Your terminal stays yours.

Portal does not use advertising, analytics, tracking, or a Portal account. Remote access is optional and terminal contents are end-to-end encrypted before leaving your devices.

01 / Scope

What this policy covers.

This policy describes how Portal Terminal for Mac and iPhone and the Portal relay handle information. Portal is provided by Max Howell. It does not apply to Apple services such as iCloud, iCloud Keychain, or the App Store, which Apple operates under its own privacy policy.

02 / Local use

Local sessions stay on your Mac.

Commands, terminal output, session names, paths, and local session state remain on your Mac when you use Portal locally. Portal does not send local terminal sessions to us unless you enable Remote Access.

03 / Remote access

What leaves your devices.

When Remote Access is enabled, Portal sends encrypted terminal frames and an encrypted session catalog through the Portal relay. Encryption keys are created on-device and synchronized between your devices using iCloud Keychain. The relay cannot decrypt commands, keystrokes, output, paths, or session names.

Like any internet service, the relay and its hosting and network providers can process connection information needed to deliver requests, including IP addresses, timing, message sizes, an opaque room identifier, and the number of connected peers. Portal does not use this information for advertising or tracking.

04 / Storage and retention

The relay stores ciphertext, not content.

Live terminal frames are held in memory only long enough to relay them to connected devices and are not persisted or logged by the Portal relay. The relay stores one encrypted session-catalog blob per opaque room; each update replaces the previous blob and no history is kept. A catalog inactive for 30 days is deleted when it is next read and may be deleted sooner after a subscription ends.

If you contact us for support, we receive the information you choose to provide and keep it only as long as reasonably necessary to respond and maintain a record of the request.

05 / Apple services

Apple handles iCloud and purchases.

Portal uses iCloud Keychain to synchronize its remote-access key between devices signed in to your Apple Account. Subscriptions are purchased and managed through the App Store. We do not receive your Apple Account password or payment-card information.

06 / Sharing

We do not sell personal information or share it for targeted advertising. Information may be processed by infrastructure providers solely to operate the relay, by Apple when you use Apple services, or when required by law or necessary to protect users, the service, or the public.

07 / Your choices

Remote access is optional.

You can use Portal locally without Remote Access. You can disable Remote Access and end terminal sessions from your Mac at any time. Portal has no user account to delete. For questions, support records, or privacy requests, email us at mxcl@me.com.

08 / Changes

Policy updates.

We may update this policy as Portal changes. The effective date at the top of this page identifies the current version.