Privacy Policy
In one paragraph. Blocks is a mail client that runs entirely on your Mac. It connects directly to your Google or Microsoft account, keeps a local copy of your mailbox on your computer, and sends nothing to us. We operate no server that handles your data, collect no analytics, and never see your mail, your contacts or your password. The only parties that receive your data are the mail provider you already use and, if you choose it, folders on your own disk.
1. Who we are
Blocks is developed and published by Amor fati ("we", "us"). You can reach us at [email address]. We are the data controller for the small amount of information described in section 7 (this website and correspondence with us). For everything the app does with your mailbox, the processing happens on your own device, under your control.
2. What Blocks does
Blocks is a desktop application for macOS. It lets you read, write, organise and plan your email, put tasks and notes beside it on a day, and block time on your own calendar. To do this it needs access to the mailbox and calendar you connect. All of that work happens on your Mac.
3. Information the app accesses, and why
When you connect an account, Blocks uses the provider's own sign-in (Google or Microsoft OAuth 2.0). You sign in on the provider's page in your browser; Blocks never sees your password. The provider then gives Blocks a token for the permissions below.
| Data | Used for | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| Email messages, including headers, bodies, attachments and labels | Showing your mail, searching it, and carrying out the actions you take (reply, archive, label, move, delete to Trash, unsubscribe) | Stored on your Mac only; written back to your own mailbox when you act |
| Sending email | Delivering the messages you write, including scheduled sends and sends queued while offline | To your own mail provider, as you |
| Calendar events | Showing your week, and creating or moving blocks for the items you choose to schedule | Stored on your Mac; written to your own calendar when you act |
| Basic profile (name, email address) | Labelling the account inside the app and addressing mail from it | Stored on your Mac only |
Blocks requests the narrowest permissions that allow these functions. For Google it asks for gmail.modify (which cannot permanently delete mail) and, only if you connect the calendar, calendar.events and calendar.readonly. For Microsoft it asks for Mail.ReadWrite, Mail.Send, Calendars.ReadWrite, User.Read and offline_access.
4. Google user data and Limited Use
Blocks' use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. In particular:
- Google user data is used only to provide and improve the user-facing features of Blocks described above.
- It is not transferred to anyone else, except as necessary to provide those features (that is, back to Google on your behalf), to comply with the law, or as part of a merger or acquisition with prior notice to you.
- It is never used for advertising, never sold, and never used to build profiles.
- No human reads your data, except with your explicit permission for support, where required by law, or for security purposes such as investigating abuse.
- Google user data is not used to develop, improve or train generalised or non-personalised AI or machine-learning models.
5. Where your data lives, and how it is protected
- On your Mac. Your mailbox copy, settings, drafts, tasks, notes and calendar cache are stored in the app's data folder in your user library, with file permissions that restrict them to your user account. Blocks relies on macOS FileVault for encryption at rest and warns you inside the app while FileVault is off.
- Sign-in tokens are encrypted using your Mac's Keychain before they are stored. If Keychain encryption is unavailable, Blocks refuses to store them.
- No server of ours. Blocks has no backend. Data travels only between your Mac and your mail or calendar provider, over HTTPS.
- No telemetry. The app contains no analytics, crash reporting, usage tracking or automatic updates. A small diagnostic log on your Mac records identifiers and status (never message content) to help you troubleshoot sync; you can read and delete it from the app.
- Remote content in mail (images, tracking pixels) is not loaded until you ask, per conversation or per sender. When it is loaded, cookies, credentials and the referrer are stripped from the request.
6. Optional features that touch other places on your Mac
- On-device AI (full build only). The full build of Blocks includes a small language model that runs on your Mac. It can judge mail against filters you write, summarise a conversation, and suggest a time slot. The model never leaves your computer, never connects to a network, and can only mark, label or propose; it cannot send, forward, delete or archive mail.
- People notes and the notes vault. You may choose a folder of Markdown files (for example inside an Obsidian vault). Blocks reads the people-notes folder to show your own notes beside a sender, and writes notes you tag "notes to log" into the vault folder as new files. Both folders are chosen by you through the macOS file dialog; Blocks writes nowhere else.
- Training sandbox. The built-in training center uses two demo accounts with made-up mail that exist only on your Mac while a module is open. They never connect to any service and are deleted when you leave.
7. This website and correspondence
This website is static. It sets no cookies and runs no analytics of ours; your browser fetches fonts from Google Fonts, which receives the usual request information (your IP address and browser details) under Google's own privacy policy. If you email us, we keep the correspondence for as long as needed to deal with it.
8. Sharing
We do not share, sell or rent your data. The app sends your data only to the provider of the account you connected, as directed by your actions. We have no access to it.
9. Retention and deletion
Everything the app stores is on your Mac, so you are in control of it:
- Sign out (Settings → Accounts) revokes the token with the provider and forgets it, keeping the local copy of your mail.
- Delete connection also deletes the local copy of that account's mail and settings.
- Erase all Blocks data (Settings → Data) revokes every connection, deletes all local data, previews and the log, and quits the app.
- You can also revoke Blocks' access at any time from your Google Account permissions or your Microsoft account's app access page, which works even if the Mac is lost. Uninstalling the app alone does not revoke access; use one of the steps above.
10. Children
Blocks is not directed at children under 16 and we do not knowingly collect information from them.
11. Your rights
Because your data stays on your device, you can view, export, correct and delete it directly. Where data-protection law gives you rights over information we hold about you (section 7), you can exercise them by emailing us. If you are in the EU or UK you also have the right to complain to your supervisory authority.
12. Changes
If this policy changes, the new version will be published at this address with a new effective date. Material changes will be mentioned in the app's release notes.
13. Contact
Amor fati · [email address]