Privacy policy
The short version. Your screen, sound, typing, clipboard and files travel end-to-end encrypted between your device and your Mac. The relay passes them along and can't read them. To sign you in and find your Macs, the relay keeps your email address, your Macs' names and a few counters. There are no analytics, no ads, no tracking and no cookies, and nothing is sold or shared for advertising.
About this policy
This policy covers the Lidless Mac app, the Lidless app for iPhone and iPad, the web page at relay.getlidless.com, the Lidless relay, and this website, getlidless.com. It is the one privacy policy for all of them.
Who is responsible. Lidless is free and made by Tamorin LLC, a company in the United States, which is responsible for your data under this policy (the "controller", in GDPR terms). "We" in this policy means Tamorin LLC. You can reach us at support@getlidless.com.
Lidless can connect in two ways. Through the relay, your device and your Mac meet at relay.getlidless.com. Over Tailscale, your device talks straight to your Mac over your own Tailscale network and the relay isn't involved. Most of this policy is about the relay, because that's where data about you is kept.
What Lidless never collects
- Your Mac's screen and sound, what you type, your clipboard and your files. These are end-to-end encrypted between your device and your Mac. On the relay path they pass through the relay in encrypted form; nobody running the relay can read them.
- The names you give your devices. They travel encrypted to your Mac.
- Your microphone, camera, photos, contacts or location. Lidless doesn't ask for them.
- Analytics, advertising identifiers or tracking of any kind. Lidless contains no analytics or advertising code.
What the relay keeps
The relay needs an account so it can sign you in and connect your devices to your Macs and no one else's. It runs on Cloudflare and stores the following.
Your account
- Your email address, stored as you typed it (in lower case). We use it to send sign-in codes and to know which account is yours.
- An Apple identifier, only if you use Sign in with Apple. It isn't offered yet; if it is, the relay keeps the identifier Apple gives it, not your Apple ID password.
- A random account number, when the account was created and when you last signed in.
Sign-in codes
When you sign in, we email you a six-digit code. The relay never stores the code itself, only a scrambled check value (a hash), with the time and the number of tries. A code works once, for 10 minutes and 3 tries. Expired entries are deleted every day.
Signed-in devices
Each signed-in app or browser has a sign-in that lasts 60 days from its last use. The relay stores it only as a hash, along with the kind of client (web, iPhone or Mac), how you signed in, and when it was created and last used. An account keeps at most 50 of these; the oldest unused one goes first. Expired ones are deleted every day.
Your Macs
For each Mac you add: its name (the computer name you set on the Mac, up to 64 characters), a public key the Mac uses to prove it's the same Mac, when you added it, and when it last connected (updated at most once an hour). The Mac signs in to your account only while you set it up, and signs out at the end. After that it uses only its own key.
Usage counts
To keep the relay free and fair, it counts connections and messages per account and per Mac, by hour and by day. These counts are deleted after 7 days.
Abuse protection
To stop people guessing codes or flooding the relay, it keeps short-lived counters keyed by your IP address, your email address or your account number. These keys are scrambled with a secret before they're stored, so the counters don't contain your IP address or email address in readable form. They're deleted after 2 days.
Logs
The relay writes a short line for each request: which part of the relay was called, whether it worked, any error and how long it took. It doesn't log addresses, request contents, codes or keys. Cloudflare's own request logging is turned off for the relay. Cloudflare keeps these lines for a limited time under its own policy.
What the relay sees while you're connected
Like any server, the relay sees your IP address, when your device and your Mac connect and disconnect, and the size and number of the encrypted messages it forwards, including which ones are setting up the encrypted connection. It can't see what's inside them. Cloudflare also sees IP addresses as part of delivering traffic.
A note on the browser version
The web page at relay.getlidless.com is served from the same Cloudflare account as the relay. Sessions in it are end-to-end encrypted. But anyone in control of that account, or Cloudflare itself, could in principle serve a changed page that sends what you see elsewhere, for sessions started after the change. We don't do this, and we want you to know the limit honestly. If that matters to you, use the iPhone or iPad app, which doesn't load code from the web, or the Tailscale path, where your Mac serves its own copy of the page.
Data on your Mac
These stay on your Mac. Lidless doesn't send them to us.
- Your approved devices, in the Mac's keychain: each device's name, an ID, when it was approved and last seen, and either a hash of its Tailscale pairing token (never the token) or its public key.
- The Mac's relay keys, in the keychain. Only the public half ever leaves the Mac.
- Settings, such as whether the relay is on and which email address it was set up with.
- The last five sessions: device name, start and end time, and how it connected. They never leave the Mac and stay even after you revoke a device.
- A session log at
~/Library/Application Support/Lidless/host.log, at most about 2 MB, readable only by you. It records states, sizes, counts and device names. When Tailscale access is on, it also records your Mac's Tailscale name and your Tailscale login, which is often an email address. It never records tokens, codes, typed text, clipboard contents or where you clicked. - A few small records: the display's previous resolution while a device has changed it, so it can be put back (
display-change.jsonin the same folder), and counts of today's relay use and set-up attempts. - Input Monitoring, only if you turn on Devices May Hide This Screen. Lidless uses it to notice when someone at the Mac holds Escape to uncover the screen. It doesn't record or send keys.
- Files you send to the Mac, saved in
~/Downloads/Lidless, and files the Mac shares, from~/Downloads/Lidless/Outbox. They stay until you delete them. - The clipboard is read or changed only when you press a button on your device, and nothing is kept.
Data on your iPhone, iPad or browser
- iPhone and iPad app: your sign-in, your email address, this device's key and your Mac's details are kept in the device's keychain, on this device only. Your settings are stored in the app. A file you fetch from the Mac is kept in a protected temporary folder until you save it, and is deleted when the session ends or the app starts. The clipboard panel is cleared at the end of every session.
- Browser: the page keeps your sign-in, your email address, this device's key (which the page can't export) and your Mac's details in the browser's storage for relay.getlidless.com, plus your display settings. It uses no cookies. Clearing the site's data in your browser removes all of it.
This website
getlidless.com has no scripts, no cookies, no analytics and no embedded content from other sites. Cloudflare serves it and, like any web host, processes your IP address and browser details to deliver and protect the site. Lidless sets no cookies on getlidless.com or relay.getlidless.com, and we keep Cloudflare's optional bot challenges, which would set a security cookie, turned off.
Who else handles data
- Cloudflare runs the relay, its database, and this website.
- Resend sends the sign-in code emails. It receives your email address and the email's text, which includes the code, and keeps a record of sent emails for a limited time under its own policy.
- Apple distributes the iPhone and iPad app through the App Store, and would handle Sign in with Apple if it's offered and you use it.
- Tailscale, only if you use it. Traffic then goes over your own Tailscale network, and Lidless only runs the Tailscale app already on your Mac.
That's everyone. Cloudflare and Resend process data only to provide these services to us, under data-processing terms that protect it at least as well as this policy. They may process it outside your country, including in the United States. We don't sell your data or share it for advertising, and we only hand it over if the law requires us to.
Why we may use your data
If you're in the EU, the UK or a similar place, the law asks us to say why we're allowed to use your data:
- To provide the service you asked for (performing our agreement with you): your email address, account, Macs, sign-ins and usage counts, so the relay can sign you in and connect your devices.
- Our legitimate interest in keeping the relay safe and free: the scrambled abuse-protection counters, the daily allowance and the short request logs.
How long things are kept
| What | Kept until |
|---|---|
| Email address, Apple identifier, account dates | You delete your account |
| Your Macs' names, keys and last-seen times | You remove the Mac or delete your account |
| Sign-in codes (as hashes) | 10 minutes, then deleted within a day |
| Signed-in devices (as hashes) | 60 days after last use, sign-out, or account deletion |
| Usage counts | 7 days |
| Abuse-protection counters (scrambled) | 2 days |
| Relay request logs | Cloudflare's retention period |
| Code emails at Resend | Resend's retention period |
There is no automatic expiry for an unused account, so delete it when you're done with Lidless.
Deleting your data
Delete your account
In the iPhone or iPad app, go to Settings > Relay > Account and choose Delete Account… there. You can also open the Account screen with Account on the app's start screen. On relay.getlidless.com, choose Account, then Delete account. If you haven't signed in within the last 15 minutes, we'll email you a code first to confirm it's you.
Deleting your account happens immediately. Every relay connection to your Macs is closed, then your email address, Apple identifier, Macs, signed-in devices, sign-in codes and per-account usage counts are deleted together. It can't be undone. Tailscale connections aren't affected.
A few things remain without anything that identifies you: scrambled abuse-protection counters until they expire within 2 days, overall counts with no account attached, and a marker that tells the relay your former Macs are no longer allowed. Resend's record of the code emails it sent stays under its own policy.
Remove one Mac
On the Mac, choose Remove This Mac From Your Account… in the Lidless menu, or remove it under Account on another device. Its relay connections close at once.
Revoke a device
On the Mac, open the Lidless menu, then Devices, and choose Revoke (or Revoke All). The device's session ends immediately and its key stops working.
Remove data on your own devices
Delete the iPhone or iPad app, clear the site data for relay.getlidless.com in your browser, or quit and delete the Mac app. On the Mac you can also delete ~/Library/Application Support/Lidless and ~/Downloads/Lidless.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to see the personal data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, take a copy of it, or object to how it's used. You can delete everything yourself as described above. For anything else, email us and we'll answer within 30 days. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.
Children
Lidless isn't meant for children under 13, and we don't knowingly create accounts for them. If you think a child has an account, write to us and we'll delete it.
Changes
If this policy changes, we'll update it here and change the date at the top. If a change affects what we keep about you, we'll say so on this page before it takes effect.
Contact
Questions about privacy: support@getlidless.com