Privacy

The short version

Northing runs no analytics service.

There is no Northing telemetry endpoint, no advertising SDK, no attribution or crash-analytics vendor, and no profile of you held anywhere. Nothing in any Northing app tracks you across other companies' apps or websites, so no App Tracking Transparency prompt is ever shown.

Most Northing apps are macOS utilities that read and write files on your own Mac. They have no account, no server, and nothing to send. The exception is Bellrock, which has an optional account and a shared scoreboard — so it gets the longest section here.

This policy covers the apps Northing publishes, listed below. It is written by the person who writes the apps, and the claims in it are meant to be checkable against the shipped software.

Every app

What is true across the board.

Advertising

None. No ad SDK is linked into any shipped app.

Tracking

None. No data is shared with data brokers or used to track you across other companies' products.

Analytics

No third-party analytics service is used. Northing collects no usage statistics.

Selling data

Northing does not sell or rent personal information, and never has.

Payment details

Never seen by Northing. Purchases, if any, are handled entirely by Apple.

Support email

If you email hello@northing.dev, that message is kept only as long as needed to answer you.

Per app

App by app.

Bellrock — iOS

Bellrock reads public sources and builds a picture of what the world is publishing. It is fully usable with no account at all, and that is the default rather than a fallback.

Reading the world

Bellrock fetches from public, unauthenticated sources — Wikipedia, Hacker News, arXiv and public news feeds. Those services see the request and its IP address, as they would for any reader. Bellrock sends them no identifier of you and no account information.

On-device work

Sentiment scoring, trend detection, text analysis and the generated cards run on your iPhone. The subjects you watch, your saved record and your forecasts live on the device.

Optional account

If you want your record to survive a new phone, Bellrock creates an anonymous account — a random identifier and nothing else. No email, no name, no contact detail. You can then claim it with Sign in with Apple so it can be recovered. Accounts are handled by Google Firebase Authentication.

Sign in with Apple

Apple's private relay means Bellrock is not given your email address. Signing in claims your existing anonymous account rather than replacing it, so nothing you have built is lost.

What you publish

Ideas and expressions you choose to submit are stored so other readers can see and respond to them, attributed to your handle. Submitting is always a deliberate act — nothing you write is uploaded unless you send it.

Anonymous tallies

Vote and forecast counts are kept on a Cloudflare service so aggregates stay cheap to read. They are keyed to a random identifier generated on first launch, which is never joined to your account, your name or your device's own identifiers.

Notifications

Alerts about subjects you watch are local notifications. There is no push server, no push token and no APNs certificate. What you watch never leaves the phone — the app wakes in the background, takes its own reading and posts the notification itself.

Deleting it

Bellrock has an in-app Delete account control that removes the account and erases the stored profile behind it. Erase my record clears what is held on the device. Deleting the app removes everything local to it.

Processors used by Bellrock: Google Firebase (authentication and stored submissions), Cloudflare (anonymous tallies), and Apple (Sign in with Apple). They process this data to provide the service and for no purpose of Northing's beyond it.

Recall — macOS

Recall builds a private, searchable memory of what you have seen on your Mac. It ships with no network entitlement at all, so it has no way to send anything anywhere — you can inspect the signed app and confirm that yourself. Captures are stored encrypted on your machine and are removed when you remove them.

Vela — macOS

Vela is a web browser, so it connects to the sites you ask it to. Those sites see you as they would in any browser; Northing does not. History, bookmarks and settings stay on your Mac, there is no account, no sync service and no telemetry. Blocking counts shown in the interface are measured locally from real WebKit rule events.

Morph — macOS

Morph converts media on your Mac. The files you convert are read and written locally and are never uploaded to Northing or anyone else. There is no account.

Sweep — macOS

Sweep scans your Mac for things worth removing and waits for you to decide. Scan results describe your own machine and stay on it — they are not transmitted to Northing. Removal is your action, the Trash is the default, and there is no account.

Cellar — macOS

Cellar is an interface to Homebrew, which is already installed on your Mac. It runs Homebrew commands locally and shows you the real command and its real output. Package downloads go to Homebrew and the taps you have configured, not to Northing. There is no account.

Isle — macOS

Isle surfaces media, controls, battery and device state around the notch. It reads that state through native macOS APIs on your machine and displays it. Nothing is transmitted, and there is no account.

Your choices

Removing what is yours.

For the macOS apps, everything lives on your Mac: moving the app to the Trash and removing its container removes it. For Bellrock, use Delete account in the app, which deletes the account and the stored profile behind it.

If you would rather not use the in-app control, or you have already deleted the app and want whatever remains removed, email hello@northing.dev and it will be handled. Ask and you will be told what is held; ask and it will be deleted. There is no retention tier and nothing is kept for analytics, because there are no analytics.

The rest

Children, changes, and who to ask.

Children. None of these apps are directed at children, and Northing does not knowingly collect personal information from a child. If you believe a child has created a Bellrock account, email the address below and it will be removed.

Changes. If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected, the effective date at the top changes and the change is described here rather than applied quietly.

Contact. Northing is an independent studio run by Christopher Musante. Privacy questions, requests for a copy of your data, and deletion requests all go to the same place, and a person reads them.