MinoFTP app icon MinoFTP

Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 6, 2026

The short version

MinoFTP collects nothing about you. There is no account, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking of any kind. The only network connections the app makes are to the FTP servers you ask it to connect to. Your passwords stay on your Mac.

1. Scope

This policy covers the MinoFTP application for macOS, distributed through the Mac App Store, and this website. It explains what the app stores on your device, what it sends over the network, and what choices you have.

It does not cover your FTP server or your hosting provider — those are services you choose and control, and their own privacy practices apply to the data you keep there.

2. What we collect

Nothing. The app has no account system, no sign-in, no cloud service and no server of ours to send anything to. Specifically, MinoFTP does not collect, transmit or have access to:

  • your name, email address or any other contact details;
  • the servers you connect to, or the credentials you use for them;
  • the files you upload, download or browse, or their names;
  • usage statistics, feature telemetry, crash reports or diagnostics data;
  • device identifiers, advertising identifiers or location data.

There is no third-party analytics SDK, no advertising SDK and no crash-reporting SDK in the app. Consistent with this, the App Store privacy label for MinoFTP reads “Data Not Collected”.

3. What is stored on your Mac

The app keeps its working data locally, in its own container. Nothing in this list is uploaded anywhere.

What Where Why
Saved sites — hostname, port, username, password, starting folders, TLS and passive-mode settings, bookmarks Application Support, file sites.json So a site can be reopened with one click
Preferences — appearance, interface language, synchronized browsing, transfer-queue options, panel visibility macOS user defaults for the app To remember how you left things
The folder you grant access to (Mac App Store version only) A security-scoped bookmark stored in user defaults To keep access to a folder you chose, across launches
Crash reports, including the last few hundred lines of the protocol log ~/Library/Logs/FTPClient outside the sandbox; the app container's CrashReports folder in the Mac App Store version So that a crash can be investigated locally

About saved passwords. We would rather you hear this from us than discover it later: saved FTP passwords are stored in plain text inside sites.json, protected only by your Mac's file permissions and by any disk encryption you have enabled (FileVault). This is a deliberate trade-off for a local utility, but it means anyone who can read your user account's files can read those passwords. If that matters to you, leave the password field empty and type it at connection time, and be aware that any macOS backup you make includes that file.

Crash reports are written to disk only and are never sent to us automatically. They are shared with us only if you choose to attach one to an email. The protocol log tail inside a crash report contains the server address, port, FTP commands and server replies from the moments before the crash; password commands are masked as ******.

4. Network connections

MinoFTP opens network connections for one purpose only: to talk to the FTP or FTPS server you have told it to use. Traffic goes directly from your Mac to that server. There is no proxy, no relay and no intermediary service of ours.

With FTPS enabled, the connection between your Mac and your server is encrypted. With plain FTP, it is not — credentials and file contents travel in the clear. Please note that the current version connects to FTPS servers in a permissive mode and does not validate the server certificate; see the support page for what that does and does not protect against.

The app contains no background updater and does not contact us, Apple, or anyone else to check for updates. Updates are delivered by the Mac App Store.

5. Access to your files

MinoFTP reads and writes files on your Mac only where you direct it: in the local pane you browse, and in the transfers you start. In the Mac App Store version, the App Sandbox restricts the app to the folder you explicitly grant, and macOS shows you that choice when it happens. Nothing is uploaded to us at any point — the destination is always your own server.

6. What we receive

The only information we ever receive is what you choose to send us by email. If you write to gavy417@gmail.com, we will have your email address and whatever you include in the message — which may, if you attach one, be a connection log or crash report.

We use that only to answer your question and fix the problem. We do not add you to a mailing list, we do not sell or share it, and we keep it no longer than needed for support. You can ask us to delete it at any time.

7. Your choices and control

  • Remove saved sites and passwords — delete them in Site Manager, or remove sites.json from the app's container.
  • Reset preferences — clear them from the app's settings or remove the app's preferences file.
  • Remove everything — delete the app, then remove its container folder; that erases sites, preferences, bookmarks and crash reports in one go.
  • Delete crash reports — choose Open Crash Log Folder from the Help menu and delete the files you no longer want, or empty the folder.

8. Children

MinoFTP is a developer tool intended for general audiences. It is not directed at children, and because it collects no personal information at all, it collects none from children either.

9. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes — for example, if a future version adds a feature that needs to send something over the network — the new version will be published on this page with an updated date above. We will not quietly widen what the app does with your data.

10. Contact

Questions about this policy, or about privacy in MinoFTP generally, go to gavy417@gmail.com.