Shotlist privacy policy

Last updated: 1 November 2026

This policy explains what Shotlist reads, what it keeps, what leaves your Mac and who sees it. It covers the Shotlist Mac app and the shotlist command-line tool, and it is written from what they actually do.

Your app and your screenshots stay on your Mac unless you upload them to App Store Connect yourself. There is no account to make, no analytics, no crash-reporting service, no advertising and no tracking of any kind.

Who we are

Shotlist is published by DigitalHope Limited, a company registered in Northern Ireland, company number NI735522, registered office 34 High Trees Drive, Donaghadee, Northern Ireland, BT21 0GQ.

For anything in this policy, including a request to see or delete your data, write to support@digitalhopeltd.com.

DigitalHope Limited is the data controller for the personal data described below.

What Shotlist reads on your Mac

To do its job, Shotlist reads:

• Your project. The Xcode project or workspace named in Shotlist/shotlist.json, which it builds with Xcode, and the Shotlist folder beside it: the configuration, captions, templates and HTTP fixtures.
• Your app, while it runs in the simulator. Shotlist installs the build in simulators it creates for itself, launches it, and talks to it over a connection on your Mac only (127.0.0.1) to show each screen and know when it’s ready. The requests your app makes through ShotlistKit are answered from your fixtures on your Mac.
• The screenshots it captures, to check their size and compare them with the last run.

All of this is read and worked out on your Mac. None of it is sent to us.

What it keeps on your Mac

• Your screenshots and their records, in Shotlist/Output inside your project: captures, composed screenshots, creative assets, the manifest and the run log, plus Shotlist/published.json, which records what Shotlist uploaded.
• Build and scratch files, in a .shotlist folder in your project.
• Its own simulators, named “Shotlist · size · runtime”, in Xcode’s usual simulator storage.
• Your App Store Connect key, if you use publishing. The Mac app keeps it in your login keychain. The command-line tool reads it from the file you point it at and never copies it.
• Your license, if you subscribe, in your login keychain, shared by the app and the command-line tool.
• The app’s settings, such as your recent projects.

What leaves your Mac

Shotlist connects to the internet for these things only.

App Store Connect, when you use it

When you plan or upload, Shotlist talks directly to Apple’s App Store Connect API using your own API key. A plan reads your app’s versions, localisations and current screenshots. An upload sends the screenshots and creative assets the plan lists. This goes straight from your Mac to Apple, under Apple’s privacy policy. We never see your key or what you send.

Caption drafts, when you ask for them

Drafting missing captions uses Apple’s on-device translation where the language is installed. If you’ve set your own ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, it can use Anthropic’s Claude instead, which sends the captions being translated, and the one-line description of your app if you give one, to Anthropic under your own account and Anthropic’s privacy policy. Without that key, nothing is sent.

Checking your subscription

If you subscribe and activate a license key, Shotlist sends it to Polar (see below) to activate it on your Mac, then checks with Polar once a day that your subscription is still active. Each request contains:

• your license key,
• the identifier Polar gave this Mac when you activated it,
• our Polar organisation and product identifiers,
• and, when you first activate, your Mac’s name from Sharing settings (such as “Sam’s MacBook Pro”), so you can tell your Macs apart in your Polar account.

In CI, a key set in SHOTLIST_LICENSE_KEY is checked the same way, without a Mac’s name. Polar replies with the state of your license and the email address it’s registered to. Like any server, Polar also sees your IP address. Without a license key, Shotlist never contacts Polar.

Checking for updates

Once a day, the Mac app asks our website whether a new version is out. The request carries the app’s version number and nothing that identifies you or your Mac. Our website is hosted by Google’s Firebase Hosting, which sees your IP address when it answers, as any web server does. The command-line tool doesn’t check for updates.

Downloads, including updates, come from GitHub, where we publish each version, and GitHub sees your IP address in the same way. Every version is signed by us and notarised by Apple, and the app refuses an update whose signature doesn’t match.

Subscribing: Polar

Shotlist is free to download. The subscription is sold by Polar (polar.sh), our merchant of record. When you subscribe, you buy from Polar, which takes the payment, handles VAT and sales tax, and sends your receipts.

At checkout you give Polar your name, email address, billing address and payment details. Polar is responsible for that information as its own data controller, under Polar’s privacy policy, and processes card payments through its payment provider. We never see your card details.

Polar tells us who has subscribed so we can support you: your name, email address, billing country, and the state of your subscription and license key, including the names of the Macs it’s activated on.

What we do not collect

• No analytics or usage tracking, and no analytics or crash-reporting software in the app or the tool.
• No advertising and no advertising identifiers.
• Nothing from your project, your app, your screenshots or your App Store Connect account.
• No tracking of you across other companies’ apps or websites.
• No selling or sharing of personal data for advertising. We do not sell your data, ever.

Why we are allowed to hold it

Under UK GDPR:

• To perform our contract with you: activating and checking your license, and supporting your subscription.
• Our legitimate interests: keeping Shotlist up to date and secure, and stopping a license being shared beyond its limit of Macs. We use the minimum needed for this.
• Our legal obligations: keeping records of sales for tax and accounting.

How long it is kept

What Shotlist keeps on your Mac stays until you delete it (see below).

Polar keeps your license and its activations while your subscription is active, and keeps purchase records under its own policy. We keep the subscriber details Polar shares with us while you’re a customer, and records of sales for as long as tax and accounting law requires, currently six years.

Your rights

You can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, or send it to you in a portable form. Write to support@digitalhopeltd.com and we will respond within one month. For your payment details, Polar can help directly.

Removing Shotlist and its data. If you subscribe, first choose Deactivate This Mac in Settings, or run shotlist licence deactivate, which frees that Mac’s place on your license. Then:

• Quit Shotlist and drag it to the Bin.
• Delete the shotlist tool if you installed it.
• In each project, delete Shotlist/Output and the .shotlist folder.
• Delete the “Shotlist ·” simulators in Xcode’s Devices and Simulators window.
• If you like, remove “Shotlist licence” and “Shotlist · App Store Connect key” in Keychain Access.

Deleting the app does not cancel your subscription. Choose Manage Subscription in Settings to cancel through Polar, or email us and we will do it for you.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK regulator, at ico.org.uk. We would rather you told us first.

Data leaving the UK

Polar, Google, GitHub and, if you use it, Anthropic may process data in the United States, the European Union and elsewhere. They protect those transfers with their own safeguards, such as standard contractual clauses, as set out in their policies.

Children

Shotlist is a tool for app developers. It is not designed for or directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has given us personal data, write to us and we will delete it.

Keeping it safe

Everything Shotlist sends travels over TLS. Your license and App Store Connect key are kept in your login keychain. Shotlist is signed with our Apple Developer ID and notarised by Apple, so macOS checks it hasn’t been tampered with before it opens.

No system is perfect, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a breach affects your rights we will tell you and the ICO within the timescales the law sets.

Changes

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top, and say so in the release notes if the change is significant. The date above is the current version.