Privacy policy

In short: Shellway collects no personal data. There is no account, no analytics and no server of ours holding your hosts, keys or passwords. They live in one vault file, encrypted on your device with your vault password.

Who we are

Shellway is made by Nicholas Xerri, an independent developer based in Malta ("we", "us"). For anything about privacy, email support@shellway.app or write to P.O. Box 3, Mellieħa Post Office, Triq il-Madonna ta' Fatima, Mellieħa, Malta.

Your vault

Hosts, keys, passwords, snippets, port forwards and settings are stored in a single vault file. It is encrypted on your device with XChaCha20-Poly1305, using a key derived from your vault password with Argon2id.

• We never receive your vault, your vault password or anything inside it.
• If you choose to keep the vault in iCloud Drive, Apple stores the encrypted file in your own iCloud account so your other devices can open it. Apple cannot read it either.
• If you turn on Face ID or Touch ID unlock, a key for your vault is kept in your device's keychain, where only Face ID or Touch ID can release it. It never leaves the device.
• Nobody, including us, can recover a forgotten vault password.

Your connections

When you connect, Shellway talks directly to the servers you add, over SSH. We don't see, relay or log that traffic. Your servers will record what servers normally record, such as your IP address and login time, under their owner's own policies.

AI command help (optional)

AI command help is off by default. If you turn it on, Shellway asks for your consent and you add your own Anthropic API key. Then, each time you use it:

• The text you type into the AI box, and your server's operating system and shell, are sent to Anthropic to produce an answer, under Anthropic's privacy policy and your agreement with them.
• Terminal output, host names, addresses, user names, keys and passwords are never sent.
• Requests go from your device straight to Anthropic, not through us.

You can turn it off at any time in Settings.

Purchases and licence keys

On iPhone and iPad, Shellway Pro is bought through Apple's App Store. Apple handles the payment and tells the app only that Pro is unlocked. See Apple's privacy policy.

Licence keys for the Mac are sold through our reseller, Lemon Squeezy, which handles payment, tax and your receipt as the merchant of record. When you enter a key in Shellway, the app sends the key and an anonymous installation name to Lemon Squeezy to activate it, and checks it again at most once a day. See Lemon Squeezy's privacy policy.

What we don't do

• No accounts, sign-up or email address needed to use the app.
• No advertising, analytics, tracking or third-party SDKs that send data out of the app.
• No selling or sharing of data, ever.

Crash reports

If you have turned on "Share with App Developers" in your device's privacy settings, Apple may share anonymous crash and usage reports with us. You control this in Settings, under Privacy & Security and then Analytics & Improvements.

When you contact us

If you email support, we receive your email address and whatever you write, and use them only to answer you. You can choose to include a support report from Settings, Help and support. Shellway shows you the whole report first and only you send it; the app makes no network request for it. It holds the app and system versions, device model, free storage rounded to a band, whether Pro is on, a few settings and up to 20 error codes with the hour they happened. It never holds host names, addresses, user names, keys, passwords or file names. We delete support emails 12 months after the conversation ends. Please never send your vault password, private keys or server passwords.

This website

shellway.app uses no cookies, analytics or trackers. It is hosted by Cloudflare, which processes basic connection data such as IP addresses for a short time to deliver the site and protect it from attacks.

Children

Shellway is a tool for IT work and is not directed at children.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask to see, correct or delete personal data we hold. In practice that means support emails only, since we hold nothing else. To remove everything Shellway stores on a device, delete the app and its vault file.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Information and Data Protection Commissioner in Malta at idpc.org.mt, or to the data protection authority where you live.

Changes

If a future feature needs to send any new data off your device, it will be off by default, it will ask for your consent first, and we will update this policy before it ships. The date at the top shows the latest version.