No InstaCal account or analytics
InstaCal does not require an InstaCal account and contains no analytics or tracking SDK. There is no InstaCal calendar server between the app and your provider.
Calendar and reminder data
Apple-managed calendars and reminders are accessed through the system frameworks after you grant permission. Direct Google, Microsoft and CalDAV events move between the device and that provider, and subscribed calendars are downloaded from the feed address you entered. A local cache keeps direct events available during temporary network failures.
Account tokens and passwords
Direct-account authorization tokens are stored in Apple’s Keychain, and so are the username and app-specific password you enter for a CalDAV account or a password-protected subscription. CalDAV and subscription connections require HTTPS; the password is sent as standard HTTP Basic authentication over that encrypted connection, and is not forwarded if the server redirects to another host. Removing a direct account from InstaCal deletes its saved credential and local cache without deleting the provider’s original events.
On-device features
InstaCal’s built-in natural-language parser runs on the device, and so does the plain-language reading of a typed task. On supported systems, Apple Intelligence adds context on-device.
Your personal task library is kept on the device. iCloud task sync is built but is not switched on in the shipping build, so tasks you add on one device stay on it. Tasks belonging to a connected Google, Microsoft or Todoist account are that service’s, and sync with it.
Optional outside services
Weather contacts the provider you select. Maps and travel-time features use Apple location and mapping services when enabled. Google, Microsoft, CalDAV and subscription connections contact those hosts for sync, task and invitation actions. A connected Todoist account syncs tasks with Todoist. A connected Zoom account is contacted only when you add, change or remove a Zoom meeting on an event, and receives the meeting’s title, start time, length and time zone.
Generating a countdown photo sends your description — and the reference photo, if you chose to add one — to Higher Bar Apps, which passes it to an image model and returns the picture. Nothing else goes with it: not your calendars, not the countdown’s date, not your accounts. A reference photo is downscaled on the device before it is uploaded. Choosing a picture from your own photo library involves no network at all.
App Lock
App Lock puts Touch ID in front of InstaCal itself. Turn it on under Settings → Privacy → App Lock, on the Mac and on iPhone and iPad alike; the switch runs the prompt first and stays off if that prompt does not succeed.
Lock after chooses the delay: Immediately, After 1 minute, After 5 minutes, After 15 minutes or After 1 hour. Once the panel and calendar window have been closed for that long — or your Mac sleeps or locks its screen — InstaCal asks you to unlock before showing anything, and the menu bar shows only the date until you do. If Touch ID is unavailable or does not recognise you, your login password unlocks it instead. On iPhone and iPad it is Face ID or Touch ID with your passcode as the fallback, and the app switcher shows a cover rather than your events.
Settings stays reachable while locked, so you are never shut out of your own preferences.
Private calendars
Marking a calendar private hides it from an app that is already open, which is a different job from locking the app. The two work independently, and if you use both, unlocking the app does not reveal your private calendars — that is a second, deliberate step.
Open Settings → Privacy → Private Calendars — the Mac says Private Calendars… and opens a sheet, iPhone and iPad push a list. Every event calendar and reminder list is listed, grouped by account, with a switch each.
- Hidden means absent, not greyed out. A private calendar’s events do not appear in the agenda, month, week or day views, in search, in conflict warnings, in the menu bar’s next item, or in Siri’s answers. A single banner above the agenda reads “N private calendars hidden” with an Unlock button, so you know there is more without anyone else learning what.
- Nothing that cannot ask for Touch ID ever receives them. Widgets, the Apple Watch app, Live Activities and system-wide Spotlight are never sent private calendars, even while you have them revealed in the app.
- Alerts are your choice. Don’t Notify silences them. Notify Normally treats them like any other. Notify Without Details — the default — fires the alert at the right time titled Private event, with no title, location or Join button.
- When you are asked is set by Ask for Touch ID. When I Open the Panel (called When I Open the App on iPhone and iPad) prompts on every arrival. When I Tap the Button never prompts on its own, so somebody glancing over your shoulder as the panel opens sees nothing. Under either setting, opening a private event from a link or a notification asks — because you asked for that event by name.
- Getting them back: choose Show Private Calendars in the calendar list, or use the Touch ID button in the panel’s footer, the calendar window’s title bar, and the Reminders and Tasks windows. Once revealed it becomes an open lock that hides them again at once.
- They hide as you leave, not when you come back, on the same signals App Lock uses.
- Marking a calendar private needs no prompt; making it public again does. The asymmetry is deliberate — the setting cannot be quietly undone by somebody sitting at your unlocked Mac.
- A calendar connected twice — added inside InstaCal and again through System Settings — counts as one. Marking either copy marks both, and the row says what else it covers.
While InstaCal is locked, nothing is donated to Spotlight at all.
Request a Feature
Request a Feature — Settings → About → Contact Us on Mac, Settings → About on iPhone and iPad — is one of only two places in InstaCal where text you type is sent to Higher Bar Apps; the other is the description you write for a generated countdown photo, above. It sends what you wrote: the type, the summary, the details, a screenshot if you attached one, your email address if you chose to give one, and the platform, device model, OS version and InstaCal version so a report can be reproduced.
No account is involved and nothing identifies you. A random identifier created on the install is included so that one copy of InstaCal cannot send more than ten requests a day; it is not tied to you, your calendars or your accounts. A screenshot is resized on the device before it leaves. Leave the email field blank and there is no way to reply to you — which is the point of it being optional.
Your calendars, events, reminders and account tokens are never part of this, or of anything else InstaCal sends.
Files you share
ICS exports, availability images, PDFs and printed output are created only when you request them. Once saved or shared, they are outside InstaCal’s container and should be handled like any other document containing calendar information.
See the Privacy Policy for the formal disclosure.
