product analytics handled by our optional analytics partner. It is OFF by default. If you enable it, we receive aggregate, non-identifying event names ("a block started", "AI verdict returned") with no block contents, no app names, no URLs, no page text, and no PII. You can disable it from Settings → General → Privacy at any time; existing events are not retroactively deleted but new events stop.
If FocusDragon crashes, a stack trace is sent to our error-monitoring partner with all personal context stripped (no block data, no file paths beyond the bundle, no clipboard, no environment). You can disable crash reporting in Settings → General → Privacy. Crash reports help us fix bugs that would otherwise silently affect users.
We use the following providers, each performing the role described: our authentication partner (auth + accounts + entitlements DB; EU-hosted infrastructure), our payments partner (billing; US/EU); FocusDragon AI, delivered by third-party model providers under strict no-training, ≤30-day-retention contracts (primary and backup AI classification providers; US/global — API inputs retained up to 30 days for abuse monitoring, no training); our hosting partner (hosting; EU-hosted infrastructure); our error-monitoring partner (crash reports; EU-hosted infrastructure); our optional analytics partner (optional analytics; EU-hosted infrastructure). Where data is transferred outside the EEA we rely on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.
If you are in the EU (GDPR Article 15–22), UK, or California (CCPA / CPRA) you have the right to access, correct, port, or delete the personal data we hold about you, and to receive an export in a machine-readable format. You can export all data we hold about you anytime via Settings → Export my data in the Mac or iOS app — you'll receive a ZIP archive containing every row tied to your account (subscriptions, entitlement history, attribution, cancellations, AI usage totals, and any waitlist record). You can also email privacy@focusdragon.app to request the same. We will respond within 30 days as required by GDPR Article 15. Account deletion is also self-serve from inside the Mac and iOS apps: Settings → Account → Delete account permanently removes your account record, your subscription, and any entitlements. Records of past payments held by our payments partner are retained as required by accounting law (typically 7 years).
FocusDragon is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 13. EU users under 16 require parental consent. If we learn we've inadvertently collected data from a minor, we delete it.
When we materially change this policy we update the "last updated" date at the top, list the change in the in-app changelog, and — for changes that expand what we collect — surface a notice in the app the next time you open it. Continued use after that notice constitutes acceptance.
Privacy questions, deletion requests, DSARs, or concerns: privacy@focusdragon.app. General questions: hello@focusdragon.app. We aim to respond within two business days.