LocalDNS
Legal

Privacy Policy

Effective 12 August 2026 · Last updated 12 August 2026

Short version: LocalDNS collects no data. The app has no analytics, no accounts, no ads, and no telemetry. It transmits nothing about you and communicates with no server operated by us or anyone else. On the Apple App Store this is declared as “Data Not Collected.” Because LocalDNS is open source, you can verify every statement below against the code.

This Privacy Policy explains how the LocalDNS application (“LocalDNS,” “the app,” “we,” “us”) handles information. It applies to the LocalDNS apps for macOS, Windows and Linux, the localdns command-line tool, and this website at localdns.selfmade.technology. LocalDNS is published by Selfmade Ninja Academy.

1. What we collect

Nothing. LocalDNS does not collect, store, sell, share, or transmit any personal data or usage data. Specifically:

  • No analytics or usage statistics.
  • No crash reporting or diagnostic uploads.
  • No advertising identifiers or tracking of any kind.
  • No account, sign-in, email address, or contact information.
  • No third-party analytics, ad, or tracking SDKs. The application has zero such dependencies.

Because the app collects nothing, there is no personal data for us to access, disclose, retain, or delete, and no data is transferred to us or to any third party.

2. Data stored on your device

LocalDNS is a developer tool, so it necessarily works with some configuration. All of it stays on your own computer, under your control, and is never sent anywhere:

  • Your rules and settings. The DNS rules you create (patterns such as *.myapp.test, their target addresses, TTLs, groups, and enable flags) are saved in a local rules.json file, plus small preference values in your operating system's standard settings store. These live inside the app's local storage on your machine.
  • The query log. LocalDNS shows a live diagnostics log of recent DNS lookups it answered. This log is held in memory only as a small ring buffer (about 200 entries), is never written to disk, and is cleared when the app quits.
  • Zone registration files. To make your OS route your zones to LocalDNS, the app creates small registration entries through your operating system's native mechanism (for example, files under /etc/resolver on macOS, NRPT rules on Windows, or a systemd-resolved routing domain on Linux). These contain only the zone names and the local server address. LocalDNS only ever touches entries it created, each marked as its own, and removes them on “Unregister All” or uninstall.

You can view, edit, export, or delete this data yourself at any time. Uninstalling the app and choosing “Unregister All” removes what LocalDNS created.

3. Network behavior

Understanding the network behavior is the clearest way to see why nothing is collected:

  • The embedded DNS server binds the loopback interface only (for example 127.0.0.1). It cannot receive packets from, or send answers to, any other machine. It answers only the zones you configure and nothing else.
  • The app makes no outbound internet connections for its own purposes. The only network activity it initiates is the in-app self-test, which sends a DNS query to 127.0.0.1 — the app's own server on your machine — to confirm it is answering. Nothing is sent to the internet.
  • DNS lookups for names you have not configured are not seen or handled by LocalDNS at all; they continue to flow through your normal system resolver exactly as before.

4. Third-party services

LocalDNS integrates no third-party analytics, advertising, tracking, or backend services, and includes no such SDKs. When you download the app from a distribution platform (for example the Apple App Store, or GitHub Releases), that platform's own privacy policy governs the download and any information the platform itself collects — that is outside LocalDNS's control and is not data LocalDNS gathers. We do not receive personal data from those platforms.

5. This website

This website is a static informational site. It does not use advertising or third-party tracking cookies, and it does not ask you to create an account or submit personal information. Like most web servers, the hosting infrastructure may keep standard, transient server logs (such as IP address and requested URL) for basic operation and security; these are not used to identify or profile you and are not combined with any app data. Outbound links (for example to GitHub) are governed by those sites' own privacy policies.

6. Children's privacy

LocalDNS is a developer utility intended for a general audience and is not directed to children. Because the app collects no personal data from anyone, it collects no data from children.

7. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we will update the text here and revise the “Last updated” date above. Material changes will be reflected on this page. Because the app is open source, any change in behavior is also visible in the public source history.

8. Contact

Questions about this policy or LocalDNS's privacy practices are welcome. The best way to reach us is through the project's public repository:

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