Your data stays on your Mac.

The short version is the whole version. There is no analytics dashboard, no growth team, no third party watching what you set as your wallpaper.

EaselWall collects no personal information, sends no telemetry, displays no ads, and has no user accounts. All settings live on your Mac.

What the app actually does

EaselWall stores your preferences (rotation time, mat color, schedule, selected paintings) in the standard macOS preferences system. The Mac App Store build keeps its preferences and cached wallpaper files in its sandbox; direct-download and Homebrew builds store cached files in their own Application Support folder. The app does not send those preferences to EaselWall or any analytics service. The optional Rijksmuseum collection uses a keyless public API; EaselWall neither asks for nor stores a Rijksmuseum API key.

Network activity

The app fetches public-domain artwork metadata and image files directly from the museums whose collections it features:

— api.artic.edu and www.artic.edu (Art Institute of Chicago)
— collectionapi.metmuseum.org and images.metmuseum.org (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
— data.rijksmuseum.nl and iiif.micr.io (Rijksmuseum — only when you request additional paintings)

These requests contain no user-specific identifier or API key. EaselWall sends an app-level user-agent to the Art Institute of Chicago. Each museum’s own privacy policy governs what it does with server logs.

If you enable auto-update (in builds distributed via Homebrew or direct download), the app periodically checks easelwall.com/appcast.xml for new releases. The Mac App Store version uses Apple’s own update mechanism instead.

Third parties

None. The app does not embed any analytics, advertising, attribution, or crash-reporting SDK.

Children

EaselWall is rated 12+ on the App Store for one piece of classical fine art with mild non-sexual nudity (Cézanne’s The Bathers). It collects nothing from anyone of any age.

Changes to this policy

If the policy ever changes, the new version will be posted here and the effective date updated. The current commitment — no data collection — is not expected to change.

Contact

Questions? support@easelwall.com or open an issue at github.com/ntindle/EaselWall/issues.

Effective 2026-08-05