Privacy Policy

Last updated October 29, 2026

Tinsel is made by Don Bytyqi. We collect as little as we can. There are no accounts, analytics, tracking or ads in the app or on this website.

When you buy

Payments are processed by Paddle.com, our reseller and Merchant of Record. Paddle collects your name, email, billing details and payment information under its own privacy policy. We never see your card details.

Paddle tells us your email and order number so we can give you your license key. If license emails are switched on, we send your key to that email through Resend, our email provider.

License checks

When you activate Tinsel, it sends the license key or email you enter to our license server at api.tinselapp.com, which runs on Cloudflare. The server looks your purchase up with Paddle and answers with your license; it keeps no records of its own. About every two weeks Tinsel checks the license again, so that a refunded purchase stops working. If your Mac is offline, Tinsel keeps working.

Snow that follows the weather

Only if you switch this on, Tinsel asks for your location, rounds it to about 10 km, and sends that to MET Norway to find out whether it is snowing. Your exact location never leaves your Mac.

Music and the Dock

To make the lights dance, Tinsel listens to the sound your Mac is playing. It is analysed on your Mac and never recorded or sent anywhere. Accessibility permission is used only to find where the Dock is.

Updates

Tinsel checks for updates with Sparkle, which downloads the update feed and new versions from GitHub. GitHub sees your IP address, as with any download.

This website

tinselapp.com is hosted on GitHub Pages, which keeps standard server logs (such as IP address and pages requested) for security and operation. The Buy button loads Paddle's checkout. We don't use cookies for tracking.

Your rights

You can ask us what we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it, by emailing spontaneousarray@gmail.com. For purchase and billing records, Paddle is responsible and may need to keep some of them by law.

Changes

If what Tinsel collects changes, we'll update this page and the date at the top.