Your monitoring data stays on your Mac. No advertising trackers. Scope does not upload your system-monitoring data to us or sell your personal information.
Scope reads information from macOS to show you what your Mac is doing. It keeps what it needs on your Mac, in its own container, a folder macOS keeps private to Scope. It has no account, no analytics and no advertising, and no Scope server receives your readings, your process names, your drive statistics, your battery readings or your network history.
What stays on your Mac
| Information | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
| CPU, GPU, RAM, drive, network and battery readings | Live readings, explanations and charts | In memory for the 1-, 5- and 10-minute charts and the battery’s last hour. In both tiers, each minute’s average and highest value, numbers only, kept 24 hours for Scope Pro’s longer charts |
| Process lists for CPU and RAM | Showing which apps are busy | In memory, only while the panel is open |
| Network use by app | Which apps moved the most data over the last minute, or with Scope Pro up to the last 24 hours | 24 hours of app names, where each app is on your Mac, and byte counts. Never destinations or page contents |
| The week of alerts | All Alerts: what happened, when and for how long | Seven days of each alert’s title, check, start and end, in both tiers; with Scope Pro, the name of the app or file behind it, and which apps kept it going, for how long and how much they used, with what each tip measured (its first and latest use, and how often it was the app in front) |
| Network totals per connection | Data usage over time | Detail for about 24 hours; running totals until you delete Scope’s data |
| Speed test results | Comparing tests over time | Your last ten results for each kind of test |
| Preferences | Your layout, drives, limits, alert choices, apps you quieted and the folders you allowed | Until you change them |
Alerts compare readings Scope already takes. To name the app or file behind an alert, Scope Pro looks once as the alert begins and keeps that name with the alert for the week. While an alert about apps lasts, it looks every 25 seconds at which app uses the most, and keeps each app’s minutes and the most it used with the alert, never a moment-by-moment timeline. It looks again only while an alert is on screen, and stops when the alert ends. For the tip under that app, Scope Pro also reads, on your Mac, what the app is made of from its own files (such as its category, or whether it syncs files), when its processes started and which process started them, macOS’s list of running apps, and, only while you’re using your Mac, which app is in front. App names and icons come from your apps themselves; nothing is looked up online. Scope Free never looks.
When Scope connects to the internet
- The internet speed test runs only when you click Test speed. It uses Apple’s speed test service, which receives the test traffic and your connection details, such as your IP address. Scope keeps the result on your Mac.
- Scope Pro is bought through the Mac App Store. Apple handles the purchase, and Scope reads Apple’s signed purchase record on your Mac. Scope sends nothing to a server of its own.
- Links you click, such as this website or System Settings, open where they point, and those have their own practices.
Permissions you control
Scope runs in Apple’s App Sandbox, like every Mac App Store app. It asks for two things, both optional, and only when you choose the action that needs them:
- Location, only so macOS will show your Wi-Fi network’s name. Scope never asks for your coordinates or keeps a location history. Without it, Scope simply says Wi-Fi.
- Your home folder or a drive, for Largest files and for speed tests on other drives. Scope asks once, in a standard Mac Open panel. Scope only reads your home folder.
Launch Scope at login is a switch in Preferences. Scope uses no privileged helper.
While a Scope panel is open, Scope notices a click outside it, so the panel can close. It never learns where or in what, and it stops listening when no panel is open.
Your files
Largest files asks Spotlight, on your Mac, for the biggest files in the place you allowed, and shows their names, folders and sizes in the panel. The drive speed test writes a temporary file of its own and removes it; your files are never opened for writing. Reports and chart exports are saved only where you choose.
Removing Scope’s data
Clear history… removes a speed test’s saved results, and, with Scope Pro, Clear History… in All Alerts removes the alerts that have cleared. Quitting Scope and deleting its container folder, in Library › Containers, removes everything it saved.
The waitlist
Until Scope is on the Mac App Store, you can ask for one email when it is. If you do, we keep your email address; whether you’d like to test Scope early and, if you choose one, which Mac you have; the page you signed up on; and when you signed up and confirmed.
We use them only to send the email that asks you to confirm your address, one email when Scope is on the Mac App Store, and, if you asked to test Scope, an invitation through TestFlight, Apple’s app for testing apps. Until you confirm, you get nothing but that first email. You agree to this by joining, and you can withdraw at any time by unsubscribing.
The list is kept in Cloudflare’s database for this website, and the emails are sent through Resend. We don’t sell or share it, and our emails carry no tracking pixels and no tracked links. To stop abuse, the form keeps a one-way code made from your IP address and the hour, never the address itself, and deletes it within two hours.
Every email has a link to unsubscribe, which deletes your address at once. To see what we keep, or to have it deleted, write to [email protected]. We delete the list once it’s no longer needed for these emails.
This website
scopeformac.com sets no cookies and has no ads or trackers, and the waitlist form sets no cookies either.
To see which pages help people, the site counts visits in two ways. Neither uses cookies, stores anything in your browser or fingerprints you, and we see only totals:
- Cloudflare Web Analytics counts page views: which pages were viewed, the site that linked to them, visitors’ countries, their browsers, operating systems and kinds of device, and how fast pages loaded.
- Our own counts, kept on our server as daily totals. Each page sends the page’s address, the name of the site that sent you (such as a search engine, never its full address), the page on this site you came from, and whether you’re on a phone, tablet or computer. As you read, it notes how long the page stays open (15 seconds, a minute, three minutes), how far you scroll, and what you use here: the working Scope, the waitlist form, the questions you open, links to other sites (their names only) and the words you type into the blog’s search. Our server adds your country, from Cloudflare. We never keep your IP address, your browser’s details or anything that could single you out, and totals are deleted after 25 months.
If your browser sends Global Privacy Control, our own counts skip it. You can also switch them off for this browser; the choice is kept only in it.
Choose whether our own counts include this browser.
Like any website, our host may keep standard server logs, such as IP addresses and the pages requested, to deliver and protect the site. If you email us, we use your message only to answer you.
Contact
Questions about privacy or security: [email protected].
Last updated October 19, 2026.