CratePrivacy Policy
Last updated 4 November 2026
Crate identifies, tags and organizes music files on your Mac. Your music stays on your Mac. This page lists the few things Crate sends elsewhere. Crate is made by Mulindi Enterprises ("we"), which is responsible for the information described here.
What Crate doesn't do
- No account, no sign-in.
- No analytics, advertising or tracking. We don't sell or share data for marketing.
- Your audio files are never uploaded.
Identifying songs
To identify a song and find its details, Crate sends the following to these services. None of it identifies you.
| Service | What's sent | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Shazam (Apple) | An audio fingerprint: a short signature computed from a few seconds of the song, not the audio itself | To recognise the song |
| MusicBrainz | The song's ISRC (recording code), or its title and artist | To find the album, track number and year |
| Apple's iTunes catalog | The song's Apple Music ID, or its title and artist, and your store's country code | To find album details MusicBrainz doesn't have |
| Cover Art Archive | The album's MusicBrainz ID | To download album artwork |
Like any website, these services can see the internet address a request comes from. Their own privacy policies apply: Apple, MetaBrainz (MusicBrainz and Cover Art Archive).
Buying Crate Pro on this website
Paddle.com, our reseller, runs the checkout. Paddle collects your payment details, email address and country (for tax), and keeps them under its own privacy policy. We never see your card details.
When the order is complete, Paddle tells us your name, email address and order number. We use them to make your license key, email it to you, and help you if you write in. The email is sent through Resend.
Your license key
Your name and email are written inside the key, so Crate can show who it's licensed to; anyone you give the key to can see them.
When you activate the key, and every few days after, Crate sends our license server the key, a random ID that Crate made for this Mac, and the Mac's name (as set in System Settings › General › Sharing), so you can tell your Macs apart if you ask us. That's how a key works on three Macs, and how a refunded key stops working. Nothing else about your Mac is sent. The server runs on Cloudflare.
We keep this for as long as your license exists, because you'll need the key again on a new Mac. Removing the license in Crate removes that Mac from the list. To have your record deleted, or to see what we hold, write to us through Support.
Buying in the Mac App Store
Subscriptions and the one-time purchase in the App Store version are handled by Apple. Crate never sees your payment details or your Apple Account; it only learns whether you have Crate Pro.
Updates
The version sold on this website checks once a day for a new version, by downloading a small file from GitHub, where Crate's website is hosted. GitHub can see your internet address and Crate's version number. The App Store version is updated by the App Store.
What Crate keeps on your Mac
Crate's settings, its track list, a cache of song details, and a list of the files it has organized (so it can spot duplicates) are stored in Crate's own folder on your Mac. They're never sent anywhere. Deleting Crate removes them.
When you use an iPod with Crate, everything happens between your Mac and the iPod.
Notifications
If you turn on Organize automatically for the watch folder, Crate can show a notification when it organizes new downloads. These are local notifications and aren't sent through any server.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to see, correct or delete the information we hold about you, or to object to how it's used. Write to us through Support and we'll answer within a month. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.
Changes
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes too. If a change affects information we already have, we'll say so here before it takes effect.