Files
tty7/docs/reference/privacy.mdx
T
l0ng-ai 9006e3ea17 docs: put the two files nobody opted into on the privacy page
"What is stored, and where" listed settings, keychain entries, scrollback
and shell history, and omitted both files that carry incidental personal
data:

  crash.log  written whenever tty7 panics — the hook is installed
             unconditionally, so nobody opts in. Time, version, panic
             message, backtrace. Capped at 256 KiB, never uploaded.
  tty7.log   only while TTY7_LOG or RUST_LOG is set, and genuinely absent
             otherwise. At debug it carries the directories and workspace
             names in each request.

A page that enumerates storage and leaves out the two files most likely
to end up attached to a bug report is answering the wrong question, so
both rows say what is in them and what to check before sending them on.

Noticed while reading a debug log for something else: a dependency had
written this machine's hostname and working directory into it.

"What leaves your machine" needed no change — nothing sends either file
anywhere, which is why each row says so.

The test lives next to the panic hook, where a change to what gets
written is a change someone is already making.
2026-08-16 10:50:30 +08:00

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3.3 KiB
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---
title: "Privacy and permissions"
description: "What macOS asks you, why, and what tty7 itself holds."
---
## Why macOS asks tty7 for permission
Panes are forked from tty7's own bundled executable, so when a program you run
asks macOS for a protected resource, macOS attributes the request to **tty7.app**
— not to the program.
If tty7 declared no usage strings, that request would be **denied outright with
no prompt at all**, and the program would look broken for no visible reason.
So tty7 declares the matching usage strings, and you get the normal one-time
prompt:
<CardGroup cols={2}>
<Card title="Devices" icon="camera">
Camera · microphone · Bluetooth · location · motion
</Card>
<Card title="Personal data" icon="address-book">
Contacts · calendars · reminders · photo library
</Card>
<Card title="System" icon="gear">
Local network · Apple Events · speech recognition · system administration
</Card>
</CardGroup>
<Warning>
**Declaring a usage string is not the same as holding the permission.**
tty7.app itself is granted none of these. Every prompt you see belongs to
whatever you ran in the pane, and you can revoke it under **System Settings →
Privacy & Security**.
</Warning>
### Full Disk Access
Apple defines no usage-string key for it. Reaching `~/Library/Mail`,
`~/Library/Messages`, `~/Library/Safari`, or `~/Library/Containers` needs a
manual grant in **System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access**.
## What leaves your machine
| | |
|---|---|
| **Update checks** | A request to the GitHub releases API every six hours, plus the download when you accept one. Turn it off with `check_for_updates: false`. |
| **Remote server installs** | Downloading a `tty7-server` binary for a machine you connected to — or, for WSL, copying the one already bundled with your install. |
| **Everything else** | Nothing. There is no telemetry, no analytics, and no account. |
Both of the above honour `http_proxy`. [Updates →](/reference/updates#proxies)
## What is stored, and where
| | |
|---|---|
| Settings, themes, window state | `~/.config/tty7/` (`%APPDATA%\tty7\` on Windows) |
| SSH passwords and key passphrases | The **OS keychain** — never `config.json`, never plain text on disk |
| Pane scrollback tails | `<config>/scrollback/*.bin`, mode `0600` on Unix and behind the config directory's ACL on Windows. 256 KiB per pane, kept only until something can no longer ask for it: closing a pane deletes its file at once, a restore consumes it, and a periodic pass collects the rest. |
| Shell history | Your shell's own file, exactly as before — unless you turned on per-pane history, which merges back into it. |
| Crash reports | `<config>/crash.log`, appended whenever tty7 panics: the time, the version, the panic message and a backtrace. Capped at 256 KiB. Nothing uploads it — it is there for you to read, and to attach to an issue if you choose. |
| Diagnostic log | `<config>/tty7.log`, written **only** while `TTY7_LOG` (or `RUST_LOG`) is set; unset, there is no log at all. At `info` it records the daemon and connection lifecycle. At `debug` it also carries the directories and workspace names each request names, and output from the libraries tty7 is built on — worth reading before you attach it to an issue. Capped at 4 MiB. |