Last updated 28 September 2026
Tomato watches your screen so it can tell you when you have drifted off the thing you said you were going to do. That is an unusual amount of trust to ask for, so here is exactly what happens to that data — and what does not.
The short version. Your screen recording and your session journal never leave your Mac. So the app can describe what you are doing, it sends text about your recent activity — your session goal, window titles, browser URLs, the text you typed, and headings read off the screen — to Anthropic, using your own API key or your own Claude Code. When you ask the chat a question, it can look things up in your local history and send what matches to Anthropic too, along with your question. When you come back to a window after a break, it can also send that window's recent text, so a one-line note can say where you left off. Separately, anonymous counts — how many sessions you ran, which setup steps you finished — go to PostHog.
Tomato uses a local screen recorder to capture what is on screen — window titles, browser tabs, and on-screen text. That capture, and the journal of focus sessions built from it, live in a database on your own machine. The recording itself — every screenshot and every frame of video — is never uploaded anywhere, and neither is the journal. Some of the text drawn from the capture is sent to Anthropic so it can be summarised; the next section says exactly which text.
To record, Tomato asks macOS for two permissions. Screen & System Audio Recording lets it take screenshots and read the text on your screen; audio is never recorded. Device Control and Data Access — called Accessibility before macOS 27 — lets it see which app and window you are in, and what you type and click. What either one captures stays on your Mac, except as described below.
Tomato also serves that history to AI tools you connect yourself, through a small server called Tomato MCP: screen text, typed input, accessibility data, memories your tools save, and video clips you ask for. It is on by default and listens on your local network. Apps on this Mac can use it directly; any other device on your network needs the access token shown in Settings. Whatever you then send to such a tool is between you and it. You can switch Tomato MCP off, or replace its token, in Settings.
Every few minutes, and again when a session ends, Tomato sends a description of your recent activity to Anthropic's API, using your own API key — or, if you chose it, through your own Claude Code, which sends it under whatever login Claude Code has (usually your Claude subscription) — and gets back a one-line summary plus a judgement about whether you have drifted. It is sent as text — no screenshots and no video are ever sent — and it contains:
This is the least we can send and still tell focus from drift. It goes to Anthropic under the key you supply, and Anthropic's handling of it is governed by their own terms — not by us. We never see it. With Claude Code, Tomato runs the claude command you installed, with its own tools, settings and history turned off; Tomato never sees your Claude login.
The chat works the same way. When you ask it a question, Tomato may look up matching on-screen text, window titles, app names, typed text and memories from your local history and send them to Anthropic, with your question, under your own API key or through your own Claude Code. Screenshots and video are still never sent. The chat saves a memory or tags a moment only when you ask it to.
Last-thread notes work the same way. When you come back to a window in one of the apps you chose for notes, Tomato sends that window's title and its recent on-screen and typed text — or, for a window showing a Claude Code session, that session's recent messages — to Anthropic, under your own API key or through your own Claude Code, and gets back one sentence to show in the window's corner. Browsers are never included. You can turn notes off for one window, for one app, or everywhere, from the note itself or in Settings › Last-thread notes.
When you use Talk it through on a project, Tomato sends that project's name, its notes and what you said to Anthropic, under your own API key or through your own Claude Code, and puts the reply in the box for you to read before it is saved.
Tomato sends a small set of anonymous counts to PostHog so we can tell whether people who download the app actually get through setup and come back. Everything sent falls into these categories, and every value is either a number or one of a fixed set of labels — never free text:
On this website, we collect anonymous analytics about how people find Tomato and download it.
Every event, in the app and on this website, also carries whether it came from a released build or from a developer's local run, so our own testing does not show up in the numbers. Nothing else is attached.
Tomato has no backend of its own. Nothing below is ever sent to us or to PostHog — the only place any of your activity text goes is Anthropic, under your own API key or through your own Claude Code, as listed above:
Analytics events are tagged with a one-way hash of your Mac's hardware identifier, truncated to 32 characters. It cannot be reversed back to your machine, and it is not linked to your email or to anything you type. Its only job is to let us tell one returning user from two new ones.
PostHog also derives an approximate country from the IP address the request arrives on. Under PostHog's default settings that IP address is retained alongside the event; it is not used for anything beyond country-level geography.
When something in Tomato breaks, it may offer a Report this problem button. A report is sent only when you click it, and only once. It carries the technical error (with your home folder replaced by ~), Tomato's version and your macOS version — never screen content, window titles, anything you typed, or your API key. It is emailed to Tomato's developer through our email provider and is not stored anywhere else.
By downloading Tomato, and by giving us your email address in order to download it, you agree that the app may send the anonymous usage counts described above. Apart from a problem report you choose to send (above), that is the entire extent of what the app sends us.
We never read your screen. No screenshots, no video, no window titles, no session goals, none of the text you type, and never your API key — none of it is transmitted to us, and no setting could change that, because we do not collect it in the first place. The sections above set out exactly what is and is not sent.
Analytics cannot be switched off from inside the app. If you would rather not send anonymous usage counts, do not install Tomato.
If you enter an email to download Tomato, it is stored by our email provider and used only to send occasional product updates. Every message has an unsubscribe link.