Last updated: July 26, 2026
The short version: Mushroom is built to keep your data on your Mac. There is no Mushroom account, no analytics, and no tracking. Your chats with the pet run on-device through Apple Intelligence and are never sent to us or anyone else.
There is one exception, and you have to switch it on yourself: file sharing. If you turn it on in Settings, Sharing, then a file you deliberately drop on your mushroom is uploaded to our temporary storage, shared through an unguessable link, and deleted after 24 hours. Nothing else is ever uploaded, and the setting is off until you turn it on. See section 2.8.
If you switch on iCloud sync, some of your data is copied to your own private iCloud so your Macs can stay in step. It goes to Apple, under your Apple Account, never to us. Sync is off until you turn it on. See section 2.7.
A few optional features do reach the internet, because they have to: weather, the news digest, tool plugins you install, the license check, the update feed, and file sharing if you switch it on. Each is listed below, and none of them sends your chats, reminders, or habit data anywhere.
The controller under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is Alexander Slatina. Contact details and postal address are in the imprint. E-mail: hello@getmushroom.app.
Everything the app knows about you is stored locally on your Mac in a single database file: reminders, habit logs, chat history, notepad content, pet state, and settings. This data is never transmitted to us, and no file on your Mac is either, unless you switch on file sharing and drop one on the pet yourself (section 2.8). You can export, import, or delete your data at any time in Settings.
Chat and natural-language reminders are processed by Apple's on-device foundation models (Apple Intelligence). Conversations are processed entirely on your Mac and are not sent to us or to Apple's servers by the app.
If you ask the pet about the weather, the app looks the place up with Apple's MapKit service and requests a forecast for those coordinates from Apple's WeatherKit. The request contains the coordinates and your IP address. No name, account, or identifier is sent. See Apple Weather attribution.
When you do not name a place, the app uses whichever of these you set up. Neither exists until you create it:
The sunrise and sunset notification is off by default and uses the same location and the same WeatherKit request. Without one of the two sources above it does nothing.
The daily quote is off until you turn it on. When it is on, the app requests the quote of the day from ZenQuotes (zenquotes.io) once a day. The request contains your IP address and nothing else: no name, account, identifier, or anything about you. The quote is shown exactly as received. See ZenQuotes.
The daily news digest is off until you turn it on. When it is on, the app fetches the RSS or Atom feeds you listed in Settings, News, directly from those publishers (the starting suggestions are Kagi News, NPR, and Al Jazeera, and you can remove or replace all of them). Each publisher receives what any feed reader sends: your IP address and the request for the feed file. Nothing about you, your reminders, or your chats is included, and the feed list stays on your Mac. Headlines are read straight from the feed and are never sent to any model or to us.
You can add optional tool plugins (small JSON files) that let the pet call web services you choose, for example a public facts API. These requests go directly from your Mac to the endpoint configured in the plugin file. Which services are contacted, and what they receive, is defined entirely by the plugins you install and enable.
Legal basis for these requests: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (performance of the license agreement) and Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (our legitimate interest in providing updates).
Calendar awareness and appointment reminders read events already on your Mac through Apple's EventKit, after you switch them on and grant access. Access is read only, Mushroom never writes to a calendar, and event titles are never sent to the model or to us. Emergency contacts, the notepad, read aloud, stats, and streaks are entirely local as well. Backups are a copy of the local database written to a folder you pick; if that folder happens to sit in iCloud Drive or a similar service, that service moves the file under its own terms. Backups are separate from iCloud sync (section 2.7) and are unaffected by whether sync is on.
Mushroom can keep several of your own Macs in step using Apple's CloudKit. This feature is switched off until you turn it on in Settings under Data, and while it is off nothing at all is sent.
When it is on, the following are copied into the private database of your own iCloud account: your reminders, your emergency and video contacts, your notepad, the settings that are not specific to one Mac, and the content of any optional features you have switched on.
These stay on each Mac and are never synced: your chat history, your stats and streaks, your reminder history, your licence, and anything tied to one machine such as the pet's position and size or your keyboard shortcuts.
We are not a party to this transfer. The data goes to Apple as part of the iCloud service you already use, is stored in the private area of your account, and we have no access to it and no ability to read it. Apple processes it under Apple's Privacy Policy and your iCloud terms. Apple Inc. is a US company; transfers rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and/or EU standard contractual clauses.
Turning sync off in Settings stops any further data leaving your Mac immediately. Copies already in your iCloud are left alone, because your other Macs may still be using them; you can remove them yourself by deleting the app's data in your iCloud settings, or by deleting the records in iCloud. Deleting a reminder, contact or note in Mushroom removes it from your other Macs as well.
This is the only part of Mushroom that puts a file of yours on a server of ours. It is switched off until you turn it on in Settings under Sharing, and while it is off nothing is uploaded and no account is created for you anywhere.
When it is on, dropping a file on your mushroom uploads that file, and only that file, to storage we run on Cloudflare R2. The file is kept in Western Europe. So that uploads are quick wherever in the world you are, Cloudflare may first write it at a location closer to you and copy it across a moment later, and that first location can be outside the EU (see section 4). You get back a link with an unguessable address. Anyone who has that link can download the file. There is no password. Treat the link like the file itself and only send it to people you mean to send it to.
What is stored while a file is live: the file itself, its name, its size, its file type, the time it went up and the time it expires, an identifier for the Mac that uploaded it, a one-way hash of your licence key, and the Gumroad sale number of the purchase. We never store your licence key itself, only a hash of it. The sale number is kept so that a file reported as harmful can be traced to the purchase behind it, which a hash alone cannot do.
How long: the file stops being downloadable exactly 24 hours after it goes up, and is normally erased from storage within the hour after that. A storage lifecycle rule removes anything still present as a backstop. The bookkeeping record survives up to 7 days longer, with the filename erased, purely so an old link can say "this expired" rather than nothing at all. You can delete any file sooner, from any of your Macs, in the Shared Files window; that removes it straight away and the link stops working.
Because the feature is tied to your licence rather than to one machine, every Mac using the same licence can see the names of, and delete, the files shared under it.
Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR, performing a feature you asked for by switching it on and by dropping a specific file. Cloudflare, Inc. acts as our processor for this storage. Turning the feature off stops any further uploads; files already shared run out their own 24 hours unless you delete them.
Anyone who receives a Mushroom share link can report it at getmushroom.app/report. The form is protected by Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks that a person and not a script is submitting it and sets no cookie.
A report stores the link, the reason chosen, anything written in the details box, and the reporter's name and email. The name and email are used only to come back to the reporter about that report, and they are deleted 30 days after the report arrives. The rest of the report is deleted after 180 days. The report is emailed to us at the moment it is made.
The form gives the same answer whether or not the link is real, so it cannot be used to find out whether a given link exists. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interest in keeping the file sharing feature from being used to distribute harmful or unlawful material, and in some cases Art. 6(1)(c) where the law requires us to act.
getmushroom.app is a static site hosted on Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., USA). When you visit, Cloudflare processes the technical data needed to deliver the page, such as your IP address and browser information (server logs). Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interest in serving the site securely. The site sets no cookies.
For visitor statistics we use Cloudflare Web Analytics. It is cookieless: it stores nothing on your device, does not fingerprint you, and does not track you across sites. We only see aggregate numbers (page views, referrers, country). Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interest in understanding how the site is used.
Purchases happen on Gumroad's site under Gumroad's privacy policy.
The tool submission form is protected by Cloudflare Turnstile. When you use the form, Cloudflare processes technical data (your IP address and browser signals) solely to tell people from bots. Turnstile does not track you across sites and is not used for advertising. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interest in preventing spam and abuse.
Tool plugin files you submit through the form are stored privately on Cloudflare R2 and read only by us, to review the tool by hand before we decide whether to publish it. Please do not put personal data or API keys into a submitted file; a plugin file never needs either. To have a submission deleted, write to hello@getmushroom.app. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR. For data transfers see section 4.
Cloudflare, Gumroad, Apple, and ZenQuotes are US companies. Transfers rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and/or EU standard contractual clauses.
If you write to hello@getmushroom.app, we use your e-mail address and message only to answer you (Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR) and keep the correspondence no longer than needed.
Under the GDPR you have the right of access (Art. 15), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction of processing (Art. 18), data portability (Art. 20), and objection (Art. 21). You can also complain to a data protection supervisory authority. Note that for everything stored by the app itself, you are in direct control: the data is on your Mac and can be exported or deleted in Settings.
We will update this policy when the app or website changes in a way that affects your data. The current version is always at getmushroom.app/privacy.