Privacy policy

Drop Down (“we”, “our”) is made and operated by Ah Yasin, an independent software developer based in Türkiye. This policy covers the Drop Down app for the Mac, its update server (updates.getdropdown.app), this website (getdropdown.app), and buying Drop Down Pro, which Polar Software Inc. sells as our merchant of record.

The short version

• The app has no analytics, no telemetry, no ads and no account.
• The app contacts two servers: our update server, which counts update checks and downloads without storing your IP address, and, only once you enter a license key, Polar’s license service, to activate the key and check it about once a day.
• Pictures of your menu bar, your settings, notes on stalls and the diagnostics report stay on your Mac. The diagnostics report never contains your license key.
• To show when a hidden app has a notification, the app reads the badges on your Dock icons. It keeps them only in memory and never reads what a notification says.
• If you buy Pro, Polar handles the payment. We see your name, email address and billing address (often just the country), your tax number if you buy as a business, and the order, never your card details.
• This website runs no analytics and sets no cookies. Its one form, the refund request, sends nothing: it puts your answers into an email that you send yourself.

The app

Accessibility

Drop Down needs Accessibility permission to work. Through it, Drop Down reads the menu bar items of the apps on your Mac: where each one sits, how big it is, what kind of element it is and the label its app gives it (a title or a description), so the panel can show each item and name it for VoiceOver. To open a hidden item, it presses that item for you. For the few apps that only answer a real click, it shows the icon for a moment, clicks it and puts the pointer back; you can switch that off in Settings › General. On macOS 27, when macOS does not draw an icon even with every icon shown, it can open the app listed for that icon instead, today only the Setapp app for Setapp’s icon.

On macOS 15 and 26 Drop Down also moves icons across the menu bar: an app’s icons when you hide or show that app, and a hidden icon you open, from the panel or, with Pro, from its notification icon beside the chevron, which it moves beside the chevron and back when the menu closes. It moves them by posting mouse events with ⌘ held. On macOS 26 it usually moves an icon straight to its place and may hide the pointer for that moment. On macOS 15 it does the same with one display. Otherwise, or when an icon cannot be moved straight, it drags the icon, and the pointer jumps to the menu bar and back. Either way it puts the pointer back where it was. For a straight move on macOS 15, it puts a window of its own, which you cannot see, over the menu bar for that moment. Before the move it looks at the layer, position, size and transparency of the windows on screen, never at their contents or titles, so that nothing covers its window and no menu is open. Just before each move it notes which of ⌘, ⌥, ⌃ and ⇧ are held, so that afterwards it can let go of any its own events left pressed.

If you hide some of Apple’s own items on macOS 15 or 26, such as Sound or Focus, Drop Down moves them in the same way; on macOS 27 it asks macOS to leave them out while it hides an app. To tell which item is which, it goes by their identifiers, read through Accessibility, not their titles. To notice when one is turned off or macOS removes it, it reads macOS’s own setting for that item. On macOS 27 it does this whether or not you hide any, to list them. Their names come from its own list, never from the item: Fast User Switching’s item can show your name.

To tell whether a menu opened, Drop Down looks at the position, size and layer of the windows the opened app shows, never at their contents or titles. While the panel is open, it notices a mouse click outside it, so it can close. On macOS 27, while icons are hidden, it also notices left mouse clicks, so that a click on the clock can still open Notification Center: for a click in the menu bar it compares where you pressed and let go with where the clock is, notes how long you held the button and whether ⌘, ⌥ or ⌃ was held, and looks at the position, size, layer and transparency of Notification Center’s windows, never at their contents. If you clicked the clock, it lets every icon show for a moment, clicks the clock, hiding the pointer for that moment and putting it back where it was (rarely, if nothing opens, it presses the clock through Accessibility), and hides the icons again. It takes no picture of the menu bar while the icons show for this, nor on its own while a Notification Center it opened is on screen. It keeps no record of where you click. On macOS 27 you can also choose a shortcut in Settings › Shortcuts that opens or closes Notification Center: macOS tells Drop Down only when that shortcut is pressed, and Drop Down then reads where the pointer is, to use the clock on that display, and works as above; while no icons are hidden, it only clicks the clock in the same way. On macOS 15 and 26, before it moves icons, it waits until no mouse button is held and no menu is open. Before it hides or shows an app, the pointer must also be out of the menu bar. When it moves icons on its own, as when a hidden app starts, the mouse and the keyboard must also have been still for a moment. Before it opens a hidden icon, no modifier key such as ⌘ may be held either. For that it reads how long ago the mouse and the keyboard were last used, whether a mouse button or a modifier key is held and where the pointer is, and it looks at the position, size and layer of the windows of the apps that have menu bar icons. On macOS 15 and 26 it also notices when you hold ⌘ and drag an icon in the menu bar yourself, and where that drag began, so an icon you move to the other side stays there; it ignores clicks without ⌘ and clicks outside the menu bar. It never reads what you typed, it does not read your documents or the text in your windows, and it does not record your keystrokes.

Notifications of hidden apps

Drop Down can show when a hidden app has a notification, from the badge the app puts on its Dock icon, such as an unread count. It reads the badges through Accessibility, every second or two, and does so by default for every hidden app. While the panel shows menu bar pictures and Screen Recording is allowed, it also reads the badges of the apps you set to Off in Settings › Notifications, and it reads them even when the menu bar icon is set to show nothing; on macOS 27 that keeps the panel’s pictures current. To find the hidden apps’ icons, it reads every item in your Dock from time to time, and once when you open Settings › Notifications, keeping only the app icons and their badges. Of a badge it keeps only the number, or that there is a badge without one, and only in memory: it never saves a badge, writes it to its log or sends it anywhere.

So that it notices a new badge sooner, Drop Down also asks Notification Center, through Accessibility, to tell it when something appears there, such as a banner, and then reads the badges at once. It reads nothing of what appears: not the app that sent it, nor its title or text. Drop Down never reads what your notifications say.

It also checks whether a display is mirrored, as on a projector. While one is, no hidden app’s icon shows in the menu bar because of a notification, not even for a picture on macOS 27, and the chevron shows a dot where it would show an app’s icon. You can turn this off in Settings › Notifications.

Microphone and camera

Drop Down can check whether any app is using a microphone or a camera. It does so for the option in Settings › Safety that pauses hiding while one is in use, which is off by default. With Pro, it also does so while an app is set to show its icon in the menu bar for a new notification: while a microphone or camera is in use, no app’s own icon is shown in the menu bar for a new notification. The menu bar icon keeps its sign, even when it is set to show the app’s icon. On macOS 27 the second-long showing for a picture while the panel is open, described under Screen Recording, can still happen then. Drop Down asks macOS only whether each camera and each sound input, such as the built-in microphone or a headset, is in use, and, for a device that also plays sound, whether any app is recording, so a headset that only plays sound does not count. It does not ask which app, and it never opens the microphone or a camera itself. The check needs no permission and shows no prompt. The diagnostics report can show that hiding paused, or that an app’s icon was not shown for a notification, because a microphone or camera was in use.

Screen Recording (optional)

With Screen Recording allowed, Drop Down takes pictures of the menu bar. Its only other picture is of your wallpaper, described below. On macOS 26 and 27 it takes them while an icon is visible: just before it hides an app’s icon, after you open one, when you press Refresh Icons, and from time to time while icons are visible. On macOS 15 it takes them from time to time whether an icon is visible or hidden (off the screen, where Drop Down moved it), after you open one, and when you press Refresh Icons. On macOS 27 it also takes one when a hidden app’s icon shows in the menu bar for a notification. And on macOS 27, while the panel is open and shows menu bar pictures, a hidden app in Applications whose Dock badge changed after its last picture shows in the menu bar for about a second, so Drop Down can picture it and the panel shows the icon as it looks now; the screen-recording indicator lights for a moment. From each picture it cuts out the menu bar icons and saves them as small images on your Mac, in ~/Library/Application Support/com.ahyasinsab.drop-down/ItemImages/, so the panel can show the icons as they look in your menu bar. At most 256 are kept; older ones are replaced. The pictures never leave your Mac. When Screen Recording is turned off, Drop Down deletes them: within half a minute, at once if its Settings or panel is open, or at its next start. Without the permission, the panel shows app icons and no picture is taken. It never keeps a picture of Fast User Switching’s item, which can show your name.

In Settings › Panel, the theme preview shows the panel over your wallpaper. For that, while Screen Recording is allowed, Drop Down takes a picture of the window that draws your desktop picture, that window alone, so nothing else on your screen can be in it. It never asks for the permission for this. Otherwise it reads the file of your desktop picture, but only from the folders macOS keeps its wallpapers in or from your Pictures folder outside a Photos library; for any other picture, the preview shows a sample background. Of either it keeps only the part behind the panel, only in memory and only while that part of Settings is open. It never saves it, writes it to its log or sends it anywhere. To draw the preview’s menu bar, it also reads whether the menu bar background is on.

For a few apps listed in Drop Down, today only Setapp, it can also show the menu bar picture inside the app itself, for when it has no picture of the icon: on macOS 27, Setapp’s icon may not be drawn at all, so it cannot be pictured. While such an app runs, Drop Down copies it to a private temporary folder, checks the copy’s code signature on your Mac, to be sure the app is the one its maker signed and has not been changed, reads that one picture from the copy, then deletes the copy. It keeps the picture only in memory, never saves it and never sends it anywhere. It reads it whether or not Screen Recording is allowed, but shows it only while it is: in Settings, and in the panel when it shows menu bar icons. Before it opens the Setapp app in place of Setapp’s icon, or counts that app as answering a click on the icon, it checks that app’s signature too.

What stays on your Mac

Drop Down keeps the following on your Mac and sends none of it anywhere:

• Your settings, in the app’s preferences: which apps you hide, the panel’s layout, order, theme and shortcut, the names and icons you chose for apps in the panel, the Notification Center shortcut on macOS 27, the Apple items you hide (on macOS 15 and 26 also which one macOS removed, until it is back; on macOS 27 also whether the panel shows the items macOS hides, and which you left out), the chevron’s look, the safety options and your choices in Settings › Notifications, including the apps you set to Off or to show their icon.
• What it has learned, in the same preferences: the apps that have shown a menu bar icon (their names, bundle identifiers, where they are installed, when they were first and last seen, how many icons they showed, and the items each listed last, by identifier and position), on macOS 27 which of Apple’s items it has seen and their last order, never a title, the order their icons last had in the menu bar, which way of opening worked for each app, which apps open their menu or window away from their icon, on macOS 27 the apps whose icon macOS did not draw even with every icon shown (their bundle identifiers, when that was last seen, a random code for each of the last two Drop Down sessions that saw it, and the position and size of your displays and their notches at the time), and whether the last session ended normally, so that repeated crashes start it in safe mode. Forget Learned Ways to Open Items, in Settings › Safety, deletes what it learned about opening apps, these apps included. Drop Down also deletes an app’s entry once the icon is drawn when you open it, and stops relying on one a week after it was last seen or once your displays change.
• The menu bar pictures described above.
• Pictures you choose for the panel, in ~/Library/Application Support/com.ahyasinsab.drop-down/Icons/. When you pick an image as an app’s icon, Drop Down only reads your file and keeps a small copy of its own, 128 by 128 pixels, under a random name. When it starts, it removes the copies no app uses any more.
• Notes on stalls, in ~/Library/Logs/Drop Down/Watchdog.txt. When Drop Down stops responding for more than two seconds, it notes when that was, how long it lasted, what happened next (such as letting your icons show, or quitting), the versions of macOS and Drop Down, and where Drop Down was stuck: positions in its own code and in the libraries it uses, with the names of their functions where they have them. A note names none of your apps, windows or files, and holds nothing you typed. Drop Down keeps the last five and removes older ones when it starts. The file stays when you delete the app; you can delete it at any time.

If you enter a license key, Drop Down also keeps your license in your login keychain; what it holds, and what of it goes to Polar, is described under Drop Down Pro and your license key.

The diagnostics report

Settings › About › Save Diagnostics Report… writes a plain-text file to a place you choose. It describes your Mac (macOS version, languages, displays), this copy of Drop Down with its settings and permissions, the apps that have shown a menu bar icon (their names, bundle identifiers and the kind of place they run from), and what Drop Down logged since it started, such as which hidden icons you opened and when. If Drop Down ever stopped responding, it also gives the last five notes on stalls described above. Of the names and icons you chose for the panel it gives only how many there are, never the names or the pictures, and on macOS 27 of Apple’s items only counts. For Setapp, it says whether its menu bar picture could be read, and it marks an app whose icon macOS did not draw even with every icon shown. Of your license it gives whether Pro is active, the plan, the number of Macs the key allows, the date of the last check and Polar’s reason for a refusal, never the key, the email address, the activation ID or this Mac’s label. Of notifications it gives your choices in Settings › Notifications and counts: the hidden apps it watches, those with a Dock icon and those with a notification, how often Notification Center woke it, and how often an app’s icon was shown for a notification. It never names an app that had a notification or says what a badge showed; its log numbers notifications instead. If only one app is hidden, the times in the log can still tell when that app had one. The report leaves out menu bar item titles, the name of your home folder, the names of other volumes and the folders of programs that are not app bundles. Drop Down never sends the report. You decide whether to share it, and with whom; please do not post it on the public feedback board.

Update checks and downloads

Drop Down updates itself with Sparkle, an open-source updater. Once a day, and whenever you choose Check for Updates…, it asks updates.getdropdown.app whether a new version exists; if you accept an update, it downloads it from the same server. Sparkle’s system profile is switched off, so the check sends no profile of your Mac: its User-Agent names only the versions of Drop Down and Sparkle, and like any request from a Mac it carries standard headers such as your preferred language, which the server does not keep. You can turn automatic checks off in Settings › General.

Like any request on the internet, these show your IP address to the server. The server is a small program we run on Cloudflare. It counts update checks and downloads, including downloads of the disk image from this website, so we know roughly how many copies are in use and which versions. For each counted request it stores:

• the time, and whether it was a check, a download or an update patch;
• the file asked for;
• the kind of client: Drop Down’s updater, a browser, a known crawler or something else;
• the version numbers of Drop Down and Sparkle, when the updater asked;
• the country Cloudflare derives from the address, as a two-letter code;
• a daily visitor token: a shortened SHA-256 hash of your IP address and the client’s User-Agent, together with the date and a secret value that exists only in Cloudflare. It changes every day, so tokens from different days cannot be matched, and it cannot be turned back into an address. It lets us estimate how many copies check in on a given day.

The server does not store your IP address or the full User-Agent, sets no cookies, and keeps no referrer, language, Mac model or macOS version. Requests it does not count (errors, release notes, other files) leave nothing behind. The counts are kept in Workers Analytics Engine in our Cloudflare account, which only we can read, and Cloudflare deletes them after three months. One honest limit: each row keeps its time to the second, so someone reading the data could in principle notice a Mac that checks at the same moment every day. We do not try to; we only look at totals, and nothing stored names you or your Mac.

Drop Down Pro and your license key

A copy of Drop Down with no license key never contacts Polar. Once you enter a key in Settings › License, Drop Down talks to Polar’s license service at api.polar.sh:

• when you activate a key;
• while a license is stored, when its last successful check is a day old. Drop Down looks at launch and every hour whether it is; after an attempt that failed, it waits at least three hours before the next one (an attempt that never left your Mac, such as one made before Wi-Fi has joined, does not count);
• for a key Polar has reported as no longer valid, daily for 30 days, then only when you ask;
• when you click Check Now, and when you deactivate this Mac.

What each request sends:

• Activating: the key, Drop Down’s organization ID at Polar (the same in every copy) and a label for this Mac: its computer name, as set in System Settings › General › Sharing (the developer’s own test builds add “Debug” or “Probe”). Polar shows the label beside the Mac in the customer portal, so you can tell your Macs apart. Before that, Drop Down checks the key alone (the key and the organization ID), so a key that is not for Drop Down uses up no place. If this Mac already holds a license, the new key is first checked together with that license’s activation ID, so a key replaced in the customer portal keeps this Mac’s place.
• Checking: the key, the organization ID and this Mac’s activation ID, the identifier Polar gave this Mac’s place when you activated. When Polar says that activation is gone, the check is repeated without it.
• Deactivating: the key, the organization ID and the activation ID.

Like any request on the internet, each one shows your IP address to Polar, together with the User-Agent DropDown/<version> and standard headers such as your preferred language. The requests carry no cookies and nothing is cached. Drop Down sends no hardware identifier, no macOS version, no list of your apps and none of your settings.

Polar keeps each activation with its label, which you can see in the customer portal and we can see in Polar’s dashboard, and for each key a count of its checks and the time of the last one, which we can see. Polar’s answer to a request holds the license’s status and limits, together with the customer details Polar keeps for the purchase, such as the name, the email address and the billing address. Drop Down uses only the status, the plan, the activation ID, the number of Macs the key allows and the email address, which Settings › License shows; it ignores the rest and stores none of it.

On your Mac, the license is one item in your login keychain, named “Drop Down License”. It holds the key, the activation ID and the plan; the number of Macs and the purchase email address; the dates of the activation and of the last successful check; Polar’s last refusal message and its date, if there is one; and a code derived from this Mac’s hardware UUID, used only to notice a keychain copied to another Mac and never sent. The item stays when you delete the app, so reinstalling keeps Pro without using up another place. Deactivate This Mac… or Remove Key, in Settings › License, deletes it. Licensing writes nothing to the app’s preferences.

Without a successful check for 30 days, Pro pauses until the next one; Basic and every setting keep working. Buy Drop Down Pro… in the app opens this website’s pricing in your browser, and the app never asks where you are.

Feedback

Send Feedback, in Settings › About and in the chevron’s menu, opens Drop Down’s feedback board in your browser. The board is run by UserJot (operated by LogSnag LLC), a third party, under UserJot’s privacy policy. Everything you post there, and the name you post under, is public. The app sends nothing to the board by itself.

Buying Drop Down Pro

Drop Down Pro is sold by Polar Software Inc. as our merchant of record. Polar’s checkout asks for your email address, your name, your billing address and your payment details (and a business name and tax number, if you buy as a business), under Polar’s privacy policy. Your card details go to Polar’s payment processor and never reach us.

In Polar’s dashboard we see each order: your name, email address and the billing details you gave Polar (the country, the rest of the address where Polar asked for it, and a business name and tax number if you bought as a business), what you bought, when, and what was charged, together with the license key it issued, the key’s activations with their labels, and when it was last checked. Polar also records the IP address the checkout came from, which we can see too. We use this only to help you with your license, to handle refunds and to keep the records tax law requires.

Polar emails you the receipt and your license key. In Polar’s customer portal, where you sign in with a one-time code sent to the email address you paid with, you can see your orders and your keys and free a Mac.

This website

getdropdown.app is a static website served by Cloudflare. It runs no analytics, sets no cookies and loads nothing from other sites: no fonts, scripts or trackers. To deliver the pages and keep the site secure, Cloudflare processes technical data such as your IP address and browser type, as any host does. On the pages that show a price, Cloudflare passes the site the country of your connection, and the site shows Pro’s price in that country’s currency as an estimate; the country is used for that one page and not stored. The download button points to a file on updates.getdropdown.app, and a download is counted as described above. Buying Pro takes you to Polar’s checkout, where Polar’s privacy policy applies; after you pay, Polar sends you back to a thank-you page here, and its address carries nothing about your order. Links to Polar, the feedback board and the social media accounts in the footer take you to those sites, which have their own policies.

The site’s one form, the refund request, runs entirely in your browser and sends nothing, to us or to anyone. Its last step puts your answers into an email to hello@getdropdown.app, opens it in your own mail app and, if the request is too long to fill in, copies it to your clipboard. Nothing reaches us until you send that email yourself; if your browser hands mail links to a webmail service, that service receives the draft as it opens. The email then holds what you typed: your name, the email address you bought with, your country, your plan, your license key (or that it never arrived), the purchase date and the order number if you gave it, your reason and what you wrote about it, which you prefer if your key never arrived (the key or a refund), whether you used Basic first, your Mac and its macOS version if you gave them, what would have made you keep Pro if you said, and whether you are using a right the law gives you. We use it only to answer you and to handle the request.

Who processes data

Cloudflare, Inc. (USA) hosts this website and the update server, under Cloudflare’s privacy policy. Polar Software Inc. (USA) sells Drop Down Pro as our merchant of record and runs the license service the app talks to, as described above, under Polar’s privacy policy. UserJot runs the feedback board, for what you choose to post there. These providers may process data in the United States and rely on recognised safeguards such as standard contractual clauses. We sell no data and share none with advertisers.

Legal basis

We deliver updates, count update checks and downloads, and keep the update server and this website running securely because we have a legitimate interest in doing so: offering updates to the copies in use and knowing roughly how many there are (GDPR Art. 6(1)(f); KVKK Art. 5(2)(f)). The counts are built so that they do not name you. When you write to us, we use what you send to answer you, on the same basis.

When you buy Pro, activating and checking your license, and helping you with it or with a refund, are what our contract with you needs (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b); KVKK Art. 5(2)(c)). Keeping the records tax law requires is a legal obligation (GDPR Art. 6(1)(c); KVKK Art. 5(2)(ç)).

Retention

• Update counts: Cloudflare deletes them three months after they are written.
• Your license on your Mac: until you deactivate the Mac or remove the key in Settings › License; deleting the app does not remove it.
• Orders, license keys and their activations: kept by Polar, under Polar’s privacy policy.
• Messages you send us: kept as long as we need them to answer you and follow up, and deleted when you ask.
• Posts on the feedback board: they stay on the board until they are removed; ask us and we remove yours.
• What Cloudflare processes to deliver this website and the update server: kept under Cloudflare’s own policy.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, including under the GDPR and Türkiye’s KVKK, you may have the right to access, correct, delete or export your personal data, or to object to how it is used. Because the update server keeps no IP address and its daily token cannot be linked back to you, we usually hold nothing we could find for you; a message you send us, a post on the board, or an order in Polar, we can. For the order data Polar holds, ask us and we pass your request on to Polar, or contact Polar directly. The license on your Mac you can remove yourself, in Settings › License. To exercise any of these rights, reach us as described below. You may also complain to a data protection authority: in Türkiye, the Personal Data Protection Board (KVK Kurulu); in the EU, the authority where you live or work.

Children

Drop Down and this website are not directed at children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their data.

Changes

We update this policy when the app or the website changes what they do with data. The date at the top always shows the latest version.

Contact

Write to hello@getdropdown.app.