Privacy

Who we are

Shotbolt is made by Breukr, based in the Netherlands. We are the controller for the personal data described on this page, which means we decide why and how it is used. You can reach us at support@shotbolt.app.

Because we are established in the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies to how we handle your data.

The app: what stays on your Mac

Shotbolt does not use an account and does not run a cloud service. Your screenshots, recordings, annotations, history and settings are stored on your Mac. We do not receive them.

• Text recognition uses Apple's on-device Vision framework. The image is processed on your Mac and is not uploaded.
• iCloud Drive is optional. If you choose to save captures to a folder in iCloud Drive, macOS syncs them through your own iCloud account under Apple's terms. We have no access to that account.
• Search inside screenshots reads the text of your screenshots on your Mac and keeps it in a local index so history can find them. It is never uploaded or logged. Turning the feature off deletes the index.
• Auto-redact looks for sensitive data, such as email addresses or card numbers, on your Mac only, when you ask for it or when automatic redaction is on. What it finds is not stored anywhere else or sent anywhere.
• Smart file names are optional and off by default. When on, Apple's on-device model suggests a name from the screenshot's text and window. Nothing is sent anywhere.
• Camera: the camera bubble in recordings is off unless you turn it on. The camera runs only while a recording is in progress, and the image goes into the recording on your Mac only.
• Keystrokes: the keystroke overlay is off unless you turn it on. By default it shows only shortcuts such as ⌘S. Typed text is never stored, and password fields are never shown.
• Settings → Intelligence shows how much Shotbolt has stored from reading your captures, and lets you delete it with one button. It is never uploaded.
• AI-safe Copy and paste protection prepare a redacted copy on your Mac. Shotbolt does not send anything to AI services; what you paste into one is shared with that service under its own terms.
• AI actions (Extract Table, Explain Error, Summarize and Alt Text) run on your Mac with Apple's on-device model, only when you start one. Nothing is sent to an AI service. Explain Error replaces secrets such as keys and card numbers before the model reads the text, and Summarize and Alt Text hide personal data the same way.
• Lift Subject and Compare run on your Mac, only when you use them. Nothing is uploaded.
• Step guides record where you click only while a guide recording runs, and not what you type. The screenshots, click positions and titles are stored in the guide on your Mac and deleted with it. Step titles are read from the screenshot on your Mac.
• Edit Text and Translate read and translate the text of a screenshot on your Mac with Apple's built-in frameworks. Nothing is sent to a translation service. The first time you use a language pair, macOS asks to download it from Apple; Shotbolt does not receive anything.
• Captions are made from a recording's audio on your Mac with Apple's on-device speech recognition, only when you ask or when automatic transcription is on. The audio is never uploaded. The transcript is kept next to the recording and deleted with its history entry.
• Editing data: to make recordings editable, Shotbolt keeps a small file next to each one with the pointer path, clicks and, if the keystroke overlay was on, the shortcuts pressed. It stays on your Mac, is deleted with the history entry and can be switched off in Settings.
• Sharing happens only when you do it, for example by pasting, dragging or sending a file to another app. What happens next is up to that app.

The app has no analytics, no crash reporting and no update check. Its only network request is the license check: when you enter a license key, Shotbolt activates it with Polar, sending the key and your Mac's name and nothing else. It checks the key again about once a day and keeps working offline for up to 30 days. We use this only to confirm the license and to show the Macs it is active on in the customer portal. Your captures do not leave your Mac unless you share them. macOS itself may contact Apple when you run any app; that is Apple's behavior, not ours.

The website

shotbolt.app is hosted on Vercel. Like any web server, Vercel processes technical data when you visit, such as your IP address, the page requested, the time, and your browser's user agent. This is needed to deliver the site and keep it secure, which is our legitimate interest. Vercel acts as our processor. Vercel keeps these request logs for a short period set by our hosting plan; on Vercel's Pro plan that is one day. Plan to be confirmed

The site currently uses no cookies, no analytics and no advertising trackers. If that changes, we will update this page first and ask for your consent where the law requires it.

Purchases

Licenses are sold through Polar. Polar acts as the reseller and merchant of record: it handles checkout, payment, invoicing and sales tax or VAT, and it issues your license key. It is a separate controller for the data you give it at checkout, under its own privacy policy. We do not receive your full card details.

To deliver and support your license, the provider shares with us the details needed for that: typically your name, email address, country, what you bought and your license key To be confirmed. We use these to deliver your license, help with recovery and answer support questions. The legal basis is performing our contract with you, and keeping records the law requires.

Customer portal and support email

Your license key, your receipts and the Macs your key is active on are in the customer portal, which Polar runs. Signing in there is covered by its privacy policy. If you email us for help, we use your email address and what you tell us to find your purchase and reply. We do not use it for marketing.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Rectification of data that is wrong or incomplete.
• Erasure of your data, unless we must keep it by law, for example tax records.
• Objection to processing based on our legitimate interest, and to ask us to restrict processing.
• Portability of data you gave us, in a common format.

Email support@shotbolt.app to use any of these rights. If you are not happy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Dutch data protection authority, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, or to the authority in your own EU country.

How long we keep data

We keep only what we need, for as long as we need it:

• License details (email address, name, license key, what you bought and when): while your license is valid, so we can help you recover it.
• Accounting records: 7 years, because Dutch tax law requires us to keep them.
• Support emails: deleted 24 months after the last message in the conversation.
• Website request logs: kept by Vercel for the period set by our hosting plan, as described above.

You can ask us to delete your data earlier, except where the law requires us to keep it.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle personal data, we will update this page and the date at the top. For significant changes we will give notice on this site before they take effect.

Contact

Breukr, the Netherlands. support@shotbolt.app