Orbit for Mac

Privacy Policy

Last updated 2026-10-31

Who makes Orbit

Orbit is a macOS app made by Gjorge Karakabakov. You can reach me through karakabakov.com, and you can report a problem at snagfrog.com/r/orbit-cards.

What Orbit collects

Nothing. Orbit doesn't collect, sell or share personal data. It has no Orbit account to sign up for, no analytics, no tracking, no ads and no AI features, and it doesn't use the X API.

How Orbit shows X

Orbit displays x.com in Apple's WebKit, the same engine Safari uses. You sign in to X yourself, on X's own pages. X's cookies and logins are stored locally by WebKit on your Mac, separately for each X account you add. Orbit doesn't collect or upload your posts, messages or timeline. On your Mac it reads only what it needs from X's pages: your @handle, the address of a link or post picture you right-click, the title of list, community and settings pages to name their columns, and a yes or no on whether a column holds text you haven't sent (never the text). A picture you choose to save or copy is downloaded directly from X.

When you use X inside Orbit, you're using X's website, so X's privacy policy and X's terms apply to what you do there. X receives the same data it would get from a browser.

Files Orbit keeps on your Mac

• Your columns (their addresses, widths and names), saved layouts and settings, in ~/Library/Application Support/Orbit and in the app's macOS preferences.
• X's cookies and website data, stored by WebKit on your Mac.
• Crash and hang reports that macOS hands to Orbit through MetricKit. Orbit keeps the newest 20 on your Mac and never sends them anywhere.

None of these files leave your Mac through Orbit. Deleting the app and its Application Support folder removes them.

Orbit Cards

The Orbit Cards panel (⌘4) loads orbitcards.app, a separate service with its own privacy policy and terms. You can use it as a guest without an account. Signing in is optional.

Orbit also has the Orbit Cards card picker built in: an Orbit button in X's reply and post boxes, which you can switch off in Settings → Orbit Cards. When you click it, Orbit reads the post you're answering or quoting from the page (the author's name, @handle and profile photo address, and the post's text; for your own post, what you've typed so far) and hands it to the picker on your Mac, which draws the card there. That post data isn't sent to Orbit Cards or anyone else. To check whether you're on an Orbit Cards plan that includes the picker, the picker sends your Orbit Cards sign-in token to the Orbit Cards server, as orbitcards.app itself does. The finished image goes into X's reply box, and nothing is posted until you press Reply or Post yourself.

Links

Links that aren't X pages open in your default browser, where that browser's and that site's own policies apply.

Updates

Orbit doesn't check for or download updates on its own. You download new versions yourself from this website.

This website

mac.orbitcards.app uses Google Analytics to count visits and downloads, but only if you click Accept in the cookie banner. Until you do, no Google scripts load and no analytics cookies are set. If you accept, Google Analytics sets cookies (_ga and _ga_*) and receives data such as the pages you view, your browser and device type, your approximate location and how you reached the site, as described in Google's privacy policy. Your choice is kept in your browser's local storage, and you can change it at any time with "Cookie settings" at the bottom of every page.

Apart from Google Analytics, the site's fonts and scripts are served from this site, not from third parties. The site is hosted on Netlify, which processes technical data such as your IP address to deliver the pages, as described in Netlify's privacy policy.

Children

Orbit isn't directed at children under 13. Using X through Orbit follows X's own age requirements.

Changes to this policy

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

Contact

Questions about privacy: get in touch through karakabakov.com or snagfrog.com/r/orbit-cards.