The short version

SnapGrep reads what is on your screen so you can search it. All of that reading happens on your Mac. Captured screen content, recognized text, and translations never leave your machine. There is no account, and the app collects nothing about what you look at or search for.

What the app processes on your Mac

SnapGrep uses the Screen Recording permission to capture the window or screen you invoke it on, and the Accessibility interface to read text that apps can hand over directly. Text recognition and translation run in Apple's on-device frameworks. Captures, recognized text, search queries, and translations are processed in memory and stay on the device.

When the app talks to the network

Three narrow cases, each limited to its purpose:

• License activation. When you enter a license key, the app validates and activates it against the API of our payment provider, Polar. The request carries your license key and an activation identifier for the Mac; it carries no screen content.
• Update checks. The app checks snapgrep.com for new releases (Sparkle). Our server sees the standard data of any web request: IP address, user agent, and timestamp, kept in routinely rotated server logs.
• Error reports. Crash stacks and error metadata go to our own Sentry instance (sentry.sysinit.at), operated by us on our own infrastructure. Reports never include screen content, recognized text, or search queries. You can switch error reporting off in Settings → Privacy.

Purchases

Sales run through Polar Software, Inc. as merchant of record. Polar processes your payment and billing data under its own privacy policy; we never see your payment details. From Polar we receive the order data needed to issue and support your license: name, email address, country, the license key, and, for renewals, the existing key you enter at checkout.

This website

• Server logs. snapgrep.com runs on our own servers. Requests land in standard logs (IP address, user agent, timestamp) used for security and operations, and rotated routinely.
• Analytics. We run a self-hosted Umami instance (analytics.sysinit.at). It is cookieless, does not build visitor profiles, and shares nothing with third parties.
• Fonts. The site loads the Inter Tight and JetBrains Mono fonts from Google Fonts, so your browser sends your IP address to Google when the page loads. Google's privacy policy applies to that request.
• Newsletter. The update-news list runs on our own Listmonk instance (lists.sysinit.at) with double opt-in. Your address is used for the news you signed up for and nothing else; every mail contains an unsubscribe link.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal data, restrict or object to its processing, and receive it in a portable format. Contact us at wolfgang.kerschbaumer@sysinit.at. You can also lodge a complaint with the Austrian data protection authority (dsb.gv.at).

The controller is sysinit | Wolfgang Kerschbaumer, MSc, St. Leonharder-Straße 4, 3281 Oberndorf a.d. Melk, Austria. Full details are on the imprint.

Changes

When this policy changes, the new version appears here with an updated date. Material changes get a note in the release notes.

Last updated: July 8, 2026