Kittiwake
Privacy policy
Last updated 24 October 2026 (2026-10-24). This policy covers Kittiwake for Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android.
The short version
Kittiwake has no account, no advertising, no tracking and no analytics, and it sends nothing to the developer. There is no Kittiwake server. The app's only network use is fetching the news you asked for, straight from your device.
Fetching the news
To check a topic, Kittiwake connects from your device, over HTTPS, to:
- Google News (its RSS search) and the GDELT news API, with your topic's keywords (and any words you excluded and the languages you chose) in the request;
- the RSS or Atom feeds you add yourself;
- for some stories from GDELT or your own feeds, the article's page, to read its text for scoring.
Like any website you visit, these services see the request and your device's IP address, and their own privacy policies apply to what they do with it. Kittiwake adds no identifier of its own. When you open a story, it opens the publisher's page in your browser.
Scoring happens on your device
Stories are grouped and scored against your question on your device: on the Mac, iPhone and iPad with Apple's on-device model (or by keywords in Basic mode), and on Android by keywords. Your questions and the stories are never sent to an online AI service or to the developer.
What stays on your device
Your topics, questions, keywords, stories, read state, signal history and settings are stored only in the app's own storage on your device. They are included in your device's own backup (iCloud or computer backup, or your Android backup), like the data of any app, and never reach the developer. Deleting a topic or the app removes them.
The widgets show a small summary of your signals (no headlines) that the app keeps in storage shared only between Kittiwake and its own widgets on that device. The widgets fetch nothing.
Notifications
Alerts, the daily digest and the weekly recap are local notifications made on your device. Kittiwake asks for notification permission only when you switch alerts on for a topic, and nothing about your notifications leaves your device.
Sharing
Signal cards, recaps, Markdown summaries, mail drafts and watch links are made on your device and leave it only when you choose to share them, through the system share sheet or your own mail app. They carry your topic's name and question, the signal and its line, never headlines or article text. A watch link someone sends you is shown in full and is added only if you confirm.
Children
Kittiwake is not made for children. It has no accounts and collects nothing from anyone.
Changes and contact
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted on this page with a new date. Questions about this policy, or anything else: support@khangazun.com.