HanziKey Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-05-15

Summary

HanziKey runs entirely on your Mac. The app does not collect, store, or transmit any personal data. No accounts, no servers, no analytics.

What HanziKey does on your device

• Reads text you select when you press the translation hotkey (⌘⇧Y). The selected text is processed locally to produce a translation popup, then immediately discarded.
• Captures a region of your screen when you press the snapshot (⌘⇧O) or live (⌘⇧L) capture hotkeys. Captured pixels are passed to Apple’s on-device Vision framework for OCR, then immediately discarded.
• Translates Chinese text using Apple’s on-device Translation framework. No network calls are made for translation.
• Looks up word definitions in the bundled CC-CEDICT dictionary, which is included with the app and does not connect to any server.

What HanziKey does NOT do

• HanziKey does not have user accounts.
• HanziKey does not collect any personal information.
• HanziKey does not send any data to remote servers.
• HanziKey does not include analytics, crash reporting, or telemetry.
• HanziKey does not track usage in any way.
• HanziKey does not require an internet connection.

Permissions HanziKey requests

HanziKey requests two macOS privacy permissions, each used only when you explicitly trigger the corresponding feature:

• Accessibility — used to simulate ⌘C and read your selected text when you press the translation hotkey. Without this permission, selection translation is disabled.
• Screen Recording — used to capture the region you drag-select when you press a screen capture hotkey. Without this permission, the OCR features are disabled.

Both permissions are governed by macOS and can be revoked at any time in System Settings → Privacy & Security.

Data storage

HanziKey stores preferences (text size, hotkey bindings, etc.) in the standard macOS UserDefaults system. This data lives in the app’s sandbox container on your Mac and is not transmitted anywhere.

Third-party data

HanziKey bundles the following open-source data:

• CC-CEDICT Chinese-English dictionary, distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC-BY-SA 4.0).
• Chinese word frequency list from publicly available linguistic datasets.

This data is bundled with the app and used locally. No external network requests are made to retrieve or update it.

Changes to this policy

If this policy ever changes, the new version will be posted at this URL with an updated revision date. Material changes will be noted in the app’s release notes.