Privacy Policy

Scope

This policy covers two separate applications, published under the same name:

• Beyond the Devices for Android — the phone application.
• Beyond the Devices for Mac — the macOS menu bar application.

There is no backend service. The product has no server component, no account system and no cloud relay; the two applications communicate directly with each other.

If you are in India, this policy is also our notice under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. The publisher named under Contact is the data fiduciary. Because the applications send nothing to us, there is no personal data held by us to access, correct or erase.

What the apps access

The Android application declares the following permissions, each tied to a feature you choose to use:

• Internet, network and Wi-Fi state — to find the paired Mac on your local network and open the connection.
• Camera — only to scan the pairing QR code, and only when you open the scanner.
• Notifications (POST_NOTIFICATIONS) — to show the persistent link status and mirror alerts to the Mac.
• Notification listener access — granted by you in Android settings, used to read and forward mirrored notifications.
• Foreground service (connected device) — to keep the connection alive while the app is not on screen.
• Battery optimization exemption — requested only when you enable the deep sleep option, so the link survives a doze cycle.

The applications do not request access to SMS, contacts, call logs, location, your files, or your photo library.

What moves between devices

Only to the Mac you have paired, and only for features you enable:

• Clipboard text you copy while clipboard sync is on.
• Notification title, text and an optional reply action for alerts the app mirrors.
• Now-playing metadata — track, artist, album and playback state — and playback commands you send back.
• Links you explicitly share to the Mac.
• Device status: battery, charging, signal and network transport type.
• Pairing material: a random device identifier, a pairing PIN and a certificate fingerprint.

Local storage

• On Android, pairing secrets are held in EncryptedSharedPreferences.
• On macOS, pairing secrets and the TLS identity are held in the Keychain.
• The Mac caches the conversations it builds from mirrored notifications until you clear them in Settings.
• Clipboard text is kept in memory only; it is not written to disk.

What is not collected

• No account, profile or sign-up.
• No advertising SDK and no separate analytics or crash-reporting service. The only third-party reporting comes from Google ML Kit’s barcode scanner, described under Third parties.
• No server-side logs, because there is no server.

Third parties

Distribution happens through Google Play (Android) and this website (macOS). Those platforms process the download itself under their own policies; Beyond the Devices does not receive personal data from them beyond aggregate install counts that the platforms publish to every developer.

One third-party library inside the Android app reports to its vendor. The app uses Google ML Kit’s bundled barcode scanner, on-device, to read the pairing QR code. The camera frames and the decoded code are processed on the phone and are never uploaded. ML Kit itself, however, sends Google limited diagnostics and usage metrics.

In this app, Google receives from ML Kit:

• Device information — manufacturer, model, OS version and build, and available hardware accelerators.
• Application information — package name and app version.
• Per-installation identifiers that are not intended to uniquely identify you or your device.
• API configuration, input and output sizes, feature version, event types, error codes, and performance metrics such as latency.

ML Kit encrypts this data in transit with HTTPS and does not share it with third parties. Google uses it to measure performance, debug, maintain and improve the APIs, and detect misuse, as described in Google’s ML Kit Terms & Privacy. The app does not enable the scanner’s optional auto-zoom, which is the only barcode-scanning feature for which ML Kit collects additional data (a per-session identifier, zoom-level changes and predicted bounding-box coordinates). If that changes, this policy will be updated first.

No other data captured by the applications is sent to any third party.

Pairing and connections

Pairing begins with a QR code shown on the Mac. The code carries a one-time token with an expiry, so a scan must happen promptly and cannot be reused later. The Mac must then approve the phone explicitly.

Once paired, the connection is TLS and pinned to the paired device’s certificate, so an unrelated device on the same network cannot impersonate either side. Forgetting a device removes the pairing on both sides.

Retention and deletion

• Forget this Mac (Android) and Forget this device (Mac) delete the pairing on both sides, including the stored PIN and certificate fingerprint.
• Clear chats on the Mac deletes the cached conversations stored there.
• Uninstalling either application removes its local storage. Because there is no server or account, there is nothing else to delete.

Children

Beyond the Devices is not directed at anyone under 18 — the age at which a person is treated as a child under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 — and does not knowingly collect information from anyone.

Contact

The publisher and data fiduciary is Vatsal Chevli, trading as Beyond the Devices. Write to support@beyondthedevices.com for privacy questions, data requests and grievances; we aim to respond within 90 days.

Changes

Changes to this policy are published at this address with a new “last updated” date. Material changes will be noted on this page.