Privacy
Updated August 2026
Frownie runs entirely on your Mac. It watches your webcam locally to notice when you frown and nudge you to relax. Your video, images, and facial data never leave your device. There is nothing to upload, and no server to send it to.
What we collect
Anonymous usage counts, and nothing else. Frownie has no account and no sign-in, so there is nothing to attach a name to. The app records product moments — it was opened for the first time, the camera was allowed or refused, the face detector loaded, calibration was started, abandoned or finished, an alert fired, a setting changed — against a random ID generated on your Mac the first time you run it. That ID is not derived from your computer and cannot be linked back to you. Your IP address is discarded and never stored, and the app sends no location at all; we never see anything your camera sees. You can turn all of this off under “Share usage data” in Settings. This website separately counts page views and downloads, and derives an approximate country from your IP address before discarding it. If you buy a license, our payment provider collects the name, email and billing details needed to take the payment and meet tax law. See “Payments and licensing” below.
What we never collect
No video, images or measurements of your face. No frown scores, no daily counts, no calibration profile — those live only in the file described below and are never sent anywhere. When calibration finishes we record only how well it worked, as one of three words, plus how many tries and how long it took — never the readings behind that verdict. No license key or email is ever attached to a usage event.
Your camera and face
Camera frames are analyzed on your device using an on-device model (Apple’s Vision / Google’s MediaPipe) to measure brow tension. Frames are never recorded, saved, or transmitted. The green camera light turns off whenever there’s no one to watch: screen locked, Mac asleep, or you’ve stepped away.
What’s stored on your Mac
Your settings, your calibration profile and your per-day frown counts are saved in a local file (settings.json) on your computer. None of it is ever uploaded, and deleting the app removes it. The one exception is the random ID described above, which lives in the same file and is the only part of it that is ever sent anywhere. Delete the file and the next launch mints a new one, unrecognisable as the same install.
Network connections
The app makes four kinds of network request, and none of them carries anything your camera saw. It checks GitHub for the latest release so it can offer updates. When you activate a license key, it sends that key once to our payment provider to confirm it is valid, then re-checks it at most once a month; if that check fails or you are offline, your license keeps working. It sends the anonymous usage counts described above, in batches, unless you have switched them off. And the popover loads two typefaces from Google Fonts. Choosing “Book Botox near me” from an alert simply opens a web search in your browser.
Payments and licensing
Purchases are handled by Polar, which acts as the merchant of record and is the seller on your receipt. Polar collects your email, billing address and payment details in order to charge you and to account for sales tax and VAT; we never see your card details. Your license key is tied to your email address so you can recover it. Polar processes this under its own privacy policy.
Third parties
No video, images or facial data are shared with anyone, because they never leave your device. Downloads and update checks are served by GitHub, payments and license keys by Polar, anonymous usage counts by PostHog, and the popover’s typefaces by Google Fonts, each under their own privacy terms. This website also uses PostHog to count page views and downloads.
Not medical advice
Frownie is a lighthearted habit tracker for reducing frowning. It is not a medical device and does not provide medical advice.
Changes
If this policy changes, we’ll update the date above. Continued use of the app means you accept the current version.
Contact
Questions? Email loukman.nacik@gmail.com.