keybars

PRIVACY

Privacy

keybars keeps as little as it can. There are no analytics, no tracking pixels and no advertising, in the apps or on the site.

The apps

keybars and keybars Pro listen to what your computer plays to draw the bars. Nothing they hear is recorded, stored or sent anywhere.

When you connect GitHub, Forgejo or a webhook, their deliveries come through a relay at relay.jwarykowski.dev, as your computer has no address they can reach. The relay checks each delivery, cuts it down to the event, repository, branch and number, and passes that to the app. It keeps only what’s needed to recognise your connection, never the deliveries, and a connection unused for 90 days deletes itself. The relay is used only while a service is connected.

Once a day, unless you turn it off in App settings, the app asks keybars.app whether a newer release is out. The request carries nothing about you.

When you activate a licence, keybars Pro sends three things to the licence server at licence.jwarykowski.dev, which passes them to Polar: your licence key, your computer’s name (so you can tell your computers apart when you move the licence) and a hashed ID for the computer, made so the real ID never leaves it. After that, the app checks the licence offline and doesn’t contact the licence server again unless you deactivate.

The app reads the marketplace from keybars.app. Installing an item adds one to that item’s install count for the day, and nothing about who installed it.

When you report a problem from App settings, keybars Pro shows you the whole report first, then sends it through keybars.app, which emails it to support and keeps only a count of reports for the day. A report holds what you wrote, the email address to reply to and, unless you turn it off, the app’s diagnostics: its version and licence’s year of updates, your system, audio and keyboard, the modes you use and recent log lines. Your licence key, tokens, webhook addresses, email addresses and the names of your user and computer are taken out before it’s shown. Replies and the report stay in the support inbox for as long as they’re needed to help you.

An idea you suggest, from the app or keybars.app/ideas, is emailed to support and kept with the keybars Pro version and keyboard model if it came from the app. A reply address, if you give one, goes only in the email. If you post it publicly, it shows on the board with your handle, and votes are kept per account so each counts once.

Buying

Polar handles the payment as the merchant of record, so your name, email address, billing address and payment details go to Polar and its payment processor, under Polar’s privacy policy. I can see your name, email address and order in Polar, to send updates about your purchase and to help with support or refunds.

The site

  • The waitlist keeps your email address, the date you joined, any modes you voted for and where you heard of keybars, if you said. It’s used to email you when Pro opens.
  • Short links such as keybars.app/hn count visits per link per day, and nothing about the visitor.
  • Marketplace accounts keep your account ID from the provider you sign in with (GitHub, Codeberg or Google), your handle, name, avatar link and bio. The provider’s token isn’t kept. Signing in sets a cookie for your session, stored on our side only as a hash.
  • Setup photos you add to your profile are kept with their caption, description, keyboard and the items you name, until you remove them. Your browser redraws each photo before it’s sent, which drops its location, camera and other hidden details, and photos that still carry them are refused. Removing a photo deletes it and its copies for good.
  • Your colour theme is remembered in your browser, and never leaves it.

The site runs on Cloudflare, which processes requests to serve it, as any host does. keybars doesn’t keep IP addresses or user agents.

Your data

Ask to see, correct or delete anything kept about you by emailing support@jwarykowski.dev. You can remove your marketplace items and setup photos yourself, and ask to leave the waitlist at any time. Data is kept until you ask for it to go, or until it’s no longer needed.

Last updated 19 October 2026.