Privacy Policy

Last updated 17 August 2026.

Who we are

Pathfinder is made by Colossal, based in New Zealand. If you are in the UK or the EU and it matters for your rights, we are the data controller for the little we hold. You can reach us at hello@pathfinderbrowser.com about anything on this page.

What we collect

Nothing from the app. Pathfinder has no user account and no sign-in. The app does not send analytics, telemetry, usage statistics, or crash reports to us or to any third party.

Four things are stored, and only if you choose to do the thing that creates them. An email address you type into the Mac or Linux interest form, described under this website below. An email address you leave to be told when Pro opens, described in the same place. If you buy Pro, the record of that purchase, described under if you buy Pro. And anything you write in Settings > Feedback and press Send. Simply using Pathfinder creates none of them.

Where your data lives

Everything Pathfinder needs stays on your computer. Each account you add is a separate browser profile stored in a folder on your machine, holding that account's cookies, local storage, and cache. Your list of apps, accounts, and workspaces is saved to a local configuration file. None of it is synced to a server.

The accounts you sign into

When you log into a website inside Pathfinder, you are dealing directly with that website, exactly as you would in any browser. Those services have their own privacy policies and set their own cookies within the account's isolated profile. Pathfinder keeps those profiles apart; it does not read or transmit their contents.

Updates

Pathfinder checks for new versions by requesting an update file from our download host. That request includes only what any file download involves, such as your IP address and the current version, and is not used to build a profile of you.

Ad and tracker blocking

Blocking is switched on by default. The filter list it matches against is downloaded from its publisher, Ghostery, when you first launch Pathfinder and refreshed roughly every two weeks. This is a plain file download, the same as the update check above: the list comes to you, and the matching runs on your machine, so no record of the sites you visit is sent anywhere. Turning blocking off in Settings stops the download.

Speed dial icons

The new tab page shows an icon for each tile you pin, fetched from Google's public favicon service. That request contains the domain of a tile you added yourself, along with your IP address, in the same way as any image a web page loads. It does not include your browsing history or the pages you open, and addresses on your local network are never sent. If you would rather it made no request at all, each tile can be set to a letter or your own image instead.

No AI

Pathfinder contains no assistant, chatbot, or model. Nothing reads your tabs, summarises your activity, or learns from how you work.

This website

The pathfinderbrowser.com site is a set of static pages served without third-party analytics or advertising trackers. The two forms described below use a Cloudflare Turnstile check to stop automated submissions; that loads a small script from Cloudflare, the company that hosts the site, and may set a cookie scoped to the challenge. It is the only third-party request any page makes.

The one exception is the Mac and Linux interest form on the download page. Neither build is planned, and that form is how we find out whether they should be. If you submit it we store two things: which platform you asked for, and the email address you typed. Nothing else is recorded, so there is no IP address, no browser, and no country against your entry. The address is used once, to tell you if that build happens, and it is never sold, shared, or added to a marketing list. The form is handled by our own site rather than a third-party form service, so your address is not handed to anyone else in the process.

The same is true of the "tell me when Pro opens" form. Pro is finished but not yet on sale, and that form is how we let you know when it is. If you submit it we store one thing: the email address you typed, and the date you gave it. No IP address, no browser, no country. It is used once, for that one email, and your address is deleted from the list after it has been sent. It is never sold, shared, or added to a marketing list, and like the form above it is handled by our own site rather than a third-party service.

If you buy Pro

The payment itself is handled by Lemon Squeezy as merchant of record. They collect it, handle the sales tax and VAT, and send your receipt, so your card details go to them and never reach us. Their privacy policy covers that part.

What reaches us is the licence record: your licence key, which plan you are on, the email address you bought with, whether the licence is still active, and the dates attached to it, meaning when it was created, when it renews, and when it ends if you cancel renewal. Stored with it are the reference numbers Lemon Squeezy uses for your order, your subscription and your customer account. Those are what let us match a renewal or a refund to the right licence. We hold all of it for one reason, which is to answer the app when it asks whether your licence is valid, and to reach you about the licence itself. Your name, your address and your card details are not part of that.

We also keep a log of the billing events Lemon Squeezy sends us, such as a purchase, a renewal, a cancelled renewal or a refund, with the time each one arrived. It is what stops the same event being applied twice, and it is how we work out what happened if a licence stops working when it should not have.

The app's side of this is deliberately quiet. It checks the licence about every ten days, and the check sends one thing: the licence key. No usage, no telemetry, no version number, no machine identifier, no list of the apps or accounts you have added. The check says which key is asking and nothing about what you do with Pathfinder.

Two things about the check are recorded against your key: when it last happened, and how many times that key has been activated. A licence that has never once checked in, and a licence being activated on a great many machines, are both things we need to be able to see. That is a date and a number, not a history of what you did.

As with any web server, the licence server sees the network address your request comes from. It is used to limit how many activation attempts can be made in a minute, because the licence key is the only credential and it would otherwise be open to guessing. It is not written into your licence record.

We keep a purchase record for as long as the licence exists, plus the period our tax and accounting obligations require after it ends, which is seven years under New Zealand law. That part we cannot delete on request, because we are required to keep it.

If you send feedback

Settings has a Feedback tab. It is the one place the app sends anything about itself, and it only does so when you have typed a message and pressed Send. Nothing is sent in the background, and closing the tab without sending sends nothing.

What we receive is the message you wrote, the email address you typed if you chose to add one, and two version numbers: the Pathfinder version and the Windows version. That is the whole payload. Not the apps in your sidebar, not the accounts you are signed into, not the page you were on, not any log file. The panel prints those two version numbers on screen before you send, so you can see exactly what rides along rather than taking our word for it.

The email address is optional and is used once, to reply to you. Leave it blank and we simply have no way to respond, which is a perfectly reasonable way to send feedback.

We keep feedback while it is still useful for fixing the thing it describes, and for two years at most. Ask us and we will delete yours sooner.

How long we keep it, and getting it removed

Feedback is kept for two years at most, or until you ask us to remove it. An interest-form address is kept until whichever comes first: the build you asked about happens and we email you about it, you ask us to remove it, or two years pass. If we have not built the thing in two years we are not going to, so the entry is deleted rather than left sitting there. A "tell me when Pro opens" address is kept only until that email has been sent, or until you ask us to remove it, whichever comes first. A licence record is kept while the licence exists, then for the seven years our tax obligations require.

You can ask us at any time what we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it, and we will do it without making you explain yourself. Email hello@pathfinderbrowser.com. The one thing we cannot delete on request is a purchase record we are legally required to retain, and if that applies we will tell you exactly what is being kept and why.

If Pathfinder changes hands

If Pathfinder or the business behind it is ever sold or transferred, whatever we hold at the time would transfer with it. Today that is the four things listed under "What we collect": the interest-form and "tell me when Pro opens" addresses, the licence records of people who have bought Pro, and any feedback sent from the app. The new owner would be bound by this policy for the data they receive, and would have to come back to you before using it for anything this policy does not already describe.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or a request to delete an address you gave us, can be sent to hello@pathfinderbrowser.com.