Last updated: 27 October 2026
GrelDesk works on your device and needs no account. Your workspace — panels, layouts, notes, themes and settings — is stored in your browser and is never sent to us unless you create an account. The app does tell our server, once a day, that it was used (section 5), and some widgets fetch data from other services when you use them (section 6). This policy explains exactly what goes where.
GrelDesk is produced by Grinning Elephant, LLC ("we", "us"). If you have a question about this policy or your data, contact us at support@grel.ai.
Without an account, the following never leaves your browser and we have no copy of it:
This is stored using your browser's IndexedDB and local storage. Uninstalling the extension or clearing site data removes it. If you run the optional GrelDesk desktop companion, the extension talks to it over a connection that stays on your own computer.
If you have Premium, your app settings and theme choice are synchronised
across your own devices using Chrome's built-in storage.sync.
That data travels through your own Google account, not through us, and we
cannot read it. Layouts and widget data are not synced this way.
An account exists to back up your workspace and to hold a Premium subscription. You can sign in with Google, or with an email address (by a password or by a one-time link we email you). Creating one stores:
| Data | Why | Kept for |
|---|---|---|
| Email address(es) | Sign-in and account recovery | Until you delete the account |
| Password, if you set one (hashed with scrypt — never the password itself) | Sign-in | Until you delete the account |
| Display name and profile picture, if you set them in the Account dialog | Showing who is signed in | Until you change them or delete the account |
| Whether you want the monthly newsletter, and when and where you last chose (sign-up or the Account dialog) | Sending it only to people who asked for it, and showing that they did | Until you change it or delete the account |
| Sign-in session | Keeping you signed in | 30 days from your last use, or until you sign out |
| Sign-in and password-reset links we email you (stored only as a hash), with the IP address and browser that asked for them | Security and abuse investigation | 7 days after the link is used or expires |
| Sign-in attempts: the email address typed, the IP address, the time and whether it worked | Slowing down password guessing | 7 days |
If you register but never confirm your email address, the unconfirmed address and the unused account are deleted automatically within a couple of days. Emails from us (confirmation, sign-in links, password resets) are sent through Google's mail service.
The newsletter is opt-in. We send the monthly GrelDesk newsletter only if you ask for it: the box at sign-up is unticked, and you can turn it on or off any time in the Account dialog. Every newsletter has a link to unsubscribe. Without it, we email you only about your account (the messages above, and receipts if you buy Premium).
With an account, GrelDesk automatically uploads a copy of your workspace — weekly, or daily with Premium — so it can be restored later. The backup is the workspace data described in section 2 (not files you opened in a viewer, and not your browser's own bookmarks, history, tabs or downloads). Images in your workspace, including a profile picture you set, are uploaded alongside it. Both are stored in Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, privately — public access to the storage container is disabled, and each upload or download uses a short-lived signed link issued to you.
Older backups are deleted automatically as new ones are taken: without Premium we keep the most recent backup from each device; with Premium we keep 30 days of them. Uploaded images are deleted once no remaining backup uses them.
If you choose this, we receive your Google account identifier and email address from Google, and we store the resulting access token encrypted (AES-256-GCM).
If you connect Google Calendar or Google Tasks so those widgets can work,
Google asks you once for three permissions, and gives us tokens for that
access: to see your calendar events (calendar.readonly), to add,
change and delete events (calendar.events), and to see, add,
change and complete your tasks (tasks). One connection serves both
widgets. Changes are made only when you make them in a widget. We store them
encrypted (AES-256-GCM) and use them only to obtain fresh
access for your browser, which then fetches your events and tasks directly
from Google — your calendar and task contents do not pass through our server.
Your browser also keeps a copy of the current token so the widgets can work.
You can disconnect at any time, which revokes the token with Google and
deletes our stored copy.
GrelDesk's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We use that information only to show and change your own events and tasks in GrelDesk at your request. We do not sell it, use it for advertising, use it to train AI models, or transfer it to anyone else, and no person at GrelDesk reads it.
Premium subscriptions are bought from inside the app and handled by Stripe. We give Stripe your account's email address; Stripe processes your card details — we never see or store them. We keep your Stripe customer reference and a record of each subscription (what was bought, the price, its status and when the current period ends) so we know whether your account is Premium.
So we can tell how much GrelDesk is being used, the app keeps one record per browser profile per day on our server. It contains a random identifier the app generates for that browser profile, which browser it is (Chrome, Edge and so on), and the times of day, to the minute, that you opened it. The app collects these times in your browser and sends them once a day, attached to its daily check with our server. This happens whether or not you have an account. If you are signed in, the record is linked to your account; if you are not, it is not linked to anyone.
Our server also stores the IP address the day's first check-in came from with that record. The app does not look up or send your IP address itself; our server takes it from the connection, as every server receives it.
This is deliberately coarse. It is not per-click analytics, and there is no advertising or third-party tracking in GrelDesk. We keep these records; they are not deleted on a schedule.
So we know which parts of GrelDesk to work on, the app also sends, once a day,
a short anonymous summary: which widgets are in your layout
(and how many of each), and the site names of your launcher
icons — the host name only, such as mail.google.com, never a page,
a path, a title or a note — with how many icons each site has and how many
times one was clicked since the last summary.
If you replace the picture of a launcher whose icon had stopped loading, the app also sends that fix: the site's host name, the address of the broken picture and the address of the new one. We review these, and the ones we approve mend the same broken icon for everyone.
Neither is linked to you. The server notes only that your browser's random identifier (the one described above) sent a summary that day, so it is counted once; the counts themselves are added to daily totals that hold no identifier, account or IP address, and the fixes are stored without one. Turn both off in Settings → General → Help improve GrelDesk; while it is off, nothing is sent.
Locations. To see roughly where GrelDesk is used, our owner-only report sends each IP address it has not seen before to ipapi.co, once, to get an approximate city, region and country. Only the address is sent. The answer is stored with the address so it is never asked about again.
We also count requests to each part of our server per day (a count only, with no details of who made them).
Some features fetch data as you use them. Apart from GrelDesk's own content (the first row), these requests go directly from your browser to the service, not through us, so the service sees your IP address like any website you visit. Widgets can only reach the addresses listed for them.
| Service | When | What it sees |
|---|---|---|
| GrelDesk content (our Azure storage, and our server) | At start and when content is shown: app settings we publish, the ready-made RSS feed list, "Of the day" lists and the background library | That a GrelDesk browser asked for a file |
| Google favicon service | Showing icons for launchers, bookmarks and site packs | The site addresses the icons are for |
| Google or DuckDuckGo | The search box on the GrelDesk web app (greldesk.app) only, while you type (whichever engine you picked; Bing and Yahoo get no suggestion requests). In the Chrome extension, a search goes to your browser's own search engine and no suggestions are requested. | What you have typed so far |
| Open-Meteo | Weather widget | The place you set, and its coordinates |
| Zippopotam.us | Weather widget, if you enter a postal code | The postal code |
| ipapi.co, then ipwho.is if that fails | Weather widget with no place set (at most once a day) | Your IP address, which they turn into an approximate location |
| ipapi.co | Google Maps widget, when first added with no place set | Your IP address, which it turns into an approximate location |
| Google Maps | Google Maps widget | The place you set, as a standard Google Maps embed |
| Google Calendar and Google Tasks | Those widgets, once you connect them | Your requests for your own events and tasks |
| Feed and list publishers | RSS widget, and "Of the day" lists from an address you give | The feed or list address you chose |
| Websites you put in a panel | A web page shown in a panel | The same as visiting that site |
Depending on where you live you may have additional rights over your personal data, including access, correction and erasure. Contact us at the address above and we will act on it.
greldesk.com counts visits: the first time a browser opens the site, it adds one to a daily count for the link it came from (for example a campaign tag in the address), and leaves a mark in that browser's local storage so it is not counted again. No cookie is set and nothing else is recorded about the visit. The site's fonts are loaded from Google Fonts.
Referral links. If you arrive by a link from one of our
associates (an address with ?via= and a code), the site keeps that
code and the date in your browser's local storage. If you then click a link to
the Chrome Web Store, the site sends us the code and its date, and we keep it
with your IP address. If GrelDesk is installed from the same address within
24 hours, we note the code against that installation — and against your
account if you later sign in — so the associate can be credited. The IP
address is used only in those 24 hours, and deleted within two days either
way. The code is used for nothing else.
GrelDesk is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data.
Account and usage data is stored in a PostgreSQL database hosted in the United States, and backups, images and server logs in Microsoft Azure Blob Storage in the United States. Our server writes an operational log, which is deleted after 30 days. If you use GrelDesk from outside the United States, your data is transferred there.
If we change how data is handled we will update this page and change the date at the top. If the change is significant we will say so in the app.