Privacy Policy

Effective October 9, 2026

This policy covers the Homestead app for macOS and this website, homesteadformac.com. Both are run by Great Work LLC ("we"). The short version: your home data stays on your Mac. We don't have accounts, we don't put analytics in the app, and we never sell or share your information.

Your HomeKit data stays on your Mac

Homestead reads your homes, rooms, zones, accessories, their current states, scenes and camera snapshots from Apple HomeKit, and sends your changes (turning on a light, locking a door) back to HomeKit. macOS asks your permission before Homestead can do this, and you can turn it off any time in System Settings > Privacy & Security > HomeKit.

HomeKit access goes through a small helper app inside Homestead (HomesteadHelper). macOS lists it under System Settings > General > Login Items & Extensions. The helper runs only while Homestead needs HomeKit, and it passes data to Homestead over a local connection on your Mac that only accepts Homestead itself. None of this data is sent to us or to anyone else. Camera snapshots are shown in the app and are not saved to disk.

HomeKit itself is Apple's service: Apple syncs your home through your iCloud account under Apple's privacy policy. Homestead doesn't change how that works.

What Homestead stores on your Mac

• Settings in ~/Library/Application Support/Homestead/preferences.json: your choices in Settings, room names, icons and order you customize, favorite scenes, saved colors, window position, and the home address and map coordinates you enter for weather.
• An activity log in ~/Library/Application Support/Homestead/activity.json of changes you make in Homestead (accessory name, room, what changed and when). It is deleted after the period you pick in Settings (7 days to 1 year), and you can clear it any time.

iCloud sync of your settings

If your Mac is signed in to iCloud, Homestead also saves the same settings (including any home address and coordinates you entered) to your own iCloud key-value storage, so they follow you to your other Macs. That storage belongs to your Apple Account. We can't see it. Signing out of iCloud stops the sync.

Weather and maps (Apple)

Weather is optional. If you type a home address, Homestead sends that address to Apple's geocoding service to turn it into latitude and longitude, then sends those coordinates to Apple WeatherKit to get the current conditions and forecast. The small map next to your home's name loads Apple Maps tiles for the same area. These requests go straight from your Mac to Apple, are covered by Apple's privacy policy, and never pass through us. If you don't add an address, none of these requests happen. Homestead does not use your Mac's Location Services, camera or microphone.

Update checks

Homestead uses Sparkle to check for updates. It fetches https://homesteadformac.com/appcast.xml from our server, and when you agree to an update, downloads it from the same site. Like any web request, this includes your IP address, and Sparkle sends the app version and macOS version with it. Homestead checks about once a day, and you can check by hand with Homestead > Check for Updates.

No analytics, no accounts

The app has no analytics, advertising or tracking code, no crash reporter of our own, and no sign-in. The only connections it makes are the ones above: HomeKit (on your Mac), Apple's geocoding, WeatherKit and Maps (only if you add an address), iCloud key-value storage (if you're signed in to iCloud), and the update check to homesteadformac.com.

Buying Homestead

Homestead is not on sale yet, so this site takes no payments today. When it goes on sale: Payments are handled by Stripe (Stripe's privacy policy). We never see your full card number. Stripe shares your name, email address, billing country and the order with us. We use them to email your receipt, let you download the app again with your email address, and handle refunds. When you download the app we record the time, your IP address and the order it belongs to, so a shared link can't be abused. If we send you a free review copy, we keep your name, email address and the number of downloads of that copy.

This website

This site uses no third-party analytics, advertising pixels, session recording or third-party fonts. On your first visit it sets one first-party cookie (_hiv) so we can tell new visitors from returning ones, and sends us a single private notification with the page, referring page, IP address and browser string. Our web server keeps standard access logs (IP address, page, time and browser string) for about two weeks to keep the site running and secure.

Sharing, retention and your choices

We don't sell, rent or share your information, and we don't use it for advertising. We keep purchase records for as long as we need them for re-downloads, refunds, taxes and accounting. You can ask us to see, correct or delete the information we hold about you by emailing hello@greatwork.company. To delete what Homestead keeps on your Mac, clear the activity log and reset settings in Homestead's settings, or delete the ~/Library/Application Support/Homestead folder.

Homestead is not directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their information.

Changes

If we change this policy, we'll update it here and change the date at the top. If a change affects what the app collects, we'll say so in the release notes of that version.

Contact

Great Work LLC, 651 N Broad St Suite 206, Middletown, DE 19709, USA. hello@greatwork.company