Privacy
Privacy
Diorama has no account, no analytics and no tracking. Almost everything it does happens on your Mac and stays there.
Last updated 4 September 2026 · Diorama for macOS and this website
In short
- No account, no sign-in, no analytics, no tracking.
- What you are playing never leaves your Mac.
- Five backgrounds — Flights, Nearest Flight, Orbital Pass, Forecast and Barograph — need a rough idea of where you are. That location is rounded to about a kilometre.
- The Seismograph background reaches the internet and sends nothing at all about you: it asks for the whole world's earthquakes, and the request is identical on every Mac.
- Your licence is checked on your Mac, so there is nothing to sign in to.
- Diorama never captures your screen, reads your files or watches your keyboard.
Your location
There is no location until you set one. You can type a city, enter coordinates, or let macOS give the app an approximate position. Whichever you choose, it is rounded to about a kilometre before it is saved, and only the Flights, Nearest Flight, Orbital Pass, Forecast and Barograph backgrounds use it. You can clear it at any time in Settings → Location.
Two of those never send it anywhere. Orbital Pass downloads the space station's orbit — the same two lines of numbers everybody gets — and works out where it is in your sky on your own Mac. Barograph uses the forecast you have already chosen, and records what it sees in a file on your Mac so it can draw the last day as well as the next one.
What is sent, and to whom
When those backgrounds are running, Diorama asks a few public services for the information they show. Nothing identifying goes with these requests — no account, no cookie, no device or advertising identifier.
| adsb.lol | Nearby aircraft, for the Flights and Nearest Flight backgrounds. Receives your rounded location. |
|---|---|
| MET Norway or Bright Sky |
The forecast, from whichever service you have selected. Receives your rounded location. |
| USGS | The world's earthquakes over the last day, for the Seismograph background. The request is the same on every Mac and carries no location. |
| Celestrak | The space station's orbit, for the Orbital Pass background. Fetched twice a day and cached on your Mac; no location is sent, and where it is in your sky is worked out on your Mac. |
| GitHub | Public airline route data, so the flight board and the single-flight panel can show where a flight is going. No location is sent. |
| Apple | Turns a place name into coordinates when you search for one, or gives the app your approximate position if you ask it to. |
These requests happen only while the background that needs them is on screen, and stop when it is covered or your Mac is asleep.
Their own terms: adsb.lol · MET Norway · Bright Sky · USGS · Celestrak · GitHub · Apple · Vercel
What you are playing
Diorama reads the track information macOS already publishes — title, artist, album and artwork — and draws it on your desktop. It is not sent anywhere and not saved. No audio is recorded.
Buying a licence
Diorama is a one-time purchase with a 7-day trial. Checkout is handled by Polar, who are the merchant of record — the legal seller of the licence — and who use Stripe to process the card. No card details reach us at any point.
What we do receive is the email address you buy with. It is used to send you your licence key and to answer you if you write in, and for nothing else: no marketing, no newsletter, nobody else. The key itself is delivered by Resend, so your address passes through them on its way to you.
Your key is checked on your Mac, so there is no activation server and nothing to sign in to.
Once a day Diorama asks this site for a short list of licences that have been refunded, so a refunded key stops unlocking the paid backgrounds. The list is the same for everyone and the request says nothing about you or your key — it reveals your IP address, exactly as the update check does, and nothing else.
Updates
If automatic update checks are on, Diorama asks this site once a day whether a newer version is available. That reveals your IP address and the version you are running, and nothing else. You can turn it off in Settings → General.
What is stored on your Mac
Your settings, the date your trial started, your licence key in the Keychain, a small cache of public route data, and the space station's current orbit so the app does not have to re-download it at every launch.
The Barograph background also keeps a record of the air pressure it has seen at your chosen place over the last day or so — that is what lets it draw the past as well as the forecast. It is a few kilobytes on your Mac, it is discarded when you change location, and it is never sent anywhere.
Removing Diorama and its settings removes all of it.
This website
The site is a few static pages. It sets no cookies and runs no analytics or tracking scripts. It is hosted by Vercel, and loads its typefaces from Google Fonts; both see the IP address of anyone who visits, as any web host does.
Your rights
The app does not build a profile of you, so there is very little to hand over. If you have bought a licence we hold your email address and the key issued to it. Write to us and we will send you a copy, correct it, or delete it. Deleting it does mean we can no longer resend your key, and payment records may have to be kept for accounting.
Cashper AS, a company registered in Norway, is the data controller for the information described here. If you are in the EEA or the UK and are unhappy with how we have handled a request, you can also raise it with your national data protection authority.
Changes
If Diorama starts sending something new, this page will say so before that version is released. The date at the top is when it last changed.