Privacy Policy

Polychrome does its work locally. Your pictures, the photos you take of your calibration cards, your plates and its logs stay on your computer, in your own user folder. So do your filament measurements, apart from the few numbers the anonymous reports include (below). There is no account.

The app makes the outside connections below. Activating your licence, which only happens when you do it, sends your licence key and your install code, which is a short code derived from your computer, to our activation service. When the app opens, it asks polychrome3d.com for the newest version number, at most once a day, and that request carries the app's own version number and nothing else. Our web host records that request the way it records any visit to the website (the time and a rough country), which lets us see roughly how many copies of each version are in use. You can turn the check off in the app's Licence window. It cannot tell us who you are.

Until your licence is settled, about one week after you activate it, the app also downloads a public list of refunded licences from polychrome3d.com, about once a week. The request contains nothing about you, your licence or your computer: no licence key, no install code and no version number. Like any web request, it shows our host your IP address. The list itself holds no names or email addresses. Once a check made at least a week after you activate does not find your licence on the list, the licence is settled and the app never downloads the list again. This check is separate from the update check, and turning the update check off does not stop it.

The free trial. Starting the free trial, and building or downloading a plate during it, sends your install code and scrambled codes made from your computer's hardware to our licence service, so it can allow one trial per computer and check that your trial is still active. The service keeps those scrambled codes with your trial's start and end dates, the date it was first used, and a count of builds and downloads for the current day, for as long as it needs them to allow one trial per computer. It also keeps a scrambled code made from your internet address for 30 days, to limit how many trials one connection can start; it never stores the address itself. None of these codes can be turned back into your hardware details or your address, and no picture or plate is sent. This is why building or downloading plates during the trial needs an internet connection; a licence works offline.

Anonymous usage and crash reports. Polychrome sends us short anonymous reports so we can see whether the app works and how it is used: when it starts and stops, how a plate build went and how long it took, which kinds of files you download or send to a slicer, which buttons and settings are used and how often, the filaments a plate was built with, and the name of any error or crash, each with the time it happened. With each start come your computer's memory size, its number of processor cores, its operating system version and type, how many days ago Polychrome was installed, whether it is running on a trial or a licence, and whether it is in light or dark mode. A build report also carries the plate's size, layer count and main settings, and for each filament its measured light numbers and whether they were measured or estimated. Filament names come only from Polychrome's built-in catalogue; a filament you named yourself is sent as "custom", without its name. Your pictures, your file names and the names you type never leave your computer. Each report carries a random number made on your computer the first time Polychrome starts. It is not your licence key, not your install code and not linked to your purchase, and resetting Polychrome's settings replaces it. Reports go to our own licence service at activate.polychrome3d.com, which runs on Cloudflare. It stores them without your internet address and deletes them automatically after at most three months. You can turn them off at any time: open the licence window (the Licence button at the top right) and untick "Send anonymous usage and crash reports". This works the same during the free trial and with a licence, and reports that were not sent yet are deleted from your computer at once.

None of these connections sends your pictures, your photos or your plates. The only filament information that leaves your computer is what the anonymous reports above describe.

Plate files made by a licensed copy carry one line of hidden metadata: the licence type and a short code made from your licence number, which only we can match to a licence. Nothing else about you or your computer is in the file, and the app does not send it anywhere.

If you send us a support message you may choose to attach the app's log files. They describe what the app did, not what you made. Read them first if you would rather not send something.

Gumroad is the merchant of record for every purchase. You give your payment details to Gumroad, not to us. We never see or hold a card number.

From Gumroad's dashboard we can see the order information they give a seller: your email address, the product and tier you bought, the amount, the country used for tax, and whether the order was refunded or disputed. We use it to support you, to handle refunds, to tell you about updates to Polychrome, and to keep the records the tax authorities require. Gumroad keeps its own records under its own policy.

Canadian privacy law, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, gives you the right to ask what personal information we hold about you, to ask for a copy, to ask us to correct it, and to ask us to delete it. Write to [email protected] and we will answer within thirty days.

We keep support emails and purchase records for as long as we need them for support, accounts and tax, and then we delete them. We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it except with the providers named here, which are Gumroad for selling, Cloudflare for hosting, activation, the free trial and usage reports, Plausible for counting visits to the website, and Resend for email.

Polychrome is not meant for children, and we do not knowingly collect anything from them.