What it sees stays on your Mac.

The short version

An activity monitor sees every app you run and every project you work on. Vitals reads that to show it to you, keeps a small history of it on your Mac, and sends none of it anywhere. There is no account, and there are no analytics in the app.

What Vitals reads

• Running processes: their names, which app they belong to, and how much memory, CPU, energy, disk and network each is using. This is the product.
• System readings: overall CPU, memory pressure, disk space, network throughput, GPU use, battery, temperatures and fan speeds.
• For the Projects tab: the working folder of your own processes and the ports they are listening on, so a dev server can be shown under the project it belongs to.
• Connected devices: the battery level of Bluetooth accessories such as AirPods, and your mounted volumes.

What it keeps, and where

Usage history — how much each app used per day — is one file at ~/Library/Application Support/Vitals/usage.json. Your settings are in the standard macOS preferences for the app. Both stay on your Mac. Delete them and they are gone; there is no copy anywhere else.

When it uses the network

Twice, and neither carries anything about what your Mac is doing:

• Checking for updates. It asks our server which version is current. The request carries the app's version and your macOS version, which is what it takes to offer the right update.
• Checking a license. When you enter a license key, the key is sent to our licensing server to confirm it is valid.

It never sends process names, app names, project names, paths, history or readings.

Permissions it may ask for, and why

• Files in Documents, Desktop or Downloads. macOS asks the first time Vitals works out which project a process belongs to, if that project lives in one of those folders. It reads folder names to find the project's root and nothing inside your files. Decline, and it guesses the project from the path instead.
• Audio capture. Only if you use the volume mixer. Changing one app's volume means passing its sound through at the level you set. Nothing is recorded or kept.
• Notifications. To tell you when an app misbehaves. Off is fine; the same items appear in the app.
• A background item, under Login Items. Only if you enable the optional helper or Open at Login.

The optional helper

macOS only lets an app read the usage of your own processes. To show the system's as well, you can enable a small helper that runs with administrator rights. It does one thing: given a list of process IDs, it returns how much they are using. It accepts no file paths, runs no commands, changes nothing, only answers Vitals itself, and quits when Vitals closes. Vitals works without it, and you can remove it at any time from the app.

Buying

Payments are handled by Paddle, our merchant of record. They collect your payment details and email; we receive your email, what you bought and your license key, so we can support you. We never see your card.

This website

It sets no cookies and runs no tracking scripts. The numbers on the home page are a simulation that runs in your browser; the page reads nothing from your computer.

Questions

hi@vitalsmac.com. A person reads it.