keepup privacy policy

Effective: September 27, 2026 · Publisher: Mark Estefanos · Contact: heykeepupapp@gmail.com

Every statement below describes what keepup does today; when that changes, this policy changes with it.

keepup is a Mac app that finds the messages and email you haven't answered. It runs on your Mac. It has no servers of its own, and nothing you read or write in it is sent to its makers.

What keepup reads, on your Mac

• Messages (iMessage and SMS), from the Messages app's database on your Mac.
• Contacts, for the names of the people who write to you.
• The chat networks you choose (WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger, X, Telegram), through bridges: open-source programs that run on your Mac and sign in to each network as you, the way a second device or a browser would. You choose which networks, if any, and you can turn each one off.
• Gmail and Google Calendar, for the Google accounts you add, through Google's APIs.
• What you tell it in setup: your name, what people call you, your pronouns, and a line about what you do.

What keepup does with it

It works out who is waiting for a reply from you, what you need to do, and which emails are noise. It shows that in the app, in a daily brief and in reminders. For the Google accounts where you turn on the sweep, it marks the emails it judges to be noise (and, if you choose, just for your information) as read. It never marks as read email that a person wrote to you. It never sends, deletes or changes a message, apart from that read mark, which you can undo.

What leaves your Mac, and where it goes

1. To the AI you choose (Claude Code from Anthropic, or Codex from OpenAI), using your own account with them: the conversations keepup is sorting (the text, who wrote it and when), and your line about what you do. The AI gets no tools; it only sorts. That provider's terms and privacy settings apply to it, including whether it may use what it receives to improve its models. Setup asks you to turn that off ("Help improve Claude" in Claude's Settings → Privacy; for Codex, "Improve the model for everyone" in ChatGPT's Data controls), and Google's rules require it for your email. keepup's makers receive none of it.
2. To each chat network and to Google, as any app of theirs would: the bridges sign in and receive your messages; keepup asks Google's APIs for your email and calendar, and marks swept email as read.
3. To your iPhone, if you use keepup's iPhone app: your Mac puts your list (who is waiting on you, what they need, and the email keepup marked read, with a line from each) and the text of your brief and reminders in your own iCloud account, in keepup's private iCloud database, which only your devices signed in to that account can read. keepup's makers can't. The iPhone app reads it from there, and your taps on the iPhone (Done, Snooze and the like) go back to your Mac the same way. Apple's iCloud privacy terms apply to it. The iPhone app collects nothing else and sends nothing anywhere else; its "See an example" uses made-up people and stays on the phone.
4. To GitHub, once a day: keepup checks for a new version by fetching a small file from GitHub, which sees your IP address and keepup's version, as with any download. You can turn this off in Settings → General.
5. To keepup's makers, only when you send feedback: Send feedback attaches a diagnostics report to an email you can read and edit before sending. It holds how keepup is set up, recent log lines and crash reports of keepup's programs (where they stopped, not what they held); it holds no message text, and email addresses, phone numbers and the names keepup knows are replaced.

keepup has no analytics, no tracking, no advertising, and no account with its makers.

Google user data

keepup asks Google for permission to read and modify your Gmail (to read your email and mark swept email as read; it can't permanently delete email) and to read your calendar. keepup's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. That data is used only to show you, on your Mac, who is waiting on you and what to do; it is sent only to the AI you chose, for that purpose (item 1 above); it is never sold, used for advertising, or used by keepup's makers to train AI models, and no person reads it.

Where it's kept, and for how long

On your Mac: settings in ~/.config/keepup, data in ~/Library/Application Support/keepup, logs in ~/Library/Logs/keepup, and passwords and tokens in your Keychain. It stays there until you remove it. In your iCloud: only the latest list (each new one replaces the last), brief and reminder texts for two days, and the iPhone's taps until your Mac has read them. Settings → General → Remove keepup from this Mac unlinks keepup from each chat network, revokes its access to your Google accounts, deletes keepup's data from your iCloud, and moves all of it to the Trash. You can also revoke Google's access at any time at myaccount.google.com/connections.

The risk in connecting chat networks

The bridges aren't official apps. The networks don't support them, and their terms don't allow unofficial clients, so an account that uses one can be challenged, signed out, or (rarely) restricted or banned. keepup shows each network's specific risk before you connect it.

Children

keepup isn't meant for anyone under 16.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version is published here with a new date, and a change to what leaves your Mac is announced in the app first.

Contact

heykeepupapp@gmail.com