Privacy Policy

Last updated 17 September 2026

Merubo is a Gmail client for macOS, published by Clovelly AB (Sweden). This policy covers both the Merubo app and this website.

The short version: Merubo has no server. Your mail is fetched from Google straight to your Mac and kept there. We never receive it, never see it, and have no way to.

1. What the app stores, and where

Everything Merubo keeps lives on your Mac, in your own user account:

• A local copy of recent mail. Merubo keeps a bounded, recent window of your messages, threads, labels and attachment details in a database on your Mac, so that opening and searching mail is instant. It is a cache: deleting it is always safe.
• Attachments are not cached. They are downloaded only when you click them, straight to your Downloads folder.
• Your Google account name and profile photo, so the app can show which account you are looking at.
• Sign-in tokens, stored in the macOS Keychain, not in the app's own files.
• Your settings, in the standard macOS preferences for the app.

The location of the cache is ~/Library/Application Support/Merubo/.

2. Who Merubo talks to

Merubo's own networking connects to Google and to nothing else — specifically gmail.googleapis.com, www.googleapis.com, accounts.google.com and Google's profile-photo servers. There is no Merubo server, no analytics service, no crash reporter and no advertising network.

There are two exceptions, both of which are things you ask for:

• Unsubscribing. If you use the unsubscribe button on a mailing-list message and confirm it, Merubo sends a single request to the unsubscribe address the sender published in that message. This goes to the sender, not to us, and only after you confirm.
• Loading images in a message. Remote images in email are hosted by the sender. Merubo blocks them by default; if you choose to load them, your Mac requests them from the sender's servers as any mail app would.

3. Google user data

Signing in uses Google's own OAuth screen. Merubo never sees or stores your Google password. It requests exactly two permissions:

• Read, compose, send and permanently change your Gmail (gmail.modify) — to show your mail, mark it read or unread, archive, trash, mark as junk, and send the messages you write. Merubo does not permanently delete mail; trashing a thread moves it to Gmail's Trash, as it would in Gmail.
• See your personal info, including any personal info you've made publicly available (userinfo.profile) — to show your name and profile photo next to your account.

Merubo does not request any other permission, and data obtained through these permissions is used only to provide the features described above, on your device.

Limited Use disclosure

Merubo's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. In particular, Merubo does not transfer Google user data to any third party, does not use it for advertising, does not sell it, and does not allow humans to read it — it never leaves your Mac.

4. Translation and summaries

Merubo translates mail written in other languages and can summarise a conversation. Both run entirely on your Mac, using Apple's on-device translation and on-device language models. No message text is sent to us, to Apple's servers, or to any cloud service for translation or summarisation.

5. Tracker blocking

Merubo blocks known tracking pixels and remote images before a message is displayed, using a list of tracker vendors built into the app. That list is never fetched at runtime and no record of what was blocked is sent anywhere; the count you see in a message is computed and discarded on your Mac.

6. This website

merubo.app is a static site. It sets no cookies, includes no analytics, no advertising and no third-party scripts or fonts. It is hosted on Cloudflare Pages, which processes standard request information such as your IP address in order to deliver the site and protect it from abuse, under Cloudflare's privacy policy. We do not receive, store or analyse that data.

If you email us, we will have your message and your email address, and will keep it only as long as needed to answer you.

7. Deleting your data

• Remove an account in the app, which deletes its local database, its cached profile photo and its sign-in tokens from your Mac.
• Delete the app and its folder at ~/Library/Application Support/Merubo/.
• Revoke Merubo's access to your Google account at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions.

Because we hold nothing, there is nothing for us to delete on your behalf.

8. Your rights

Clovelly AB is the data controller for this policy. Under the GDPR you have rights of access, correction, erasure, restriction, objection and portability over personal data a controller holds about you. As set out above, we do not hold your mail or your Google account data — it stays on your device — so in practice these rights apply only to any correspondence you send us. Email hello@merubo.app to exercise them, or to complain. You may also complain to your national data protection authority; in Sweden this is Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten (IMY).

9. Children

Merubo is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them.

10. Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new date at the top. Material changes affecting how your data is handled will also be noted in the app's release notes.

11. Contact

Clovelly AB
hello@merubo.app