Privacy Policy

Last updated 22 August 2026

Docksmith is made by Fred Jocelyn (legal name Frédéric Jalbert-Desforges), a sole proprietor based in Québec, Canada. This policy explains what happens to your information across three separate things: the Docksmith application, this website, and the purchase.

1. The Docksmith application

What it does not do

Docksmith does not create an account, ask for an email address, assign you an identifier, or send usage data anywhere. It contains no analytics SDK and no crash reporter. Your docks, your pinned applications and folders, your workspace layout and your settings are stored only on your Mac, in your user library.

The only network requests it makes

Docksmith checks for updates. That request goes to our own update server and asks a single question: is there a newer version. While a purchased licence is installed, it also reads (at most once a day, and once more the moment you enter a key, from the same domain) a short revocation list: the order references of refunded purchases, so a refunded key stops counting. Both are plain reads that carry no identifier of yours; to answer them, the server necessarily sees your IP address and the version and system information any HTTP request carries. We do not use that to build a profile, and we do not link it to a licence or a purchase. You can turn update checks off in the application's settings; the revocation read happens only while a purchased key is installed.

Your licence key

Your licence key is verified on your Mac, using a signature check against a public key built into the application. There is no activation server and no call home. We cannot tell whether, when, or on how many machines you have activated your licence.

Permissions

macOS asks you to grant Docksmith two system permissions, and macOS, not us, controls them:

• Accessibility is what allows Docksmith to list and raise other applications' windows. It is required for the window features. Docksmith reads window titles and positions in order to place and switch windows; nothing derived from that leaves your Mac.
• Screen Recording is optional and is used for one thing only: the live thumbnail shown when you hover an application tile. Those images are rendered on screen and are never stored or transmitted. Decline it and the docks work normally.

You can revoke either permission at any time in System Settings → Privacy & Security.

2. This website

Hosting

docksmith.app is served by Cloudflare. Like any web host, Cloudflare processes the technical information every request carries (IP address, browser, page requested) to deliver the page and protect the service from abuse. We do not add advertising, tracking cookies, or any third-party analytics to this site. The one thing we count ourselves is described immediately below.

Counting visits, not people

We count what happens on this site, because a business that cannot see whether its pages work is a business guessing. Here is the entire list, and what each row is for.

Page views. Each page you open records: the path on this site, the site you arrived from (the host only, never the full address, because a complete referrer can carry another site's query string and that is their business, not ours), the two-letter country Cloudflare reports at the edge, and your browser's first language. It also records a random number drawn when your tab opens, so that a visit reads as one journey rather than four unrelated pages. That number dies when you close the tab. Two visits by the same person are two strangers to us, deliberately: we cannot tell that anyone came back, and we have kept no way to find out.

Four actions. A question in the FAQ being opened, a reader asking the assistant to take an answer further, the assistant being opened from the button in the corner, and the app being downloaded. The download count is split between browsers and crawlers by user agent, so the number means people rather than robots.

What is never recorded: your IP address, your browser's user agent, your screen size, or anything else that could pick you out of a crowd. No cookie is set or read. The columns for those things do not exist in our database, which is a firmer promise than a paragraph.

A note on what this misses, since a measurement that hides its blind spot is worse than none: page views are recorded by a small script, so a browser with JavaScript switched off, or a content blocker that stops it, is never counted. Crawlers do not run scripts either, which is exactly how we tell them apart from readers.

Your IP address serves one purpose, held in memory and never written down: refusing a flood of these from one place, so the counters cannot be filled with noise. Page views are deleted after 30 days, the action counts after 45, and both deletions are run by the same scheduled job that reads them. Retention that runs itself is retention that actually happens.

The purpose is narrow: to know whether the FAQ's follow-up conversations are worth offering, without learning anything about who had them.

Paddle's checkout script

The pricing page loads a script from Paddle so that the checkout can open as an overlay instead of sending you to another site. It loads on that page whether or not you click Buy, and Paddle therefore sees the technical information any request carries. We do not control what it collects; that is governed by Paddle's privacy policy. It is the only third-party script on this site.

The assistant

This site offers an assistant that answers questions about Docksmith. It is worth being explicit about it, because it is the one place where something you type leaves this site:

• What you type is sent to a third-party AI provider, which generates the reply. It is processed under that provider's terms for the service, not held by them for us.
• We keep a copy of the conversation for 30 days, and then it is deleted automatically. This changed on 20 August 2026; before that date nothing was kept. The reason is narrow and worth stating plainly: the assistants are written by one person, and the only way to find out that one of them answered badly, or that people gave up at a particular sentence, is to read what actually happened. What is kept is used for that, and for nothing else. It is never sold, never shared, and never used to build a profile of you.
• E-mail addresses are removed before the copy is written, along with long number sequences and licence keys, so the stored transcript reads “[e‑mail]” where you typed one. If you asked for a trial key, your address is still used to send it (that is described above), but the retained conversation does not carry it.
• No identifier follows you. A random number is drawn when a conversation starts so its turns can be kept together; it lives in your browser tab, disappears when you close it, and links nothing to any other visit. There is no cookie, and no IP address, browser or device information is stored with the conversation.
• The assistant can issue one thing: a free 7-day trial key. (The support assistant, described further down this page, can also issue one key of its own: the one-time trial extension.) If you ask for one it will ask for your e-mail address, and that address is then used to generate the key and send it to you. It appears in our server logs, as described under “What we log” below. That is the only reason we would ever ask you for it here.
• Beyond issuing that key, the assistant has no access to any customer, order or licence information: it cannot look up a purchase, cannot issue a paid licence, extra seats or a refund, cannot extend a trial itself (that exists, once per Mac, but only through the verified support assistant described below), and cannot find out anything about you.
• The pre-launch waiting list. Before Docksmith went on sale, the assistant could take the e-mail address of a visitor who asked to be told the day it did. Addresses collected that way are stored in full, not redacted, together with the language the visitor was reading in and the country the request came from, and with nothing else. They are kept for exactly one purpose: sending the single message those visitors asked for, announcing that Docksmith is on sale. Nothing else is ever sent to them; the list is not a newsletter, and it is never sold, shared or used to profile you. It is the one thing here that is not deleted after thirty days, because it had to outlive that window to serve its purpose. Write to team@docksmith.app and your address is removed from it, with no reply needed beyond confirming it is done.
• Please do not type anything confidential into it. If you would not put it in a public forum, email us instead.

The free trial, and your Mac's fingerprint

A trial key is tied to the Mac it will run on. This is the one place where Docksmith looks at something about your hardware, so it is worth being precise about what that means.

• What is computed. Docksmith reads your Mac's hardware identifier (IOPlatformUUID), combines it with a fixed word built into the app, hashes the result with SHA-256 and keeps the first four bytes, eight characters such as 69d543cd. Your serial number and the identifier itself are never used directly and never leave your Mac. The four bytes cannot be turned back into either.
• Docksmith does not send it. The app adds it to the web address it opens in your browser, in the same way it adds your language. The request is made by your browser, when you click. The application itself still makes no network call other than checking for a new version and, while a purchased licence is installed, reading the licence revocation list.
• What we keep. When a trial key is issued we store that fingerprint, the e-mail address you gave, its domain, your IP address, the date and the key itself. That record is how we can tell that a Mac has already had its free trial, and how we know not to send you the same reminder twice.
• Why it exists. So the trial can be free and require no credit card. Bound to an e-mail address alone it would renew for ever, and the alternative most software uses (an account, or an activation server the app talks to) is exactly what we did not want to build.
• How long. Trial records are kept for two years, then deleted. Write to team@docksmith.app to have yours removed sooner, or to ask what we hold about you.

A fingerprint stored next to an e-mail address is personal information under Québec's Law 25, whatever it is hashed with. Hashing limits what we could do with it; it does not make it something else, and we would rather say so than call it anonymous.

Support, and what a ticket keeps

The support page at docksmith.app/support is a second assistant, separate from the one on the home page. Asking it a general question (why a dock will not appear, how the knock works) keeps nothing at all: that conversation lives in your browser and is gone with the tab.

Three things change that, and only if you choose them:

• Verifying your address. If you ask about your own purchase, we e-mail a six-digit code to prove the address is yours. We store a one-way hash of that code, never the code, for ten minutes. A successful check opens a session that lasts twelve hours and is held by your browser.
• Opening a ticket. If a problem is not solved in the conversation, a ticket is recorded so it is not lost and so we recognise you next time. It holds your address, a short subject, what you wrote about the problem in your own words, what resolved it if anything did, the Docksmith version, and the dates. It does not hold the conversation. We keep what a person picking this up in a month would actually read, not forty exchanges of chat.
• Asking for a trial extension. Once your address is verified, this assistant can extend a free trial: once per Mac, ever. A new seven-day key, dated that day, is given in the conversation and sent to your address by e-mail; it applies to the most recent trial on your address that has not been extended before. Issuing it writes the same kind of trial record described above (the machine fingerprint, your e-mail address, its domain, your IP address, the dates and the key), marked as extended, and that mark is how the one-extension limit is enforced. Like any trial record, it is kept for two years, then deleted.

Escalating a ticket sends Fred an e-mail containing your address and that same summary, so he can reply to you directly. The assistant can see your own tickets and licences and nothing else (it has no way to name another customer), and it never sees a paid licence key. The one key it can produce itself is the trial extension key described above.

Tickets are kept for two years, then deleted. Write to team@docksmith.app to have yours removed sooner, or to ask what we hold about you.

If you email us

Mail sent to team@docksmith.app or support@docksmith.app is delivered by Google Workspace, which hosts those mailboxes and processes the message in order to deliver it. We keep correspondence as long as it is useful for support, and no longer than necessary.

3. Buying Docksmith

We never see your payment details. Purchases are handled by Paddle.com Market Limited, which acts as the merchant of record, meaning Paddle is the seller for the transaction, collects the payment, and handles sales tax and VAT worldwide. Your card number, billing address and tax details are given to Paddle, not to us, and are governed by Paddle's privacy policy.

What we receive from Paddle, and why:

• Your email address: to send you your licence key. The key is also shown on the page you land on right after paying, but the email is what lets you find it again later.
• The number of licence seats and the order reference: to issue a key that matches what you bought, and to be able to help you if you write to us quoting that reference.

That information is processed by a Cloudflare Worker we operate, and is written to its logs so that a lost key can be reissued. We do not use your email address for marketing and we do not sell, rent, or share it.

4. Legal basis and retention

Where the GDPR applies, we process your email address and order details to perform the contract (you bought a licence and we owe you a key), and we keep technical request logs on a legitimate interest basis, to run and secure the service. We keep purchase records for as long as tax and accounting law requires, and technical logs for a short operational period.

5. Your rights

Depending on where you live, including under Québec's Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector (Law 25), the GDPR, and the UK GDPR, you may have the right to access the personal information we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to receive a copy of it, and to complain to a regulator.

Write to team@docksmith.app and we will answer. Requests about payment or billing data are usually best directed to Paddle, since they hold it.

Person responsible for the protection of personal information

As required by Québec Law 25, the person responsible for the protection of personal information is Fred Jocelyn (legal name Frédéric Jalbert-Desforges), reachable at team@docksmith.app.

6. Where information goes

Docksmith is operated from Canada. The service providers above (our hosting provider, our AI provider and our payment processor) may process information outside your country, including in the United States. Each is bound by its own agreement with us and its own privacy commitments.

7. Children

Docksmith is a tool for professionals and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16.

8. Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will change the date at the top and, for material changes affecting existing customers, say so by email.

9. Contact

Fred Jocelyn (legal name Frédéric Jalbert-Desforges), Québec, Canada
team@docksmith.app