Privacy

• No account, analytics, crash reporting or tracking in the app
• Your files, their names and contents never leave your Mac
• No cookies on this website

The App

spacebar previews your files on your Mac. Your files, their names and contents never leave it. No account, analytics, crash reporting or tracking. Settings live in a file on your Mac.

• OfflineEvery library (Markdown, Mermaid, KaTeX, code highlighting) is bundled, so previews work offline.
• EditsTicking a task or editing a paragraph writes to the file you are previewing, and nowhere else.
• Space helperThe optional Space helper, if you turn it on, uses Accessibility to notice Space in Finder and read which file is selected. That happens on your Mac and is sent nowhere: the helper has no network code, never opens or reads the file, and never records what you type. Turning off Use spacebar for every file in Settings stops it.
• Drag and Open WithDragging a file out of the Space window hands another app only a file you chose: one the sidebar lists, a search found or the window shows, and only while you hold the mouse button. Open With opens the file only in an app it offered you, and ignores a per-file choice another app saved on the file.
• ArchivesA file you open inside an archive is streamed into memory by a sandboxed copy of bsdtar, never written to disk.
• Going onlineBeyond the daily update check below, the app goes online only to load a document’s web images, when an HTML page that wasn’t downloaded loads its own web content (next item), to open a web link in your browser, or to download an update you choose to install. Remote images are off by default. A blocked image offers a one-time load for that preview, which is never saved. Loading them sends your IP address to each image’s server, which also learns when the document was opened. Settings › Advanced turns them on for every document.
• HTML pagesHTML pages made on your Mac run their scripts and may load from the web, as in a browser. Pages you downloaded, which macOS marks as quarantined, get no scripts and load nothing from the web. Files from git clone, curl, unzip or a USB drive aren’t quarantined, so they count as made on your Mac: their scripts run and they may load from the web. Settings › Advanced › Scripts in HTML files › Never turns scripts off for every HTML file.
• Update checkOnce a day it asks GitHub for the latest release, to show an Update button in the preview’s toolbar when there’s an update. That request carries nothing about you or your files beyond the IP address any web request does, and GitHub’s own privacy policy covers it; spacebar reads only the version number from the reply. Turn off Check for updates in Settings.

This Website

• No cookiesAnd no third-party analytics or ad scripts.
• Page viewsThe site counts its own page views: a daily count of each page’s views, and a daily count of the sites that linked here. No cookies, no personal data, nothing third-party. Known bots and automated browsers aren’t counted, and the totals are deleted after about 400 days.
• Updates listIf you join, we store your email address and when you joined, only to email you about big releases. We never share or sell it, and will remove it whenever you ask.
• Preview statsWhen you preview a file in the demo, we store the file’s name (one of the samples), the time, and the city, country and approximate coordinates our host, Vercel, derives from your connection, rounded to about 10 km. We never store your IP address. These are for our own stats and are not shown publicly. An hourly cleanup deletes entries older than 24 hours; only the running total, shown as the counter at the top of the page, is kept.
• Abuse protectionTo stop automated signups and inflated counts we keep a one-way, salted hash of your IP address and the current hour or few minutes. It can’t be turned back into the address, and is deleted by the next hourly cleanup after that window ends.
• Your browserLocal storage remembers that you joined the updates list, and the demo’s theme, appearance and sidebar layout. That never leaves your device.

Hosting

The site runs on Vercel; the updates list, counter, preview stats and page view totals are stored with Convex. Vercel processes requests, including IP addresses, to deliver and protect the site, under its own privacy policy. Convex never receives your IP address.

Contact

Questions, or want your email removed? Reach out on X (opens in a new tab). For the app itself, see help or contact.