What it sees stays on your Mac.

The short version

An activity monitor sees every app you run and every project you work on. Vitals reads that to show it to you, keeps a small history of it on your Mac, and sends none of it anywhere. There is no account, and there are no analytics in the app.

What Vitals reads

• Running processes: their names, which app they belong to, and how much memory, CPU, energy, disk and network each is using. This is the product.
• System readings: overall CPU, memory pressure, disk space, network throughput, GPU use, battery, temperatures and fan speeds.
• For the Projects tab: the working folder of your own processes and the ports they are listening on, so a dev server can be shown under the project it belongs to.
• Connected devices: the battery level of Bluetooth accessories such as AirPods, and your mounted volumes.

What it keeps, and where

Vitals keeps its history in ~/Library/Application Support/Vitals: how much each app used per day, the last few minutes behind the live charts, and the insights it has shown you. Settings for Vitals are saved in macOS preferences, and your license is kept in your Keychain. All of it stays on your Mac. Delete it and it is gone; there is no copy anywhere else. Settings → About → Show Usage Data in Finder takes you to the folder.

When it uses the network

For these things only, and none of them carries anything about what your Mac is doing:

• Checking for updates. About once a day, if you allow it, Vitals downloads a short list of versions from statics.fore.studio. The request says only that it comes from Vitals and which version you have.
• Your license. When you activate, Vitals sends our licensing server at apps.fore.studio your key, your Mac’s name (the one in System Settings → General → Sharing), your macOS and Vitals versions, and an anonymous ID made from a one-way hash of your Mac’s hardware ID. The name is there so you can tell your Macs apart when you move a license. About once a week Vitals sends the key and that ID again to confirm the license is still active, and it sends them once more if you deactivate.
• A review, if you write one. After a week, Vitals offers a short review form. If you send it, it goes to apps.fore.studio with your license key: the rating, your words, and a name, role and X or LinkedIn profile only if you fill them in. It is published only if you tick the box that allows it. Until a review is sent, Vitals also asks the same server once per launch, with your key, whether your license already has one, so it never asks twice.
• Your AI plans’ limits, if you turn them on. Usage Limits is off until you turn it on. Then Vitals reads the sign-in that Claude Code, Codex and the other AI tools keep on your Mac, and asks their makers (Anthropic, OpenAI and the others) how much of your plan is used, the way the tools do themselves. The request carries the tool’s own sign-in and nothing about your Mac, and Vitals keeps no copy of the sign-in.

It never sends process names, app names, project names, file paths, history or readings.

Permissions it may ask for, and why

• Files in Documents, Desktop or Downloads. macOS asks the first time Vitals works out which project a process belongs to, if that project lives in one of those folders. It reads folder names to find the project's root and nothing inside your files. Decline, and it guesses the project from the path instead.
• Audio capture. Only if you use the volume mixer. Changing one app's volume means passing its sound through at the level you set. Nothing is recorded or kept.
• Notifications. To tell you when an app misbehaves. Off is fine; the same items appear in the app.
• A background item, under Login Items. Only if you enable the optional helper or Open at Login.

The optional helper

On its own, Vitals can measure only the processes you started. To include macOS’s own, you can turn on Full System Metrics, which adds a small helper that runs with administrator rights. It does one thing: given a list of process IDs, it returns how much they are using. It accepts no file paths, runs no commands and changes nothing. macOS lets only the Vitals app we signed talk to it, and it quits when Vitals closes. Vitals works without it, and you can remove it any time in Settings → Permissions.

Vitals Lite, from the Mac App Store

Vitals Lite is the edition sold on the Mac App Store. The App Store’s sandbox keeps it from macOS’s own processes, the ports apps listen on, Bluetooth and containers, so it reads less than Vitals. Everything above about what Vitals reads and sends holds for it, with these differences:

• Where it keeps things. Its history and settings are in ~/Library/Containers/com.forestudio.VitalsLite, the folder macOS gives it inside the sandbox.
• No license, updates or review form from us. The Mac App Store sells and updates it, so it never contacts apps.fore.studio or statics.fore.studio. A rating, if you leave one, goes to Apple.
• Folders you choose. For the token counts, it reads the .claude and .codex folders in your home folder only after you choose them in an Open panel. It reads them and never changes anything in them.
• AI plans. It reads Claude Code’s sign-in on your Mac and Codex’s from the folder you chose, and no other tool’s.
• Buying. The free trial and Full Access are in-app purchases, handled by Apple under its own privacy policy. Apple doesn’t give us your name, email or payment details.

Buying

Payments are handled by Paddle, our merchant of record, under their own privacy policy. From them we receive your email, your name if you gave one, what you bought and when, which is what we need to send your key and help you. We never see your card.

This website

This site uses Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages and buttons people use, so we know what to improve. It records the page, the site that sent you, your browser and device type, your approximate location, and actions such as opening the checkout, picking a number of Macs, opening a question in the FAQ or downloading Vitals. It never receives what you type into a form: not your license key and not your email. Google Signals and ad features are off, so none of it is used for advertising.

In the EU, the UK, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, Google Analytics runs without cookies. Everywhere else it sets Google’s own analytics cookies on this site (_ga), which keep for up to two years. You can block them in your browser or with Google’s opt-out add-on; the site works the same either way. Google handles this data under its own privacy policy.

The site also asks our licensing server for the current price, and it loads Paddle’s checkout only when you click a buy button. The numbers on the home page are a simulation that runs in your browser; the page reads nothing from your computer. None of this applies to the Vitals app, which has no analytics.

Questions

Email [email protected]. A person reads every message.