Privacy policy

Last updated: July 8, 2026

Punctual is a free, open-source macOS menu bar app that shows your upcoming meetings and takes over your screen when one starts. It is built around a simple principle: your calendar data belongs to you and stays on your Mac.

What data Punctual accesses

To do its job, Punctual reads your calendar events. Depending on how you connect your calendar, that means:

• macOS Calendar (EventKit): events from any account synced to the macOS Calendar app (iCloud, Google, Outlook, CalDAV, and others).
• Google Calendar API: if you connect your Google account directly, Punctual requests read-only access to your Google Calendar events.

From your events, Punctual reads only what it needs to display reminders: event titles, start and end times, location, and the event description/notes (to detect meeting links such as Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or Webex URLs).

How Punctual uses your data

Your calendar data is used exclusively to provide the app's user-facing features:

• showing your next meeting and a countdown in the macOS menu bar,
• listing your day's meetings when you click the menu bar item,
• displaying a full-screen reminder overlay when a meeting starts, and
• opening the meeting's join link when you click "Join".

That's it. Punctual does not use your data for advertising, analytics, profiling, or any purpose unrelated to showing you your meetings. Your data is never used to train artificial-intelligence or machine-learning models.

Where your data is stored

All processing happens locally on your Mac. Punctual has no backend servers, and your calendar data is never uploaded, transmitted, or copied anywhere. Authentication tokens (such as a Google OAuth token, if you connect Google Calendar directly) are stored securely on your device and are used only to fetch your calendar data from Google.

What Punctual shares

Nothing. Punctual does not share, transfer, sell, or disclose your calendar data or any Google user data to any third party. There are no ads, no data brokers, no analytics services, and no telemetry. No humans read your data. The only exceptions would be those permitted by Google's Limited Use policy: with your explicit consent, for security investigations, or where required by law — and because your data never leaves your Mac, even these are unlikely to ever apply.

Google API Services — Limited Use disclosure

Data retention and deletion

Punctual keeps no copies of your calendar data beyond what is momentarily needed to render the interface. To remove all data the app can access:

• quit Punctual and delete it from your Applications folder;
• if you granted macOS calendar access, you can revoke it anytime in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Calendars;
• if you connected Google Calendar directly, you can revoke Punctual's access anytime at myaccount.google.com/permissions.

Open source

Punctual is open source under the MIT license. You don't have to take this policy on faith — you can read the source code and verify exactly how your data is handled.

Children's privacy

Punctual is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect any personal information — from anyone, of any age, because it collects nothing.

Changes to this policy

If Punctual's data practices ever change, this policy will be updated here first, with a new "Last updated" date above. Material changes will also be noted in the release notes.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data? Open an issue on GitHub and we'll get back to you.