Privacy Policy

Dashboard for Ecowitt, also called Weathervane ("the app," "we," "us"), is developed by Leech Software, Inc., an independent software studio based in New York. This policy explains what information the Mac app handles, why, and what it does not do with it.

By using the app, you agree to the practices described here. If you do not agree, please do not use the app.

01 — What the App Does

The app is a native macOS client for Ecowitt weather stations. It lives in your Mac's menu bar and shows your station's live readings (temperature, humidity, wind, rain, pressure, and similar data) in a dashboard panel, in station windows you can keep on the desktop, and in small windows for individual sensors. It retrieves those readings in one of two ways, as you choose:

• Ecowitt Cloud — the app signs in with your own Ecowitt account and reads your stations directly from Ecowitt's own service.
• Your local network — the app reads an Ecowitt gateway or console directly over your own Wi‑Fi or LAN, with no account and no internet connection involved.

02 — Information You Provide

If you connect through Ecowitt Cloud, you sign in with your Ecowitt account credentials (your Ecowitt.net API key and/or application key). These credentials are:

• Sent directly from your Mac to Ecowitt's own servers to authenticate and retrieve your station data — the app does not operate a backend server that receives, stores, or has access to your Ecowitt credentials.
• Stored only on your Mac, in the macOS Keychain, so you don't have to sign in every time you open the app.
• Never transmitted to Leech Software, sold, or shared with any third party other than Ecowitt itself, as necessary to provide the app's core function.

If you connect over your local network instead, the app stores only the gateway's address on your Mac. No Ecowitt account or credentials are involved at all.

Your Ecowitt station data (temperature, humidity, wind, etc.) is displayed in the app and is cached locally on your Mac — for example, so the menu bar and your desktop windows can show the latest known reading, and so history graphs can go back over time. This cached data stays on your Mac and is not collected by us.

If you choose Email Us… inside the app, your message includes a short diagnostic report about your setup — app and macOS version, Mac model, language, time zone, data source, and which gateway and sensors were found. It never includes your readings, your keys, your passwords, or your device addresses. Nothing is sent until you send the message yourself.

If you contact us directly (for example, through the contact form on this website), we receive whatever information you choose to include — typically your name, email address, and message — solely to respond to your inquiry.

03 — Information We Do Not Collect

The app does not use location services, analytics SDKs, crash-reporting SDKs, advertising networks, or any third-party tracking technology. We do not build advertising profiles, and we do not sell or rent personal information to anyone, for any purpose.

04 — Third-Party Services

Depending on how you use it, the app connects to the Ecowitt API/service to retrieve the weather station data associated with your account. Your use of Ecowitt's service is governed by Ecowitt's own privacy policy (api.ecowitt.net) and terms, which we encourage you to review. Leech Software, Inc. is not affiliated with, and does not control, Ecowitt.

To show the forecast and radar, the app also requests public weather information for your station's location from the National Weather Service / NOAA and a forecast service. These requests carry only the location coordinates needed to return a forecast, and no account information or identifiers of any kind.

05 — Data Security

Credentials stored on your Mac are kept in the macOS Keychain, which is encrypted and sandboxed to the app. The app is sandboxed by macOS and distributed through the Mac App Store. Network requests to Ecowitt's API and the weather services use standard encrypted connections (HTTPS/TLS); readings taken directly from a gateway stay entirely on your own local network. No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure, but we don't operate a server-side database of user credentials or personal data that could itself be a target — because one doesn't exist.

06 — Data Retention & Deletion

Your Ecowitt credentials and any cached station data remain on your Mac only for as long as the app is installed. You can remove them at any time by changing the connection in Settings › Station, by deleting the app, or by quitting the app and deleting its container at ~/Library/Containers/com.leechsoftware.weathervane, which removes your keys and stored history. To revoke the app's access to your Ecowitt account entirely, delete the API key in your Ecowitt.net account settings.

07 — Children's Privacy

The app is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. The app's only "account" is your own Ecowitt account, which is not intended for use by children independently.

08 — Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy as the app changes. Material changes will be posted on this page. Continued use of the app after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

09 — Contact

Questions about this policy or how the app handles data can be sent through the contact form on the app's homepage (leechsoftware.com/dashboard-for-ecowitt-mac), or with Email Us… in the app's ••• menu.