Terms of service

Last updated: July 25, 2026

1. Who we are, what these terms cover

These terms govern the use of the Mushroom app for macOS and of this website. Provider is Alexander Slatina; contact details are in the imprint. By purchasing or using Mushroom you agree to these terms. Mandatory consumer protection law of your country of residence remains unaffected.

2. The app

Mushroom is a desktop companion that shows a pixel pet on your screen and offers gentle wellness reminders (water, breaks, food, eye strain, bedtime), custom reminders, a notepad, and an on-device chat. It requires macOS 15 or later on Apple Silicon; chat and natural-language features additionally require either Apple Intelligence to be available and enabled, or a model downloaded once from within the app.

3. License

With your purchase you receive a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use Mushroom on up to 5 devices, Macs and iPhones, that you own or control. A license key identifies one person and must not be shared or resold.

Organisations. A company, practice, or other organisation may buy licenses for the people who work for it, one per person, and may install Mushroom on Macs it owns or controls. Each person activates their own key and gets the same 5 devices an individual would. Spreading one key across a team is the thing this does not allow.

Running the servers yourself. Friends messaging and file sharing normally use servers we run. You may instead run that server software yourself, for your own organisation, on infrastructure you control. When you do, those two features stop reaching us entirely: we neither hold nor process what they carry, and their operation, availability, and lawful use become yours. That server software is published separately under the Apache License 2.0 at github.com/qubit999/mushroom-selfhost, and that licence, not these terms, governs what you may do with it. This setting is in both versions, the one downloaded from this site and the Mac App Store one.

You may not reverse engineer, modify, or redistribute the app itself except where the law expressly permits it.

4. Purchases and refunds

Sales of the version downloaded from this site are processed by Gumroad, Inc. under Gumroad's terms. If you bought Mushroom on the Mac App Store instead, Apple is the seller, Apple's own terms apply to that purchase, and a refund for it is asked for through Apple rather than through us. Either way, if something does not work, write to hello@getmushroom.app first, we will try to fix it.

Membership. Friends messaging and Spore Storage file sharing run on our servers, so they are sold as a membership: USD 2.99 a month or USD 24.99 a year. It renews automatically at the end of each period, at the same price, until you cancel. Cancelling is always available and takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for, so you keep both features until then and are not charged again. On the direct version you cancel through Gumroad, using the link in your purchase email; on the Mac App Store you cancel in the App Store, and Apple is the seller for that membership.

The app itself is a separate one-time purchase and does not renew. If a membership ends, the app and everything that runs on your own Mac keep working, and only those two server backed features switch off. Anyone who bought Mushroom before the membership was introduced keeps both features permanently at no extra cost. Running both features on your own server needs no membership.

5. Sharing files

The optional file sharing feature stores a file you choose on our infrastructure for 24 hours and gives you a link to it. You are responsible for what you upload and for who you send the link to. Do not upload anything unlawful, infringing, malicious, or that you do not have the right to share.

We may remove any file and suspend a license's access to file sharing at any time, in particular on an abuse report. Suspending file sharing does not affect your license to use the rest of Mushroom. Files are deleted automatically after 24 hours and we give no guarantee of availability, durability, or backup: keep your own copy. To report a shared file, use the report form.

6. Updates and availability

We may provide updates that improve or change features. There is no obligation to provide new features indefinitely, but we will not remotely disable functionality you paid for, except where required by law or by changes in macOS itself. Online features (weather, optional tool plugins) depend on third-party services and may become unavailable.

7. Your content and plugins

Reminders, notes, chats, and habit data stay on your Mac and remain yours. If you install tool plugins, you are responsible for the services they call and for complying with those services' terms.

8. Liability

We are liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, for injury to life, body, or health, and under the German Product Liability Act.

In cases of slight negligence we are liable only for the breach of an essential contractual obligation (an obligation whose fulfilment makes the proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on whose observance you may regularly rely), and only up to the foreseeable damage typical for this kind of contract. Any further liability for slight negligence is excluded, in particular for lost profit, lost savings, and indirect or consequential damage.

Liability for loss of data is limited to the cost of recovery that would have arisen if you had made regular, risk appropriate backups. Mushroom can create automatic backups for you (Settings, Data); please use them.

Mushroom is a companion app for general well being. It is not suitable for any use in which a missed, late, or incorrect reminder could cause harm, including health related or otherwise safety critical purposes, and it must not be used for such purposes. Reminders depend on macOS, on your notification settings, and on your Mac being awake and unlocked, so we cannot promise that a given reminder is delivered at a particular time or at all.

Online features and third party services (weather, any tool plugins you install, Gumroad, Apple) are outside our control, and we are not liable for their availability or their content.

The limitations above apply likewise to our legal representatives and vicarious agents.

9. Governing law

German law applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. If you are a consumer, the mandatory consumer protections of your country of habitual residence remain unaffected.

10. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms for future versions and purchases. The current version is always at getmushroom.app/terms.