Your financial data stays yours

The short version

The MonthMade app is local-first. It has no advertising, analytics, tracking, third-party crash-reporting SDK, or MonthMade account. Your working data stays in the app’s sandbox on your Mac unless you explicitly enable private iCloud Sync. The public website uses the limited website measurement described below.

Data MonthMade stores

The authoritative local store is a Core Data SQLite database in MonthMade’s sandbox. It contains settings, income sources and rate plans, schedules and calendar overrides, payments and adjustments, completed time entries, and Pomodoro presets. An active or paused timer uses a separate local recovery file. Dashboard totals and other calculated views are derived in memory from those records.

First-run lookup and optional iCloud Sync

Before showing the setup steps, an eligible fresh installation may read one root record from the private CloudKit database of the Apple Account already signed in on the Mac. This lookup only checks whether compatible MonthMade data exists. It does not create or modify a CloudKit zone or record, upload local data, restore anything, or enable sync.

Only choosing Use iCloud Data restores the private copy. MonthMade suppresses outgoing changes while it reads and adopts that data; after a successful local adoption, it publishes a new current generation and enables automatic sync. Choosing Keep This Mac’s Data instead replaces the cloud copy only after confirmation.

When sync is enabled, encrypted CloudKit payload fields can contain income names and amounts, rates and plans, schedules and calendar changes, payments, notes, adjustments, completed time sessions, Pomodoro preset names, and all app settings, including calculation, currency, calendar, language, money/date/time formats, Menu Bar, display/privacy, Realtime, requested launch at login, notifications, and sound. Records also contain ordinary app-generated entity and generation identifiers, a stable random device-writer identifier, and sync timestamps. That writer identifier is not a hardware or advertising identifier.

Active timers, calculated views, logical backups, exports, macOS permission and login-item registration status, and Auto Privacy detector metadata do not sync. App preferences synchronize, while macOS permissions and enabling iCloud Sync are managed separately on each Mac. MonthMade has no separate cloud account or developer-operated data warehouse. Signing out of iCloud or changing Apple Accounts disables sync but does not automatically replace the local SQLite dataset.

Purchases

Apple processes Pro purchases, renewals, cancellations, refunds, subscription management, and restoration through StoreKit and the App Store. MonthMade uses localized product information and verified StoreKit transactions to display Monthly and Lifetime. Apple checks eligibility for the 14-day Monthly introductory trial and handles its automatic transition to a paid subscription unless cancelled. Lifetime offers a separate free 14-day trial or immediate one-time purchase. Only that Lifetime trial uses its original purchase date with no automatic charge; restoring does not restart it. Offer eligibility, trial history and its end date are used in memory to select Free or Pro features. It does not receive Apple Account credentials or full payment-card details, keep a custom receipt, order, payment, or license database, or link purchase state to the local dataset or private CloudKit records. Restore Purchases restores access through Apple without restoring or enabling iCloud data.

Auto Privacy and Hidden mode

Auto Privacy is optional and best effort. Enable it with the switch in Settings → Privacy. It requires no Screen Recording or Accessibility permission and no restart. Any Screen Recording permission granted to an earlier version is no longer used by MonthMade.

MonthMade checks local screen-capture and display-mirroring state once per second. It reads only whether capture or mirroring is active, keeps that state in memory, and never saves, logs, uploads, or links it to financial records. It does not inspect window names or application lists, create capture streams, or receive screenshots, screen pixels, video, window contents, or system audio.

Some capture paths may not be detected, macOS changes may affect detection, and polling can delay hiding. Camera or microphone use alone does not trigger screen-capture detection. Normal screenshots can include MonthMade. During automatic hiding the app shows a privacy shield and asks macOS to exclude affected windows—including a detached Summary window—from capture, but capture tools may ignore that request.

Manual Hidden is always available. Show Values, or choosing Amounts or Percentages during automatic hiding, reveals values and removes capture exclusion across the app only until the current continuous detection ends; the next detection hides them again. This override stays in memory and also resets when you relaunch MonthMade. These display protections do not delete or redact stored data or exports.

Notifications and diagnostics

Pomodoro notification access is requested only after you opt in. Scheduled notifications use generic text and contain no source name, activity, note, or financial amount. MonthMade uses Apple Unified Logging for local diagnostics; potentially identifying error details are marked private. It has no analytics, advertising, tracking, custom telemetry, or third-party crash-reporting service.

Export and deletion

A complete JSON export is written only to a file you select. It can include settings, financial data, complete time history, Pomodoro presets, and archived or deleted-record markers. Privacy display mode does not redact the file, so treat every export as sensitive.

Reset All Data requires confirmation. It replaces the working dataset with fresh state, removes financial and historical entities, the logical backup, and the active-timer checkpoint, and keeps app settings such as calendar, currency, time zone, language, money/date/time formats, display/privacy, login-item, and notification choices. If iCloud Sync is enabled, reset first requests deletion of MonthMade’s private CloudKit zone, resets sync state, and disables sync. If sync is already disabled, local sync metadata or corruption-recovery copies can remain and may contain a cached record mirror.

For cloud cleanup, run Reset All Data while sync is enabled before deleting MonthMade. Deleting the app alone may leave its local container or private CloudKit zone. User-selected exports are never deleted automatically. Reading existing data, export, and deletion remain available independently of Pro access.

App Privacy disclosure

For App Store privacy disclosure, MonthMade classifies its current data flows as Data Not Collected. It does not transmit personal or usage data in a way that lets the developer or an integrated third-party partner access it. Local-only data stays on this Mac. If you enable iCloud Sync, encrypted records are stored only in the private CloudKit database tied to your Apple Account; only the user can access that database by default, and its contents are not visible in the developer portal.

This does not mean the app is network-free: CloudKit handles the read-only lookup and optional sync, and Apple handles StoreKit payments and purchase history. MonthMade has no developer-operated backend and uses no data for tracking, advertising, analytics, marketing, or product personalization. It receives no captured photos, video, audio, screen contents, or full payment-card details.

Network boundaries

MonthMade’s outbound network paths are limited to Apple’s StoreKit and App Store services, CloudKit for the read-only lookup and explicitly enabled sync, and Apple push delivery used by CloudKit. The app requests public App Store metadata to show release dates and check for updates automatically or when you choose Check for Updates. These requests send the public app ID, Mac software filter, and App Store country, using the system region or US if the storefront is unavailable. They contain no personal or financial data, cookies, or account credentials. Release dates and check results are cached only on this Mac and never synced. Updates are installed through the App Store. There is no developer-operated account, payment, updater, analytics, advertising, crash-reporting, or other backend, and the app accepts no incoming network connections.

Website measurement

This website is hosted by Cloudflare and uses Cloudflare Web Analytics to measure page visits and performance. Separately, when you view a page or activate a download link, the website sends a small event to an endpoint on monthmade.com. We retain daily totals grouped by page, a broad referral source such as Google or Reddit, and platform such as macOS. Download clicks also include the button location. These totals count page views and link activations, not unique people or completed App Store downloads.

Our aggregate counters do not store IP addresses, full browser identifiers, full referrer URLs, query strings, names, email addresses, or information from the MonthMade app. Referral sources are reduced to a fixed set of labels; unrecognized sources are grouped as “other.” No analytics cookies or visitor identifiers are created. A source label with a 30-minute expiry is kept in the current tab’s session storage so that moving to another page preserves the source. It is not shared across devices or retained after the tab session ends.

Download links can include Apple’s public provider token and a campaign label such as “website-google.” This lets Apple report campaign performance in App Store Connect under its own measurement rules. The label contains only the broad source, not a visitor identifier or the original referral URL. These campaign parameters and our aggregate counters respect browser Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals.

Aggregate results are accessible through the site owner’s Cloudflare account. Cloudflare also processes normal network request information to deliver and protect the website. See Cloudflare’s privacy policy for its practices. Opening the App Store is handled by Apple and remains available if website measurement is blocked or unavailable.

Contact

Questions about privacy or data handling can be sent through the Contact page or directly to support@monthmade.com. For practical help, see the Help Center.