What JustNow captures
JustNow only captures your screen after you grant it Screen Recording permission in macOS. From then on, while JustNow is running and recording is not paused, it takes a still image of each connected display periodically. You choose the capture interval in Settings; JustNow may increase it when you are idle or to reduce energy use.
Those images contain whatever was visible on screen. That can include messages, documents, private browsing windows, and passwords or codes that were shown in plain text. JustNow does not try to detect or skip sensitive content, so pause recording whenever you would rather it did not keep a copy.
JustNow stops capturing while the screen is locked, while the Mac is asleep, and while another user is logged in through fast user switching.
Pausing recording
You can pause and resume recording at any time with ⌘⌥⇧J (configurable in Settings) or with Pause Recording in the menu bar menu. A pause lasts until you resume recording or JustNow next launches, including after an update or a login launch. Quitting JustNow also stops capture. To stop JustNow capturing entirely, quit it, turn off Launch on startup in Settings, and remove its permission in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording.
Where your history is stored
Captured frames are saved as JPEG images, with a local SQLite
database of frame details (such as capture times and which display
they came from), in
~/Library/Application Support/JustNow/. JustNow
restricts that folder to your macOS user account and marks it to be
excluded from Time Machine backups (other backup tools may not honour
this). JustNow does not add its own
encryption to these files, so we recommend turning on FileVault.
Keep recent history in memory is on by default. JustNow then keeps most recent frames only in memory, but still saves a frame from each display to disk every few seconds, when the screen changes a lot, and when recording stops or JustNow quits. Other memory-only frames are cleared when JustNow quits or relaunches. Turn the setting off to save all history to disk instead.
If JustNow finds damaged or incomplete storage when it starts, it
moves the affected files into a recovery folder inside
the same storage folder instead of deleting them. Those copies stay
there until you clear your history or delete them yourself.
How long history is kept
You choose how much rewind history to keep: 30 minutes, 2 hours, 8 hours, or 24 hours (the default). JustNow keeps every frame for the most recent part of that window, then keeps fewer frames as history gets older. While JustNow is recording, frames older than the window are deleted automatically, along with their recognised text. History saved before you pause, lock your Mac, or quit stays on disk until recording resumes and the clean-up runs, or until you clear it. When the window is shorter than one hour, JustNow keeps a sparse hour of history so that the one-hour search option still works.
Recognised text and search
To make your history searchable, JustNow runs text recognition on captured frames using Apple’s on-device Vision and VisionKit frameworks. The recognised text, and for some frames the position of matching words, is stored in a local search database in the same storage folder. Neither the images nor the text are sent anywhere. Text in the current search database is removed when its frame is deleted, with the legacy-file exception below.
Deleting your history
In Settings → Capture → Storage, choose
Clear All History. This deletes all captured frames,
all recognised text in the search database, and any recovery copies.
It does not delete the diagnostics log, your settings, or screenshots
you have saved elsewhere.
Open Storage Folder in the same section shows you the
files. You can also quit JustNow and delete
~/Library/Application Support/JustNow/ yourself.
If you used an early version of JustNow, a legacy
text_cache.json file containing recognised text may
remain in the storage folder. Automatic retention and
Clear All History do not delete this file. Its text
can be imported again on a later launch if the search database is
empty. To remove this older copy, quit JustNow and delete
text_cache.json from the storage folder, or delete the
whole storage folder.
Deletion removes JustNow’s local history files, but it is not secure erasure. The space that deleted data occupied may not be overwritten straight away, either on disk or inside JustNow’s database files, and deleting the storage folder does not change that. If you delete the folder in Finder, empty the Trash afterwards. Deletion also cannot remove copies made elsewhere, such as by backup tools other than Time Machine, or screenshots and text you saved or copied. FileVault keeps any leftover data encrypted at rest, but it does not erase it.
Clipboard and saved screenshots
JustNow only copies or saves something when you ask it to:
- The text-grab drag action copies recognised text from a rewind frame to your clipboard.
- Saving a frame or region (⌘S, the screenshot drag action, or the overlay’s screenshot menu items) writes a JPEG to the folder you choose in Settings (your macOS screenshot location by default), copies it to the clipboard, or both.
By default, dragging grabs text and holding ⌘ while dragging selects a screenshot region. You can change the Default drag action in Settings → Rewind; holding ⌘ selects the other action.
Once something is on your clipboard or in a folder, it is handled by macOS and any other apps you use. For example, Universal Clipboard or iCloud Drive syncing of your Desktop may copy it to your other devices. JustNow does not track or delete those copies.
Diagnostics log
To help debug capture problems, JustNow keeps a small diagnostics log
at ~/Library/Logs/JustNow/. It records capture lifecycle
events (starts, stops, errors, permission checks, and sleep or lock
transitions, with timestamps), the names and system identifiers of
your connected displays when capture starts or stops on them, the
app and macOS versions at launch, search outcomes (result counts and
timings, never your search text), and occasional aggregate
measurements such as frame counts, total data sizes, and queue
lengths.
The log never contains screen content, recognised text, search queries, image data, or perceptual hashes (image fingerprints), and JustNow does not write file paths to it. It is capped at about 1 MB on a rolling basis, so it can cover a long period. It is kept separately from your history, is never sent anywhere by JustNow, and you can delete it at any time. If you attach it to a bug report, you choose what to share.
Network requests and updates
The only network requests JustNow makes are for software updates, using the open-source Sparkle framework:
-
Checking for updates downloads the public update feed from
https://justnow.tk.sg/appcast.xml, which is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. - If an update is available and you choose to install it (or turn on automatic downloads), JustNow downloads the signed update from GitHub Releases.
These requests carry the details any web request does, such as your IP address, plus the app and Sparkle versions. JustNow does not send a system profile, a device identifier, or anything about your history. Cloudflare and GitHub may keep standard server logs under their own privacy policies. You can turn off automatic checks in Settings → General → Software Update and check manually instead.
What JustNow does not do
- No analytics, telemetry, or crash reporting services.
- No account or sign-in.
- No upload or cloud sync of screen history, recognised text, or settings.
- No advertising, and no selling or sharing of data. JustNow never sends us your history, recognised text, or settings.
- No use of your data to train AI models.
The Search Diagnostics figures in Settings are calculated and shown on your Mac only. JustNow also watches whether you are using the keyboard and mouse, without recording what you type or click, so it can capture less often when you are idle.
This website
justnow.tk.sg is a static site. Its own code does not set
application cookies. Cloudflare, which hosts and protects it, can add
performance-measurement code that sends the page URL, a per-page
identifier, browser information, JavaScript memory use, and loading
and rendering timings to Cloudflare. Cloudflare may also process
standard request logs and use security cookies to manage automated
traffic or challenges.
Changes to this policy
If JustNow’s handling of data changes, this page will be updated along with its effective date. The full history of this page is public in the JustNow repository.
Contact
For questions about this policy or JustNow’s privacy, email [email protected]. Please do not attach screenshots or logs that contain anything private.