Privacy

Last updated 2026-07-14

Scope is a local-first tool. This page covers both halves of the product — Scope.app (the Mac app) and the Scope browser extension (Chrome) — since they're sold as one license and this is the one place their combined network behavior is written down.

What never leaves your machine

Your geospatial data does not pass through any Scope-operated server — there is no Scope backend. Specifically:

• The embedded local database (DuckDB) lives in a file in your Mac's Application Support folder and is never uploaded anywhere.
• Files you open or paste (GeoJSON, Shapefile, GeoPackage, KML, GPX, CSV, WKT) are read and rendered entirely on-device.
• If you connect Scope to your own PostGIS server, or import from an Esri FeatureServer/MapServer or a GeoParquet URL, those requests go directly from your Mac to the server you specified — Scope doesn't proxy, log, or see that traffic.
• Features you capture with the browser extension (from an Esri web map) stay on your machine — copied to your clipboard and/or handed to Scope.app via the degis:// URL scheme — until you choose to export or share them yourself.

What does leave your machine

The only network call either half makes on its own initiative is license activation, handled by our payment processor, LemonSqueezy:

• When you enter a license key, the app (or extension) sends that key and a device/browser label (e.g. "Scope on <your Mac's name>") to LemonSqueezy's License API to activate it.
• This happens once per install, not on every launch — Scope caches the unlock state locally (in the Mac Keychain, or the extension's local browser storage) and doesn't re-check it over the network afterward.
• Scope.app also checks GitHub's public Releases API on launch (at most once every 24 hours) to show a "new version available" banner — this is an anonymous, unauthenticated read of public release metadata, not tied to your license or identity.

What we don't do

• No analytics or telemetry SDKs of any kind.
• No accounts — a license key is the only credential involved, and it identifies a purchase, not a person.
• No cookies (the Mac app and extension aren't web pages; this marketing site and the share-link viewer use none either).
• No selling or sharing of any data, because none is collected to begin with.

Questions

Scope is an independent, one-person product. Reach out via GitHub Issues with any privacy questions.