Privacy Policy

What we do not collect

Lynsi requires no account and integrates no advertising, user profiling, or third‑party analytics. The developer does not receive, store, or sell your clipboard contents, files, photos, videos, screen contents, camera video, device contacts, or precise location.

What is transferred between devices

Only when you enable the corresponding feature or act deliberately does Lynsi transfer the following between your paired HarmonyOS device and Mac, over the local network or a USB cable:

• text you copy and allow to sync, and images too once the paired Mac has Lynsi Pro;
• files you actively send through the file picker, drag and drop, or the system share sheet, and links and text you deliberately share or send;
• the album listings, thumbnails, and previews you authorize, videos you play on the Mac, and the photos and videos you deliberately save, drag out, or copy on the Mac;
• photo deletion requests you start on the Mac (Lynsi Pro; every deletion must be confirmed on the phone);
• new screenshots taken on the phone, delivered to the Mac's clipboard, after you turn on the "screenshot push" switch (off by default);
• screen video frames you share through the system screen‑recording consent;
• after you tap “Use as Mac camera” on the phone (requires Lynsi Pro on the Mac), the live picture from the phone's lens and the orientation used to keep it upright, without sound.

This data is exchanged directly between your two devices and is not uploaded to any Lynsi server.

Information stored locally

So your devices can reconnect automatically next time, the app stores the pairing address, pairing token, device name, and the Mac's certificate on the device itself. The Mac also keeps a list of paired devices: each phone's name (the model name the phone reports), a device identifier the phone generates at random when Lynsi is installed, the credential issued to that phone, and when it was paired and last connected; unpairing a phone on the Mac deletes its entry. Files fully received on the Mac are saved to “Downloads/Handoff”; files received on the phone are first kept in the app's private directory and are only exported to a destination you choose after you choose to save them. With “Send later” turned on (requires Lynsi Pro on the Mac), files you share to Lynsi while the Mac can't be reached are kept as a copy in the phone app's private directory (up to 2 GB) and are sent, then deleted, once it connects; you can also remove them at any time under Files → Needs attention. Links and text are not kept.

Purchases and subscriptions

Lynsi's advanced features (Lynsi Pro) are offered through App Store in‑app purchases, including monthly and annual subscriptions and a one‑time lifetime unlock. All transactions, payment methods, and subscription management are handled by Apple; the developer does not receive, store, or sell your payment information, Apple ID, or billing details. The Mac stores only the local entitlement state — whether Pro is unlocked — to decide whether advanced features are available, and tells a paired phone that state when it connects; the phone caches the last state it was told so it can decide whether “Send later” is available while the Mac is offline. That state is not uploaded to any server. You can review, manage, or cancel subscriptions at any time in your App Store account settings.

How permissions are used

• Network and network state (including whether the Wi‑Fi hotspot is on): to discover and connect to a Mac on the same local network, and after a drop, to tell whether the phone is still on a network that can reach the Mac before it keeps reconnecting. On the Mac, local network access lets the phone discover the Mac on the local network and connect to it.
• Bluetooth (phone and Mac): to find a paired Mac nearby and obtain its connection address (for example across subnets, or on networks that block device discovery), and to let the Mac wake the phone over Bluetooth so it can reconnect after the system has frozen it. Apart from the fields the Bluetooth protocol requires, each side's broadcast contains only a service identifier: its prefix is fixed, so nearby devices can tell that a device running Lynsi is present; the remaining bytes are derived from the pairing credential and a 15‑minute time window and can be recognized only by paired devices. Broadcasts contain no device name, manufacturer data, or any of your content. The Mac's connection address is kept only in a Bluetooth characteristic that has to be read explicitly, masked with the pairing credential; the Bluetooth connection the Mac makes to wake the phone carries no data. In addition, if you turn on “Enable keyboard input”, the Mac advertises a keyboard named “Lynsi Keyboard” only while pairing; during setup Lynsi on the phone temporarily keeps the wake-up broadcast above on and, once the Mac confirms over the paired, encrypted connection, starts a system Bluetooth pairing with that Mac (which you confirm in the system prompt), and on newer systems also connects it for you afterwards (see “Optional remote control”). Bluetooth is not used for location. The phone asks for this permission only after it first connects to a Mac successfully.
• Clipboard read: to read text only when you enable auto‑sync or tap “Send clipboard to Mac”; tapping “Send clipboard” on the home‑screen card also reads it once. Once the paired Mac has Lynsi Pro, images read this way are synced to the Mac too.
• Photo and video read: in two cases, neither of which uploads anything to any server — when gallery sharing is on and you browse or back up from the Mac, to read the photos and videos you selected; and when you turn on screenshot push, to watch for and read new screenshots so they can be sent to the Mac. Both switches are yours, and turning either off stops the reading immediately.
• Photo and video write: used only in two cases, and requested the first time you do either — when you “Save to gallery” photos or videos received on the phone; and when you delete phone photos from the Mac (requires Lynsi Pro, with gallery sharing on). Every deletion must be confirmed on the phone, and deleted photos move to the system's Recently Deleted album, where they can be restored for 30 days.
• Camera (phone) and camera access (Mac): the phone uses its lens only after you tap “Use as Mac camera” and only while Lynsi is in the foreground; it captures video only, never sound (Lynsi does not request microphone permission). The picture is sent over the local connection into Lynsi's virtual camera on the Mac, “Lynsi · Phone Camera”; Lynsi does not record or store it. If you turn on “Also send the mirrored screen to the virtual camera” in the Mac's settings, the mirrored screen is sent to that virtual camera too. The Mac requests camera access only to feed this virtual camera and never opens the Mac's built‑in camera; before first use you approve installing Lynsi's camera extension on the Mac. Once you select this camera in a meeting or other app, how that app transmits or stores the picture is governed by that app.
• USB accessory access: when you connect by cable, HarmonyOS asks you to allow Lynsi to access the USB accessory (your Mac); it is used only to transfer data between the two devices, and the system may ask again when you reconnect the cable.
• Notifications (Mac): when a file or a link from the phone arrives, the Mac shows a system notification containing the file name and size, or the link's title and address; macOS asks for permission the first time one is needed, and you can turn notifications off in System Settings at any time.
• Background running: to keep the cross‑device link alive while connecting, transferring, or mirroring.
• System screen recording: every start of mirroring is requested and explicitly authorized by HarmonyOS.

Connection security

Connections use transport encryption and pin the Mac's certificate captured at first pairing. The application protocol adds an independent pairing‑token check; clipboard, file, and gallery requests are not processed until it passes. Choosing “Unpair” for a phone, or “Unpair all phones…”, on the Mac invalidates the affected phones' credentials immediately.

Optional remote control

Control Phone in 3.0 requires an Apple Silicon Mac and a phone connected over the local network. You must enable wireless debugging in the phone's Developer options and trust the Mac on the phone. Debugging grants broader access than ordinary Lynsi pairing and is authorized separately; ordinary mirroring and file transfers do not require it. You must deliberately enable and authorize control the first time. After a successful control session, the same phone is connected automatically when mirroring starts in future by default; you can turn off “Turn on control when mirroring starts” in settings. Keep the phone unlocked.

When control is enabled, the Mac sends taps, swipes, keys and text you explicitly submit over a separate local wireless debugging connection. It also reads display dimensions and window focus to detect the lock screen. This information is not uploaded to our servers. Debugging keys, each phone's port, whether it has been controlled successfully, and the automatic-control preference are stored locally on the Mac. Clipboard sync keeps working during control; sending text replaces the phone clipboard without restoring its previous content.

Stopping control, ending mirroring, switching phones or disconnecting, switching to the gallery or files, changing to camera video, or putting the Mac to sleep or quitting Lynsi closes the control connection and clears pending input; an action already executing on the phone may finish. Locking the phone stops control; unlock it and enable control again. Switching to another Mac app keeps the control connection open, so you can return to Lynsi and carry on. Stopping control by hand keeps it off for the rest of that mirror. You can turn off wireless debugging or revoke trust in the phone's Developer options. Unpairing in Lynsi (including “Unpair all phones…”) does not revoke this separate authorization.

“Compose on This Mac” in the control panel uses your Mac's input method to compose text locally, with candidates shown on the Mac and no involvement from the phone's input method. After composing, Return sends the whole text to the phone's current cursor. This needs no Bluetooth keyboard pairing; it uses the wireless debugging connection and replaces the phone clipboard. The text is not uploaded to our servers.

You can also choose “Enable keyboard input” to have the phone use this Mac as the Bluetooth keyboard “Lynsi Keyboard,” with text composed by the phone's own input method. Setup requires one Bluetooth pairing: the 3.0 phone app helps start pairing while keeping Lynsi connected, and you confirm the matching codes in both system prompts. Some systems require you to connect the keyboard by hand when prompted. Choosing the manual setup flow temporarily pauses Lynsi's connection, which resumes when setup finishes or is cancelled. This Bluetooth connection carries no keystrokes or content; it only tells the phone that a keyboard is attached. Keys still travel over the wireless debugging connection and are not uploaded to our servers either. The keyboard serves only phones paired on this Mac, and the Mac advertises it only while pairing; the phone connects to it by itself when it is near the Mac. To tell whether the keyboard is attached, a recent phone app reads the phone's list of input devices and tells the Mac only whether “Lynsi Keyboard” is among them, over the paired, encrypted connection; with an older phone app this is read over the wireless debugging connection, only during remote control. During setup the Mac reads its own list of paired Bluetooth devices to tell when pairing has completed; that list is used only on the Mac and is never sent anywhere. You can disable keyboard input in Lynsi's settings and unpair it in the phone's Bluetooth settings.

Logs

Diagnostic logs may record connection state, message types, data sizes, timestamps, and error information that contains no content. Logs do not record clipboard text, file contents, photos, videos, screen contents, or camera video.

Your control

You can turn off clipboard or gallery sharing, stop mirroring, or tap “Stop camera” on the phone to end the camera at any time; a dropped connection or turning video off in a meeting app does not stop capture on the phone, while switching to another app or locking the phone does. Disconnecting only ends the current session, and the pairing stays valid. “Unpair” next to a phone under “Paired devices” on the Mac deletes that phone's credential and disconnects it at once, and the current pairing QR code is replaced; “Unpair all phones…” deletes every phone's credential; “Unpair” on the phone deletes only the pairing stored on the phone, and the Mac keeps listing that phone until you unpair it there. Refusing Bluetooth permission or turning Bluetooth off does not affect local network or USB connections; only nearby discovery, wake‑up and the Bluetooth keyboard stop working. Uninstalling the phone app removes the pairing information and staged content in its app‑private directory; deleting the Mac app does not automatically clear the pairing information and settings it stored on the Mac, so to clear the list of paired devices, choose “Unpair all phones…” before deleting it. Files you have already saved into system folders or the gallery are yours to manage.

Children and policy updates

Lynsi is not designed for children and does not knowingly collect children's personal information. If this policy changes because of a feature change, we will update the effective date on this page and, for significant changes, note it in the app's release notes.

Contact us

For questions about privacy or data handling, you can reach the developer at:

• Developer: Ma Hui
• Support email: [email protected]

You may also reach us through the developer support channel listed on the app store product page.