Privacy Policy for Tilt

Last updated: 2026-10-06

Tilt collects no personal data, and it has no network code of any kind. Nothing it reads leaves your Mac, because there is nothing in the app that could send it anywhere.

What Tilt reads

The lid angle. Tilt reads the angle of your MacBook's lid from the built-in sensor, through the system's IOKit interface. It is a number in degrees and nothing else. It is used to draw the screen in perspective and is never stored.

The screen. While the effect is on, Tilt captures the desktop through macOS's own ScreenCaptureKit, which is why macOS asks you for the Screen Recording permission the first time. It takes a still of the wallpaper and a live stream of the windows so it can tilt the windows away from the wallpaper behind them.

What happens to the capture

It is drawn on your screen and discarded. Tilt holds one frame in memory so the picture does not flicker while the next frame arrives, releases it as soon as that frame lands, and releases it entirely when the effect ends.

The capture is never written to disk. It is never transmitted. It is never shown to anyone but you, on the machine it came from.

What Tilt stores

Six settings, and only settings. They are kept by macOS in Tilt's own sandbox container on your Mac:

• whether the effect is switched on
• the lid angle at which it engages
• the strength of the glass treatment
• your viewing distance in centimetres
• whether the angle appears in the menu bar
• whether you have already seen the first-run hint

No usage data, no identifiers, no analytics, no crash reporting, and no third-party services of any kind. Tilt has no account, no sign-in, and no server.

One thing is kept outside that container, by macOS rather than by Tilt. If you switch on "Open at login", macOS records that choice in its own background task database, which is where every login item on your Mac lives. It holds the fact that you asked for Tilt to start, and nothing about you. You can see it and switch it off at any time in System Settings, under General and then Login Items, and Tilt's own menu reads that setting back from the system rather than keeping a copy of its own.

Deleting Tilt does not remove that entry, which is worth knowing because it is not what most people expect. Measured on 2026-09-15: with the application bundle deleted, the entry was still recorded and still switched on. If you remove Tilt and want the entry gone too, switch it off in Login Items. That is the only copy of it, and it is the system's rather than ours.

Permissions

Screen Recording is required, because drawing your desktop in perspective means reading it first. macOS asks for it, and you can revoke it at any time in System Settings under Privacy and Security. Without it, Tilt simply does not draw the effect.

The lid angle sensor is reached through the com.apple.security.device.usb entitlement, which is what macOS requires for access to that class of device from inside the app sandbox. Tilt uses it for the hinge sensor and for nothing else. It reads no external, removable, or connected device.

Input Monitoring is never requested, and Tilt is built so that macOS does not ask for it. An app that asks the system for every input device, rather than for one, gets that prompt; Tilt asks only for the hinge sensor, and was measured both ways to be sure.

While the effect is on screen, Tilt does watch for one key. The overlay covers everything, so the escape key has to reach it, and every key press is looked at for long enough to see whether it is escape. Nothing else is done with any of them: they are not stored, not counted, not sent, and every key that is not escape is passed straight on to the app you were using. That is the whole of it, and it happens only while the effect is on screen.

Keeping and removing what is stored

The six settings stay on your Mac until you remove them. They are not sent anywhere, so there is nothing held elsewhere to ask for or to have deleted, and there is no account to close.

To clear them, quit Tilt first and then delete its container folder, at ~/Library/Containers/com.cottonferry.tilt (io.sxong.tilt for Tilt 1.0). Quitting first matters: while Tilt is running it holds the same values in memory and writes them back when you change a setting, so a folder deleted underneath it comes back. Deleting the app does not reliably remove that folder, which is why it is worth saying where it is.

The "Open at login" entry is separate and is described above: it lives with macOS rather than in that folder, and Login Items is where you remove it.

Children

Tilt is not directed at children and collects nothing from anyone, of any age.

Changes

If this policy ever changes, the new version replaces this file and the date at the top changes with it.

Contact

Questions about this policy: sxong2x@gmail.com