Privacy policy

Cortex is made and sold by Pantazi Software SRL, Romania (company ID, CUI 42731715), which is responsible for the data described here.

Cortex is a system monitor, so it sees a lot about your Mac. This policy explains, plainly, what happens to that information. The short version: it stays on your Mac.

What stays on your Mac

Everything Cortex measures stays on your Mac. That includes:

• the list of apps and processes, and their CPU, memory, energy, disk, network, GPU and Neural Engine use;
• 30 days of history for every metric and every app;
• alerts, baselines and the daily digest;
• detected local AI workloads and loaded models;
• dev servers found by Projects;
• Silicon Probe results;
• your questions to Ask Cortex and its answers. Ask Cortex runs on Apple’s on-device Foundation Models. When those are not available, a built-in rule-based assistant answers, also on your Mac.

None of this is uploaded, sold or shared. There is no account and no analytics or telemetry of any kind in the app.

What leaves your Mac

Cortex makes only two kinds of network request.

1. The update check

Cortex checks for new versions using Sparkle. It downloads the update feed from https://cortexformac.com/updates/appcast.xml and, if you choose to install an update, the new version from our servers. Like any web request, these reveal your IP address to the server.

2. The license check

When you activate Cortex, and when it checks the license afterwards, it contacts license.cortexformac.com and sends:

• your license key;
• your Mac’s name;
• an anonymous device ID.

We use these only to enforce one Mac per license and to show you which Mac holds your license when you move it. Your license keeps working without internet between checks.

Features that talk to your own Mac

Local AI workloads reads the status of runtimes such as Ollama and LM Studio. It only contacts localhost, which never leaves your Mac.

Buying Cortex

Payment is handled by Creem. Creem receives the details you enter at checkout, such as your email address and payment information, under its own privacy policy. Creem emails you your license key. We receive your email address and order details so we can support your purchase.

This website

This site sets no cookies and loads nothing from third parties.

To download Cortex, you enter your license key on the download page. The key is sent to our server, which checks it with the license server and then sends you the app. The key is used only for that check. The host, Cloudflare, processes standard request information such as IP addresses to serve pages and protect against abuse.

If we ever turn on Cloudflare Web Analytics, it is cookieless and collects no personal data. We will update this page if we do.

Support email

If you email hello@cortexformac.com, we keep the conversation so we can help you, and use it for nothing else.

Changes

If this policy changes, we will update the date at the top and describe the change in the changelog.

Contact

Questions about privacy: hello@cortexformac.com.