Planes Above is made by an independent developer in India. It has no accounts, no analytics and no server of its own. Here is exactly what it does with your data, what it costs, and what you get when you buy it.
Last updated 15 October 2026
Very little. What the app needs, it keeps on your Mac. A few services answer its questions, and each one learns only what it needs to answer.
| Service | What it receives | Why |
|---|---|---|
| adsb.lol | Your position rounded to about 1 km, and how far around you to look. The flight number or aircraft address of flights you track, and of a plane when it comes on screen. | To find the planes near you, follow your flights and draw a plane’s recent path |
| adsbdb.com | A plane’s callsign or airline code | To look up its route and airline |
| Planespotters.net | A plane’s aircraft address | To show a photo of it, with the photographer’s name |
| pics.avs.io | An airline’s two-letter code | To show the airline’s logo |
| Apple | If you allow Location Services, macOS works out where your Mac is. If you search for a place to watch, your search and your rough area go to Apple Maps, which sends back map images. | Your location, and finding a place |
| Dodo Payments | Outside India, once you buy: your licence key and your Mac’s model (for example Mac15,6), when you activate and about once a week after | To check your licence |
| GitHub | That a copy of the app is checking for an update, once a day. The check carries no ID. | To offer updates, and to count roughly how many copies are in use |
Each service also sees your IP address, as any website does, and its own privacy policy applies. Apart from Apple’s Location Services and, if you buy, Dodo’s record of your purchase, none of them learns who you are or exactly where you are, and none learns how you use the app.
Your settings, the place you watch, your tracked flights and, if you bought Planes Above, your licence key with the email address it was bought with. When you bring in a crew roster, Planes Above reads it on your Mac and keeps only the flights. The PDF is not stored or sent anywhere.
No analytics or tracking in the app, no crash reports, no advertising and no accounts. We don’t sell or share data about you, because we don’t have any.
Outside India, Dodo Payments sells Planes Above on our behalf as the merchant of record. They collect your name, email address, billing country and payment details to take the payment, handle tax, and email your receipt and licence key. Their privacy policy covers that. We can see each order (name, email, country, amount) so we can help with support and refunds.
Planes Above is not made for children under 13 and collects no personal data from anyone. If your child bought it without asking, write to us for a refund.
Wherever you live, including under Europe’s GDPR and India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, you can ask what we hold about you and have it corrected or deleted. Write to hello@planesabove.app and we’ll answer within 30 days. Complaints and grievances go to the same address.
Planes Above is free for everyone while it launches, and copies downloaded now stay free. After that it stays free in India, and new downloads everywhere else cost $10, paid once, after a 7-day free trial that needs no card. Please don’t sell it or pass on changed copies of it.
Outside India, one purchase gives you a personal licence key for up to 3 of your own Macs, with all updates included. Please don’t share or resell your key.
Prices are one-time. Any sales tax or VAT your country charges is shown at checkout before you pay.
If Planes Above starts charging where it’s free today, or charges more, nothing changes on the Macs where you already use it, updates included. Moving to a new Mac? Write to us and we’ll sort it out.
Planes are heard by volunteer radio receivers, and routes come from community databases. Positions can be late or missing, and routes and times can be wrong, especially when an airline reuses a callsign. Notifications about tracked flights can be late or missed. Don’t use Planes Above for navigation or safety, or to decide when to leave for the airport: check with the airline for times that matter.
Flight positions come from adsb.lol under the Open Database License (ODbL). Aircraft photos belong to their photographers and come from Planespotters.net. Airport data comes from OurAirports. Airline names, codes and logos belong to their airlines and are shown only to say which airline a plane belongs to. Planes Above isn’t connected to or endorsed by any airline.
Planes Above is provided as it is. We work to keep it running, but we can’t promise it will always work or always be right. As far as the law allows, our responsibility for any problem is limited to what you paid for it. This doesn’t take away any rights your local consumer law gives you.
If these terms change, the date at the top changes too, and big changes are mentioned in the app’s update notes. These terms are governed by the laws of India, and the courts of India handle any dispute.