TabBar for PowerPoint

1. Data collection

TabBar for PowerPoint collects no data about you. There are no analytics, no tracking, no advertising, and no third-party measurement of any kind. We do not build a profile of you, and we do not sell or share information with anyone.

2. How TabBar works on your Mac

To show your open presentations as tabs, TabBar uses the macOS Accessibility API to look at Microsoft PowerPoint's windows. It reads the titles of those windows — the presentation names — so it can list them in the tab bar, and it raises a window when you click its tab. It also reads the active window's position and size so the bar can sit directly above it.

TabBar does not read, store, or transmit the contents of your presentations. It works only with window titles and window geometry, entirely on your Mac, and none of it is ever sent anywhere.

macOS requires your explicit permission for this. The app can see nothing at all until you grant Accessibility access in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility, and you can revoke it there at any time.

That describes the direct download. The Mac App Store edition, which since 18 September 2026 ships as part of TabBar for Office, cannot use the Accessibility API at all — a sandboxed app is not permitted to. It reaches PowerPoint through a small helper script instead, and because Apple requires such a script to live in the app's own Application Scripts folder, and a sandboxed app may not write there unaided, macOS shows you a folder panel once. TabBar accepts only that one folder and nothing else you might select; a macOS security-scoped bookmark to it is then stored on your Mac, alongside your other preferences, so an app update does not ask you again. You are also asked once for permission to control PowerPoint. Neither is asked again.

In that edition a presentation is brought forward by handing macOS its file path, because PowerPoint offers no command that focuses a presentation by name. So the App Store edition reads the path of each open presentation as well as its name. Both are held in memory only, for as long as the presentation is open, and neither is stored or sent anywhere. A presentation you have never saved has no path; it appears in the bar but cannot be switched to. The helper is written by TabBar, regenerated on every launch, reads nothing else on your Mac, and is removed with the app.

3. Personal information

TabBar requires no account, no sign-in, and no email address. We do not ask for, collect, or store personal information. The one exception is described in the next section: activating a licence sends your computer's name to our licensing provider so you can see which Macs a licence is being used on.

4. Your licence and purchases

TabBar for PowerPoint is a one-time purchase. Payments are processed entirely by Lemon Squeezy, our licensing and payment provider — we never see or store your card details, billing address, or payment information.

When you activate your licence, the app sends your licence key and your computer's name (the name macOS shows for your Mac) to Lemon Squeezy, so the licence can be tied to that machine and you can manage your activations. On later launches it sends the licence key and the resulting activation identifier to confirm the licence is still valid. Nothing else is transmitted. Lemon Squeezy processes this under its own privacy policy: lemonsqueezy.com/privacy.

If your Mac is offline, the app keeps working on the last successful check for a 30-day grace period, so a dropped connection does not lock you out.

5. Network connections

TabBar makes network connections to exactly two destinations, and to nothing else:

• api.lemonsqueezy.com — licence activation and validation, as described above.
• storage.bdtech.app — the update feed and the app updates themselves.

6. Automatic updates

The app checks for updates in the background every 48 hours, and whenever you choose "Check for Updates" from the menu. Updates are delivered with Sparkle, a widely used open-source update framework for macOS. Each download's cryptographic signature is verified before anything is installed. Update checks do not send a system profile or any information about your Mac — Sparkle's optional profiling is switched off.

7. Data stored on your device

Everything the app keeps, it keeps on your Mac:

• Your licence key and activation identifier, in the app's own folder under ~/Library/Application Support/com.yybd.PowerPointTabs/.
• Your preferences — the tab bar's width, whether the bar is shown or hidden, whether the app launches at login — in the standard system settings store (UserDefaults).

None of this is transmitted. Deleting the app and that Application Support folder removes it completely.

8. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Any changes will be reflected on this page, with the "Last updated" date above revised accordingly.