privacycommand

drop an app. see everything it touches.

Forensic permission audits for any macOS app.

Warning

Pre-1.0 — no stable release yet. Anything can change in any release, including a patch: APIs, CLI flags, config keys, file formats, and data already on disk. Keep your own backups. Project status. The badge above is generated from the privacykey status list, which says what I promise for this project and every other one.

---

privacycommand takes a .app bundle (or a .dmg) and reports what the app actually touches: the entitlements it claims, the permissions it will ask for, the domains and URLs compiled into its binary, the third-party SDKs it ships, the login items and helpers it registers — and, if you let it, what it does while it runs.

It is built for people who want evidence rather than a vendor's word: security teams, IT, and anyone deciding whether a download deserves a place in /Applications. Every finding carries a plain-English explanation from an in-app knowledge base, so a report is readable without a reverse-engineering background.

All analysis happens on your machine, and the app ships no analytics of its own. The exact list of network calls it makes is in docs/PRIVACY.md.

What it does

• Static analysis — entitlements, code signing (the 10-character Team ID expanded to the developer's name), a notarization deep-dive (stapler / spctl / SHA-256), URL schemes, document types, hard-coded domains, embedded launch agents and helpers, feature-flag and trial-state strings, secrets and licence-key names, anti-analysis signals, dylib hijacking surface, and Apple's Privacy Manifest checked against what the binary actually uses.
• SDK fingerprints — which analytics, advertising and attribution SDKs the bundle ships, with a heat-graded count and per-category breakdown.
• Outbound call sites — which functions can open a connection, the networking symbols they reach for (BSD sockets, getaddrinfo, CFNetwork, nw_*), and any host or URL literals sitting next to them. Any call site can be decompiled on demand if you have Ghidra installed.
• App Store privacy labels — for Mac App Store bundles, the developer's declared Privacy Nutrition Labels sit next to the static findings, so you can see whether the claims match the binary.
• Background Task Management — every login item, launch agent, daemon and helper the app has registered, read through the privileged helper.
• Monitored runs — launch the inspected app under privacycommand and watch, in real time, its file events (via the optional helper running fs_usage), network destinations with reverse-DNS labels, child processes, pasteboard / camera / microphone / screen-recording activity, USB device interactions and resource usage.
• Network kill switch — cut the app off from the destinations it is contacting, via a pf anchor installed by the helper, and watch how it copes.
• VM mode — a guest agent that runs inside a macOS VM (VirtualBuddy / UTM / Parallels) and ships observations back to the host, for apps you would rather not run on bare metal.
• Compare runs — diff any two saved reports from the History tab. Added and removed entitlements, domains, SDKs, login items and findings are colour-cued, with a "show only changes" toggle.
• Batch scan — point it at a folder, or at all of /Applications, and triage many apps at once in a sortable table of risk tiers, warning counts and headline signals.
• Reports — every finding exports as JSON, HTML or PDF.

Get it

Requires macOS 13 or later.

Homebrew — the cask lives in privacykey/homebrew-tap:

brew install --cask privacykey/tap/privacycommand

brew upgrade --cask privacycommand keeps it current. When privacycommand detects it is running from a Homebrew Caskroom it disables in-app updates, so brew stays in charge of the on-disk version.

Direct download — take the signed and notarized .dmg from the latest release and drag the app to /Applications. In-app updates use Sparkle 2 against an EdDSA-signed appcast feed; automatic checks are off by default and you opt in under Settings → Updates.

Command line — the repo also builds auditctl, a CLI over the same analyser. Its preview command inspects Homebrew casks before you update them; it never runs brew, never blocks an update, and always exits 0. Building and using it is covered in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Docs

There is no docs site yet. What exists lives in the repo:

• .github/ARCHITECTURE.md — the targets, why they are separate, how data moves between them.
• privacycommand/README.md — source-tree map, signing and entitlements reference, troubleshooting.
• privacycommand/HELPER.md — privileged helper bundling, signing and verification.
• privacycommand/docs/GUEST_AGENT.md — VM guest-agent walkthroughs.
• docs/PRIVACY.md — every network call the app makes, and why.
• NOTICES.md — third-party notices.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. CI runs two workflows on every pull request: the SPM build and test suite plus an auditctl smoke test, and an unsigned Xcode build of the app target. Reproduce the first locally from privacycommand/:

swift build
swift test

Or just build and just test from the repo root. Setup, the Xcode path, and what to include in a pull request are in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Found a security issue? Please do not open a public issue — .github/SECURITY.md has the reporting address and what is in scope.

Licence

Released under the MIT licence.