Privacy & Data

This page is a quick summary of the desktop app's local-first design. For the full legal Privacy Notice covering the website, contact messages, and support payments, see the Privacy Notice.

Overview

Nothing identifying, nothing hidden, and anything persistent is opt-in.

Your code, projects and environment stay on your machine. ForgeKit never sends your source code, database contents, file paths or domains anywhere.

It does send an anonymous summary of how ForgeKit is set up, so we can see which features and versions people use. You can turn it off in one click.

Anonymous usage statistics

The snapshot contains counts and version numbers, nothing else.

What's in it:

  • Your ForgeKit version
  • How many sites you have, and how many use HTTPS
  • How many web servers, databases, mail servers and cache servers you have, their types (Apache or nginx, MySQL or MariaDB, Redis or Memcached) and their versions
  • Which PHP and Node versions are installed or in use
  • How many runtimes are installed
  • A few preferences, like your theme and whether LAN access is on

What's never in it:

  • Project names, domains or file paths
  • Source code or database contents
  • Environment variables or credentials
  • Your username, computer name, or any machine identifier
  • Your IP address

See it yourself. Open Preferences → Privacy and click View analytics data. It shows the real snapshot ForgeKit would send right then, not an example.

Turn it off. Same screen, one checkbox. Switch off Share usage statistics and ForgeKit stops sending anything.

How installations are counted

Each snapshot carries a random value that changes every day. It lets us group several snapshots from one installation on the same day so it isn't counted three times. It can't be tied to you, your machine, or the same installation on another day.

There's a second setting, off by default: Help us understand whether ForgeKit is useful long-term. It adds a random installation ID that stays the same over time, so we can see whether installations keep being used. It holds nothing about you or your machine, and switching it off deletes it.

No accounts

ForgeKit does not require:

  • Registration
  • Login
  • User profiles

There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to manage. You download it and use it.

Fully local

Everything runs locally on your machine:

  • Your projects
  • Your configurations
  • Your databases
  • Your servers

No cloud sync, no remote storage. Your environment doesn't depend on us being online.

Works offline

ForgeKit works offline. Once installed, it doesn't need an internet connection to run your development environment.

If a snapshot can't be sent, ForgeKit carries on as normal. Nothing is queued and nothing waits on it.

What ForgeKit connects to

Automatically:

  • Checking whether an update is available
  • Sending the usage snapshot, at startup, at shutdown, and about once a day if left running

Only when you ask:

  • Downloading binaries (PHP, Apache, MySQL and so on)
  • Fetching a binary catalogue you configured

That's the full list. Updates are never installed automatically. ForgeKit tells you one is available and you decide.

Philosophy

ForgeKit is built on a simple idea:

It's your machine.

No accounts. No profiles. Nothing about your work sent anywhere. The one thing we collect is anonymous, visible to you, and off whenever you want.