Thock — Keyboard Input

Why the permission is needed

Thock plays a sound when you press a key. To do that, macOS must tell Thock that a key was pressed, which is why the app asks for the Input Monitoring permission. We want to be precise about what this does and does not mean.

What Thock receives

macOS notifies Thock that a key was pressed or released, and which key it was. Thock uses this for one purpose only: choosing which sound to play, how loud, and from which direction. The key identity is used in memory at the moment of the keystroke and is then discarded.

What Thock never does

Thock does not record, log, store or transmit what you type. There is no keystroke history, no text buffer and no file on disk containing anything you have typed. Thock is also not able to modify or block your keystrokes: it observes them in listen-only mode and passes them through untouched.

No network access

Thock is distributed through the Mac App Store and runs in Apple's App Sandbox. It is built without the network entitlement (com.apple.security.network.client). This is a technical restriction enforced by macOS, not a promise: the app has no ability to send data anywhere, to us or to anyone else.

Statistics

Thock can show you how many keys you have pressed — a total, a per-day count and a peak typing speed. These are counts only. Thock does not record which keys were pressed, so no statistic can reveal anything about the content of your typing. All of it is stored locally on your Mac and is removed when you delete the app.

Sound packs

If you import your own sound pack, Thock copies the audio files you selected into its own folder on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded.

Turning the permission off

You can revoke the Input Monitoring permission at any time in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring. Thock will stop producing sound and will continue to work normally in every other respect.