Privacy

Layout works entirely on your Mac. It makes no network requests and sends nothing anywhere.

What Layout stores

Layout keeps three files in ~/Library/Application Support/Layout/:

• configuration.json: your workspaces, sections, layouts, and settings, your progress in the guided setup, and your work contexts. Work contexts include the folders, web addresses, app links, and simulator settings you enter.
• recovery.json: the recovery journal. Before Layout moves a window out of sight, it writes the window’s title and position here, so it can put the window back even after a crash. Entries are removed once their windows are restored.
• browser-windows.json: for each workspace’s browser tabs, the tab addresses and the browser window that opened them, so the next launch reuses that window.

These files stay on your Mac. Layout doesn’t save which window belongs to which workspace between runs. The undo history of window moves and the diagnostic event log stay in memory only.

What Layout reads

With the Accessibility permission:

• Your windows: their titles, positions, sizes, and state (minimized, full screen), and the document path an app reports for a window. Layout uses them to place windows, and to recognize the editor window that already shows a project.
• Your browsers’ tab addresses, when you launch a layout with browser tabs: Layout checks whether a browser window already shows your tabs. It reads the addresses the browser reports, not the content of the pages.
• The Dock’s badges, to show a red dot on app icons in the Layout bar.

Without any extra permission:

• App information: the names and icons of your installed apps, and the link types each app declares in its Info.plist. Layout uses the link types to decide which apps get an app link.
• Slack’s local state, in ~/Library/Application Support/Slack/storage/root-state.json, only at the moment you paste a Slack channel link, to find the ID of the Slack workspace. Layout never reads it when you switch workspaces.
• Claude’s and Codex’s chat records, when a workspace gives them a project: Claude’s session files in ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude-code-sessions and Codex’s state database in ~/.codex/, opened read-only. Layout reads them to find the project’s latest chat and never changes them. See Claude and Codex chats.
• The window list of macOS: window positions and layering, never their content. Layout uses it to follow a window while you drag it and to draw borders.
• Wi-Fi and battery status for the Layout bar: whether Wi-Fi is connected, not which network, and the battery level.

What Layout never does

• It makes no network requests. Tab icons are drawn from the site’s initial, not downloaded, and there’s no telemetry or analytics.
• It never records your screen. It doesn’t ask for Screen Recording: the veil you see while dragging a window uses the app’s icon, and the Layout Overview draws schematic desktops.
• It doesn’t ask for Full Disk Access.
• It never runs shell commands or your project’s commands. Nothing you type in a work context reaches a shell.
• It never changes your macOS settings, such as the option to hide the menu bar.

Diagnostics stay on your Mac

Export diagnostics… saves a JSON file where you choose, and nothing more. By default, window titles and document paths in the file are replaced by aliases. The file includes your configuration as it is, with the folder paths, web addresses, and app links of your work contexts, so read it before you share it. See Diagnostics.

The launch email

If you leave your email on getlayout.app to hear about the launch, it’s kept with the date and the form you used, only to send you that one email.