Verify it yourself

Every app claims it respects your privacy. This one can be checked in about a minute.

On the Mac, Balance can't phone home, fetch remote configuration, or talk to a third-party service: the operating system denies it network access outright. Your books are the most sensitive file you own, so you shouldn't have to take that on trust. Here are two ways to check, in rough order of how conclusive they are — the first is the Mac guarantee itself, the second covers iPhone and iPad too.

1

Read the code signature

macOS · 30 seconds · no tools

codesign -d --entitlements - /Applications/Balance.app

You will see the App Sandbox and the iCloud container. You will not see com.apple.security.network.client.

That's the whole story. A sandboxed macOS app without that entitlement is denied outbound network access by the operating system, not by our good intentions. Entitlements are covered by the code signature, so they can't be edited without invalidating it, and macOS won't launch an App Store build whose signature doesn't check out.

2

Watch the traffic

iPhone, iPad and Mac

On Mac, run Little Snitch or LuLu (free and open source). Both alert on any outbound connection attempt. Balance will never raise one.

On iPhone or iPad, turn on Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ App Privacy Report and use Balance for a week. Apple logs every domain each app contacts. Balance’s entry stays empty.

That last one is Apple’s instrumentation, not ours. It is the check we would trust if we were you.

Then what is iCloud doing?

It's the obvious objection, so here is the honest answer. With iCloud Drive on for your device, Balance keeps your journal in an iCloud container folder. The syncing itself is done by iOS and macOS, under your Apple ID, by system processes that ship with the operating system. On the Mac, Balance never opens a connection, which is why it needs no network entitlement and can still sync.

Turn iCloud Drive off in your device's settings and the file just stays on the device. There is no switch in the app, and nothing else about it changes.

What we are not claiming

  • Apple knows you bought Balance. Purchases run through the App Store; we receive no personal information from it, but Apple plainly has it.
  • The App Store privacy label reads “Data Not Collected.” That is our declaration to Apple, so believe the checks above instead. They don't depend on our word.
  • Balance itself is not open source. SwiftLedger, the engine that parses, validates and writes your journal, is MIT-licensed and public, and it's the part that actually touches your data.

Found something that contradicts any of this? That's a security report, and we want it. See Support.