Data & permissions
Diurnal reads your calendar, so it owes you a plain account of what it touches. This page is that account: every permission, every Google scope, every service contacted, and the ones deliberately left out.
The principle
Diurnal is a tool for writing down what you need to do and seeing your day. It asks you to sign in before you start, because your day is synced rather than stranded on one disk: the Mac you pick up next has the same day as the one you put down.
What it does not do is take anything else. Your day is kept on your own Mac, which is what makes the app fast and what lets it keep working without a network. Your calendar is a separate decision you make later, or never. And nothing you do in the app is tracked, so there is no record of how you use it.
Your account
Diurnal requires an account. A signed-out launch shows a sign-in window and nothing else: there is no anonymous mode, and the shortcut has nothing to summon until you are in.
There are two ways in, and both end in a verified account:
- Continue with Google. Google confirms the address, so the account is verified the moment it is created.
- Email and a password. Diurnal sends a verification link, and the account opens nothing until you click it.
Signing in with Google requests only your basic profile: an identifier, your email address and your name. Every calendar permission is requested separately, later, and only if you choose to connect a calendar. The scopes are listed in full below.
What Diurnal asks for
Each row is something macOS or Google will prompt you about. The third column is the one worth reading: it says what the permission does not give the app.
| Access | When | Why it exists | What it does not mean |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diurnal account | Required | Identifies you so your day can exist on more than one Mac. Sign in with Google, or with an email address and a password. | Not a profile. Diurnal keeps what you write and who you are, not what you do with the app. It does not track how you use it. |
| Calendar (Google) | On request | Draws your day beside your tasks, and lets /cal add an event without opening a browser. | Not requested until you connect an account. Diurnal never asks for the scope that can delete calendars, and it does not read calendars you have not added. |
| Notifications | Optional | A task with a time becomes a reminder, delivered by macOS at that time. | Not a channel for anything else. Diurnal sends no announcements, no marketing and no re-engagement nudges. |
| Network | Required | Signing in, and keeping your day in step across your Macs. Talking to Google Calendar as well, if you connect it. | Not used for tracking. Diurnal does not measure how you use it, so there is nothing to opt out of. |
| Launch at login | Optional | Off by default. An app that is not running cannot answer its shortcut. | Not required. Diurnal works exactly the same if you start it yourself. |
Google Calendar scopes
When you connect a Google account, Google shows you a consent screen listing what Diurnal is asking for. These are those scopes, and the reasoning behind each one.
Signing in to Diurnal requests openid · email · profile and nothing else. Every calendar scope below is requested separately, later, and only if you choose to connect a calendar. You can use Diurnal fully, including sync, without ever granting one.
| Scope | Why it is requested | What was chosen instead |
|---|---|---|
openid · email · profile | Identifies the account you connected and labels it in the app, so a reconnect prompt can say which account it means. | Not applicable. These three are the sign-in scopes, and they carry no calendar access at all. |
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.calendarlist.readonly | Lists the calendars already on your Google account, so you can choose which ones appear. | Deliberately not calendar.readonly, which grants “see and download any calendar you can access”. |
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar.events | Reads the events for the day you are looking at, and creates one when you type /cal. | Deliberately not auth/calendar, whose consent screen says “permanently delete all the calendars”, the worst possible string to show someone for an app that reads a day and adds an event. |
Diurnal requests the narrowest scope that does the job in both cases. It never asks for the scope that can delete a calendar, and it never asks for the read-everything scope that would let it see calendars you have not chosen to show.
What it never asks for
Diurnal does not request any of the following, and no feature is planned that would need them:
- Camera
- Microphone
- Screen recording
- Full disk access
- Accessibility
- Contacts
- Location
- Photos
What is stored, and where
On your Mac
Your tasks, tags, days and settings are kept on your own machine. That is the working copy, and it is what the app reads and writes as you work, which is why Diurnal renders your day with no network at all.
On the sync service, if you sign in
Your account is identified by the Google account or the email address you signed in with, and your tasks, tags and settings are copied to the sync service so your other Macs can read them. That is what the account is for.
Calendar credentials, if you connect one
When you connect a Google account, the access and refresh tokens are held by the sync service, encrypted at rest, so it can read the days you look at and create the events you ask for. Calendar events themselves are cached only so the pane can draw the day you are looking at.
Signing out
Signing out removes that Mac’s local copy of your data. You can also disconnect a Google account on its own, leaving sync in place.
What connects where
Every network destination Diurnal contacts, what it is for, and when. There is nothing else on this list.
| Service | Purpose | When |
|---|---|---|
| Diurnal sync service | Signing in, and syncing your tasks between your own Macs. | Only after you sign in. Never if you don't. |
| accounts.google.com | The Google sign-in and calendar consent screens. | Only while you are connecting a Google account. |
| www.googleapis.com | Reading the calendars and events you chose to show, and creating an event from /cal. | Only while a Google account is connected. |
Diurnal does not track you. It does not report how you use it, and there is no usage data to opt out of because none is collected.
You stay in control
- Revoke calendar access at any time from your Google Account security settings, or by disconnecting the account in Diurnal’s Calendars settings. You can also switch individual calendars off without disconnecting the account.
- Sign out from the Account tab in Settings. This removes that Mac’s local copy of your data.
- Keep the calendar out of it. Connecting Google Calendar is a separate step you can simply not take. Diurnal works fully without it.
- Turn off reminders in macOS System Settings under Notifications, without affecting anything else.
About this demo
The interactive macOS desktop on the home page is a replica running entirely in your browser. Every task and event in it is invented. It does not read your calendar, does not read anything else on your computer, sends nothing anywhere, and stores nothing: closing the tab discards all of it.