Telemetry and privacy

Basic first-session event

After the first game session reaches the ready state and ends, Mactician sends one event for that retained macOS preferences domain. It contains a random event ID, calendar day, approximate duration bucket, launcher version, and build number.

It does not contain an installation or device identifier, exact time or duration, device properties, launcher settings, language, identity, logs, or a network-address field.

The server immediately increments an aggregate grouped by received day, version, build, and duration bucket. It stores no raw basic payload. A SHA-256 hash of the random event ID is retained for 14 days only to reject retries. Aggregates are retained for 730 days; groups smaller than five events are not displayed or exported.

Optional extended diagnostics

Extended diagnostics are disabled until you explicitly grant consent in Mactician settings. Consent version 1 allows one event after each completed session. Its fields are: a fresh random event ID; event type; exact UTC completion time and duration; launcher version and build; consent version; profile and effects-quality IDs; display width, height, density, and UI scale; guest memory and CPU count; Mac model identifier; macOS version; physical-memory size; and logical CPU count.

Extended events never contain an installation ID, Mac name, serial number, MAC address, Apple ID, macOS username, Riot ID, IP field, application list, password, authentication data, or game logs.

Raw extended diagnostic events are stored as JSONL without an installation ID and retained for 90 days. Turning diagnostics off prevents new events and removes the local pending diagnostic queue. A change to the diagnostic field set requires a new consent version.

Delivery, retries, and server processing

Pending events reuse their random event ID during retries. HTTP 202 acknowledges both a new event and a duplicate. Network failures, HTTP 408/429, and server errors remain queued; unrecoverable client errors are discarded. A pending first-session event expires locally after seven days.

The API rejects unknown or out-of-range fields, bounds request sizes, and does not persist source IP addresses or User-Agent headers. A client address exists only in the in-memory rate limiter for a short period.

Your choices

The basic first-session event is part of the current launcher behavior. Extended diagnostics are optional and can be enabled or disabled in Mactician settings at any time. Mactician can be inspected and built from source.

Contact

For privacy questions, email [email protected]. Include “Mactician privacy” in the subject. Because events contain no stable installation identifier, it may not be possible to locate an individual event.