Privacy policy · Sidekick

Which Sidekick this covers

Sidekick for Mac is a Mac app that shows your Google Tasks in floating lists over your other apps. Everything from “What Sidekick for Mac accesses” to “Your choices for Sidekick for Mac” is about the Mac app; “Sidekick” in those sections means the Mac app.
Sidekick for AI is a web service that connects your Google Tasks to AI apps you choose. It is a separate product, with its own Google sign-in, and it has its own section below. Using one doesn’t send anything to the other, unless you link your Mac to your Sidekick account (see “Who Sidekick for Mac talks to”).

What Sidekick for Mac accesses

When you connect a Google account, Sidekick asks Google for permission to:

See, create, edit and delete your Google Tasks (the tasks permission). Sidekick uses this to show your task lists, add tasks, mark them done, change titles, notes, due dates and steps, reorder them, and delete tasks when you ask it to.
Know your account’s email address (openid and email). Sidekick uses this only to tell your connected accounts apart and to show which account a task belongs to.

Sidekick does not ask for, and cannot reach, anything else in your Google account.

Where Sidekick for Mac keeps your data

On your Mac only. Sidekick keeps a copy of your tasks, your connected accounts (email address and the label and colour you chose), the position of your lists and your settings in its own folder on your Mac, so your lists appear instantly and stay on screen when you’re offline. Changes you make without a connection wait in the same folder until Sidekick can send them to Google.
Your sign-in is a token from Google, stored in the macOS Keychain on your Mac.
If you link your Sidekick account, Sidekick also keeps that account’s email address, its ID for App Store purchases, whether it has Premium and when it last checked, and a key for this Mac. The key is stored in the macOS Keychain.
No tasks on our side. Sidekick for Mac has no servers for your tasks. We don’t receive, store or have access to your tasks, your Google email address or your Google sign-in.

How Sidekick for Mac protects your data

Encrypted in transit. Every connection Sidekick makes to Google uses HTTPS (TLS). Sidekick never sends your tasks, email address or sign-in over an unencrypted connection.
A sign-in that never shows us your password. You sign in on Google’s own page in your browser, and Sidekick never sees your Google password. The sign-in uses the protections Google recommends for desktop apps: PKCE and a one-time check value, so a sign-in code can’t be swapped or reused, and a redirect that is caught on your own Mac (127.0.0.1) and never travels over the internet.
Your sign-in token is encrypted at rest. It is stored in the macOS Keychain, which encrypts it and lets only Sidekick read it.
Your local copy stays inside Sidekick’s sandbox. The copy of your tasks and settings is kept in Sidekick’s own App Sandbox folder, which macOS keeps apart from other apps. It is protected by your Mac’s login, and encrypted on disk when FileVault is turned on.
The least access needed. Sidekick asks only for your tasks and your email address, nothing else in your Google account.
No copy on any server. Because Sidekick for Mac has no servers, your Google data is never gathered in one place where it could be breached, and nobody at our end can read it.

If you think you’ve found a security problem in Sidekick, please write to support@heysidekick.app.

Who Sidekick for Mac talks to

Google, to sign you in (accounts.google.com, oauth2.googleapis.com) and to read and update your tasks (tasks.googleapis.com). Google’s own privacy policy applies to your Google account.
Apple, through the App Store, if you buy Premium or the Founder Edition. Apple handles the payment; we receive no payment details.
Your Sidekick account (account.heysidekick.app), only if you choose to link your Mac to it in Settings, under Sidekick Account. Linking is optional. Sidekick for Mac sends a one-time link code and this Mac’s name (as set in System Settings), then the key for this Mac each time it checks your Premium: when it opens, about once a day, and when a purchase changes. It also sends Apple’s signed records of this Mac’s App Store purchases (product, transaction IDs, dates, price and store country) when you link and again when they change, so a purchase made in one place unlocks Premium in the other. Purchases you make after linking carry your Sidekick account’s ID, so Apple’s notices about them reach your account. When you link from Settings, under Sidekick for AI, the same visit in your browser can also give Sidekick for AI its own permission to your Google Tasks, on Google’s page; the Mac sends nothing more for it. That section then shows the Google accounts Sidekick for AI can reach and the AI apps connected to it. Sidekick fetches them from your Sidekick account with this Mac’s key when the section is open, and keeps them only in memory, never on your Mac’s disk. It never sends your tasks, your Google accounts or your Google sign-in.

Sidekick for Mac contains no analytics, advertising or tracking code, and it does not share or sell your data to anyone.

Your choices for Sidekick for Mac

Disconnect an account in Settings, under Google Accounts: choose the account, then Sign Out. Sidekick deletes that account’s copy of your tasks, any changes it hasn’t sent yet, and its sign-in from your Mac.
Revoke access at any time from your Google Account at myaccount.google.com/permissions.
Unlink your Mac in Settings, under Sidekick Account (Unlink This Mac…). Sidekick removes this Mac from your account and deletes the account’s details from your Mac straight away. If your account can’t be reached just then, Sidekick keeps this Mac’s key in the Keychain only to finish the removal, tries again the next time it opens, links or checks, and deletes the key once the removal goes through. You can also remove the Mac on your account page; the Mac then unlinks the next time it checks.
Remove everything by signing out of each account and, if you linked it, unlinking your Mac, then deleting Sidekick. Signing out removes the sign-ins Sidekick keeps in the Keychain, and its folder on your Mac goes with the app.

Sidekick for AI

Sidekick for AI is coming soon. Unlike the Mac app, it is a service that runs on servers, so it has to keep a few things on our side; this section says exactly what.

What Sidekick for AI accesses

When you sign in, Sidekick for AI asks Google for permission to see, create, edit and delete your Google Tasks (tasks) and to know your account’s email address (openid and email). It uses your tasks only to carry out what you ask your AI app to do, and your email address to identify your account. It does not ask for, and cannot reach, anything else in your Google account.

What it keeps, and where

Sidekick for AI runs on Cloudflare’s platform (see “Where it’s stored”). It keeps:

Your Google sign-in, the token that lets it reach your tasks, encrypted with AES-256-GCM under keys only the service holds. The short-lived token it uses for each request is held in memory only and never written down.
Your account: your email address; for each Google account you connect, its email address, Google account ID, Workspace domain if it has one, and the permissions it granted; your plan, the two lists the free plan uses, and your purchases: whether you have Premium or the Founder Edition from a web purchase, with our payment provider’s IDs for it, and for App Store purchases you link, their transaction IDs, product, expiry and renewal state. Kept until you delete your account.
Linked Macs: for each Mac you link, its name, when it was linked and last checked, and its key, stored only as a hash, so it can check your Premium. Kept until you remove the Mac or delete your account.
Your connected AI apps: a record of each app you’ve connected and when it was last used, so you can see and revoke them. Their access tokens are stored only as one-way hashes.
Usage counts, such as today’s deletes, for the free plan’s limits. Counts only, never task content, kept for 90 days.
A security log of events such as sign-ins, connections and deletes (the event, the app, the time, a hashed account ID and, for some events, a count or a purchase’s state, never your email or task content), kept for one year, including after you delete your account.
Service logs of each request (the tool, how long it took and any error, never your email or task content), kept for 7 days.
Backups of the database, kept for 30 days, so it can be restored after a fault.

Your tasks pass through

Your tasks stay in Google Tasks. When your AI app asks for something, Sidekick for AI reads or changes your tasks in Google and passes the result to that app. To answer quickly, it holds recent results in memory for a few minutes. A delete preview keeps only the tasks’ IDs and when they last changed, for ten minutes, so the delete can check nothing changed. If Google can’t take a change you asked for yet, because Google’s daily limit for the service has been reached, Sidekick for AI keeps that change, with its text, until it goes through, for up to 7 days, then removes it. Apart from that, task titles and notes are never written to a database or to logs.

Who it shares with

The AI app you connect, which receives what it needs to answer each of your requests. That app is made by another company, and its own privacy policy covers what it does with what it receives.
Google, to sign you in and to read and update your tasks.
Cloudflare, which runs the service and stores what’s listed above on our behalf.
Our payment provider, if you buy Premium or the Founder Edition on the web. It sells them to you as the seller (merchant of record) and handles payment and sales tax under its own privacy policy. We give it your email address and your account’s ID to start the checkout; it collects your payment details and billing country (and address where tax rules need it) itself, for receipts, tax and fraud prevention. We receive whether you have Premium and its IDs for your purchase, never your card details.
Apple, if you link an App Store purchase. We receive the purchase’s transaction ID, product, expiry and renewal state, never payment details.
An email delivery provider, to send account emails such as confirming a deletion, a problem with a payment, or notice of a change that affects you.

Sidekick for AI contains no advertising or tracking, and we don’t sell or share your data with anyone else.

Where it’s stored

Cloudflare stores and processes Sidekick for AI’s data in the United States and other countries, under Cloudflare’s data processing addendum, which uses standard contractual clauses for transfers out of the EU and UK.

Not used to train AI

We don’t use your Google data, including data from Google Workspace accounts, to develop, improve or train generalised AI or machine learning models, and we don’t let anyone else do so. Sidekick for AI doesn’t run an AI model of its own; the AI app you connect does the thinking.

How it’s protected

Encrypted in transit and at rest. Every connection uses HTTPS (TLS). Your Google sign-in is encrypted with its own key, and the service’s keys are kept as secrets outside the code.
Your AI app never gets your Google sign-in. It gets its own access to Sidekick for AI, limited to that app and revocable on its own, and Sidekick for AI never accepts a token issued for anything else.
The least access needed. Only your tasks and email address.
Deletes need your approval. Nothing is deleted without a preview you’ve seen and approved.

Your choices for Sidekick for AI

Disconnect an AI app at any time from your account page, or from Sidekick for Mac’s Settings, under Sidekick for AI.
Disconnect Google from your account page, or revoke access from your Google Account at myaccount.google.com/permissions.
Delete your data from your account page. Sidekick for AI revokes its access to your Google account with Google, disconnects every AI app, deletes what it holds about you and cancels any web subscription, straight away, and confirms by email. Three things remain: security log entries, which hold no email or task content, until they expire after a year; database backups, until they expire within 30 days; and payment records that our payment provider and Apple keep under their own legal obligations. App Store purchases stay with Apple, and can be linked again to a new account.

Your rights

You can ask to see the data Sidekick for AI holds about you, correct it, get a copy (you can also export it from your account page), delete it, or object to how it’s used, by writing to support@heysidekick.app or from your account page. You can also complain to your data protection authority.

If you use Sidekick for AI with a Google Workspace account and your organisation needs a data processing addendum, write to support@heysidekick.app.

Cookies

Sidekick for AI uses one cookie to keep you signed in to your account page for up to 7 days. The same cookie lets the page where you approve an AI app recognise you in that browser, so it can offer the Google accounts already in your Sidekick account without Google’s sign-in. Two short-lived cookies, each lasting up to 10 minutes, tie a sign-in or an approval to your browser: one while you sign in to your account page, which ties Google’s reply to your browser, and one while you approve an AI app. All of them are needed for the service to work, and none is used for tracking.

Security

If you think you’ve found a security problem in Sidekick for AI, please write to support@heysidekick.app.

Google API Services User Data Policy

Sidekick for Mac’s and Sidekick for AI’s use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Data from your Google account is used only to provide Sidekick’s features to you, is never used for advertising, and is never read by people. Sidekick for Mac never transfers it to anyone. Sidekick for AI transfers it only to the AI app you connect, at your request, to provide the features you use, and your email address to our payment provider and email delivery provider as described above.

This website

heysidekick.app has no analytics, advertising, cookies or tracking, and loads nothing from other companies. Like any website, its host receives your IP address and browser details to deliver the pages and protect the site from abuse; we don’t use them for anything else.

Children

Sidekick is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect information from them. Sidekick for Mac collects no information from anyone unless you link it to your Sidekick account; Sidekick for AI keeps only what’s described above.

Changes

If this policy changes, we’ll update it here and change the date above. If a change affects what Sidekick for Mac accesses, the app will tell you before it applies; for Sidekick for AI, we’ll tell you by email first.

Contact

Questions about privacy go to support@heysidekick.app.