Privacy

Perch is a way to use your own Mac from your own browser. It has no accounts, no tracking, no analytics, no ads and no servers of its own. Here is everything it keeps, and everyone who could see anything.

Nothing collected

No sign-up, no cookies, no analytics, no tracking pixels. Nobody behind Perch learns that you use it.

Straight from Mac to browser

Your screen, sound, clicks and typing go directly between your Mac and your browser, encrypted the whole way.

Your Mac decides

Every sign-in is checked by your Mac itself: your passkey and the code from your authenticator app.

Who can see what

GitHub Pages, which hosts this website

The pages of this website (including the one you're reading) come from GitHub Pages. Like any website host, GitHub sees normal web requests: your internet (IP) address, your browser type and which pages were loaded. It does not see anything you do after the page has loaded: signing in and using your Mac don't go through GitHub at all. See GitHub's privacy statement.

Free public message services, to find your Mac

Your Mac and your browser are usually on different networks, so before they can talk directly they swap a few short "here's how to reach me" notes through free public message services (run by EMQX, HiveMQ and the Eclipse Mosquitto project). They are used at the same time, so one being down doesn't matter.

The notes are scrambled. They are sealed with a key that only your Mac and your passkey (or your pairing link) know. The services can't read them, and can't change them without it being noticed.
What they can see: your internet address and your Mac's, when the notes were sent, and a random-looking label that doesn't contain your Mac's name.
Backup sign-in (Mac name and password, if you turned it on): its notes are scrambled with the Mac's name only, which hides them from casual onlookers but not from someone who knows that name. That's fine: your password never travels at all (Perch uses a method called OPAQUE that proves you know it without sending it), and the Mac still asks for your authenticator code.
These services carry anyone's messages and check nothing. Perch's safety never depends on them.

Address helpers (STUN servers)

To connect directly, each side asks a public helper (Google's and Cloudflare's STUN servers) what its own internet address looks like from outside. Those helpers see your internet address and nothing else: no names, no picture, no sound.

The connection itself

Once your browser and your Mac have found each other, everything goes directly between them, encrypted with WebRTC's built-in encryption (the same used by video-call apps). Perch has no relay server in between. Your Mac sends nothing, and accepts no clicks or keys, until you have signed in with both steps.

What is kept, and where

On your Mac

In Perch's settings folder (~/Library/Application Support/Perch): your Mac's Perch name (like amber-otter-4821), a random ID, your settings, and for each device you paired: its passkey's public part (which can check a sign-in but can't make one), a label like "Safari on iPhone" and when it was added and last used. Also a short list of recent sign-ins and failed attempts, so you can see if someone tried.
In your login Keychain: Perch's secret keys and the secret behind your authenticator codes.
If you turned on backup sign-in: a check value made from your password, not the password itself.
Nothing of this is ever sent anywhere. Uninstalling Perch deletes all of it.

In your browser

The list of Macs you've connected to from this browser: each Mac's name, the details needed to find it again and which passkey belongs to it. Remove one with Forget on the Connect page, or clear this site's data in your browser settings.
A few preferences: picture quality, "Ctrl acts as ⌘", the volume, whether the connection details are shown and the Mac name you last typed for backup sign-in.
Your passkey itself is kept by your device's password manager (such as iCloud Keychain or Google Password Manager), not by Perch.
All of this stays in your browser. This website has no server that could receive it.

What you can see on the Mac

While a device is connected, Perch's menu bar icon shows it, and macOS shows its own screen-recording indicator. Only one device can use the Mac at a time, and you can disconnect it or pause Perch from the menu bar.

Questions or problems

Perch is free and open source, so you can read exactly what it does in the source code. Ask a question or report a problem through GitHub issues. For a security problem, please follow the security notes instead of opening a public issue.

Last updated October 2026.