Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 25, 2026

Otter Mail is a desktop email app for macOS, made by Christophe Kafrouni under the Otterware name. This policy explains what data Otter Mail accesses, where it goes, and what control you have. In short: Otter Mail runs entirely on your Mac and talks to Google directly. There is no Otter Mail server, and we never receive your mail, your contacts or your sign-in.

Data Otter Mail accesses from your Google Account

When you sign in with Google, you choose to give Otter Mail access to:

• Gmail (https://mail.google.com/): to read, search, send, label, archive and delete your mail, and to manage drafts and labels, as you do in the app.
• Contacts (contacts.readonly, contacts.other.readonly): to show the photos and names of people you correspond with, and to suggest recipients as you type.
• Calendar events (calendar.events): to show calendar invitations you receive by email and to record your reply when you accept or decline.
• Basic profile (openid, email, profile): to know which account you added and to show its name and picture.

How the data is used and stored

• Data from Google is used only to provide Otter Mail's features to you, in the app on your Mac. It is never sold, never used for advertising, and never used to train artificial intelligence models.
• Your mail, labels and contact details are stored in a local database on your Mac, so the app is fast and works offline. It stays in the Otter Mail folder in your home directory (~/.otter-mail) until you remove the account or delete the app's data.
• Google sign-in tokens are stored on your Mac, encrypted with a key kept in your macOS Keychain.
• Translation of foreign-language mail uses Apple's on-device translator. The text does not leave your Mac.
• No analytics, tracking or crash reports are collected.

When data leaves your Mac

Otter Mail connects directly from your Mac to:

• Google (Gmail, People, Calendar and sign-in services), to do what you ask in the app.
• Image and icon services, to show sender pictures: Gravatar receives a one-way hash of a sender's email address, and Google's and DuckDuckGo's favicon services receive the domain of a sender's email address (never for personal addresses such as gmail.com). Images inside emails are downloaded from the servers the sender chose, as in any mail app.
• Links you choose to open, such as unsubscribe links, which are sent to the sender's own servers.
• Your assistant, only if you set one up. The optional assistant runs through a provider you install and sign in to yourself (Claude Code, Codex or Hermes). When you ask it something, the messages and mail content it needs are sent to that provider under your own account with them, and are subject to that provider's privacy policy. Nothing is sent to an assistant unless you use it.
• GitHub, to check for app updates. This shares only your IP address and the app version, as any download does.

Otter Mail does not share your Google data with anyone else.

Google API Services User Data Policy

Otter Mail's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Your control

• Removing an account in Otter Mail (Settings → Accounts) deletes its local copy of your mail and its sign-in from your Mac. Nothing is deleted from Gmail.
• You can revoke Otter Mail's access at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions.
• Deleting the ~/.otter-mail folder removes all of the app's data.

Children

Otter Mail is not directed at children under 13.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be published on this page with a new date.

Contact

Questions about privacy: chris.kafrouni@gmail.com.