FAQ
Fair questions, straight answers
The short version: Keycito watches for shortcut matches in memory, stores counts locally, and syncs nothing unless you join a league — and then only a daily score. Everything else, below.
What is Keycito?
Keycito is a menu-bar app for macOS that quietly notices which keyboard shortcuts you use — and which ones you miss — then teaches you a few new ones each week, chosen from your own behavior, and reinforces them with streaks and spaced repetition until they're muscle memory.
There are no lessons, decks, or flashcards. You just work; the shortcuts show up.
Is it a keylogger? What exactly does it see?
It is designed to be the opposite of one, and to be checkable. Keycito listens for one thing: whether a keystroke matches a known shortcut in the app you're using. That match happens in memory, on your Mac. What gets written to disk is a count — "⌘D in Finder, 3 times today" — in a local database you can open yourself.
No text you type is ever stored, sent, or even assembled: the app matches modifier combinations (like ⌘, ⇧, ⌥ plus a key) and immediately discards everything else. No key logs, no window titles, no document names, no screenshots.
What about passwords?
Passwords are physically untrackable. When you type in a password field, macOS turns on Secure Input, which blocks keystroke observation for every app at the operating-system level — before Keycito (or any similar app) could see anything. This is an OS guarantee, not a policy we ask you to trust.
Keycito honors it fully and never attempts to work around it. If another app leaves Secure Input stuck on, Keycito simply pauses and tells you which app is responsible.
What permissions does it need, and why?
One permission on most Macs: Accessibility. It powers everything — counting shortcut combos as tallies, reading app menus to discover which shortcuts exist, and noticing when you click a menu item that had a shortcut you skipped.
Some macOS versions additionally require Input Monitoring for the same listen-only tap; if yours does, the app walks you through both toggles and explains each one before asking. Keycito never asks for Full Disk Access, Screen Recording, or network permissions it doesn't need.
Will it slow down my typing or my Mac?
No. Keycito uses a listen-only event tap: it observes keyboard events but never intercepts, delays, or modifies them, so your keystrokes reach your apps exactly as they would without it. The shortcut match is a small in-memory lookup.
The app is a native Swift menu-bar utility, not an Electron shell — it is built to be invisible in Activity Monitor as well as on screen.
What data leaves my Mac?
By default: nothing. Keycito works fully offline and needs no account.
If you opt into a league, one thing syncs: a daily score, as five numeric components (usage, diversity, learning, mastery, streak) plus the day, your client version, a nonce, and a signature. The complete payload is printed on our homepage and published as a schema our releases are tested against. Per-shortcut data, per-app data, and timestamps finer than the day never leave your machine.
Can I use it without an account?
Yes — that's the default. Onboarding requires no sign-up, no email, and no network. Accounts exist only for the optional league features, and you can use Keycito forever without one.
How do I delete my data?
Local data: it's a single local database on your Mac. Delete the app and its data folder and everything is gone — there is no server copy of your shortcut activity, because it never leaves the machine.
Account data (if you joined a league): request deletion in-app or email privacy@ — we delete your account and everything attached to it (scores, league membership) within 30 days, and you can export a copy first. See the privacy policy for details.
What does it cost? How long is it free?
Keycito is completely free during early access — every feature, no card, no trial countdown. The free period runs until well after 1.0 (our published plan: until 5,000 devices or six months after launch, whichever comes first).
After that, a Pro tier is planned at $29/year for power features, and early-access users get a discount for their first year. The core stays free forever: tracking (up to 12 apps), teaching, streaks — including free streak freezes — and leagues.
Why isn't it on the Mac App Store?
Because the App Store sandbox prohibits the two things that make Keycito work: reading app menus to auto-discover shortcuts, and noticing when a click had a shortcut alternative. That's a hard technical block, not a choice we could pay or engineer our way around.
So Keycito ships the way most serious Mac utilities do: direct download, signed with an Apple Developer ID certificate, notarized by Apple (Gatekeeper checks every build), with secure automatic updates.
Are the weekly draws legal? Is this gambling?
Weekly draws are planned, and the structure is designed to the strictest reading of US sweepstakes law: no purchase is ever necessary, money can never buy entries or increase your odds — directly or indirectly — and a free web entry route with equal odds will exist for people who don't even use the app.
No draw will run before its official rules have been reviewed by a sweepstakes attorney, and draws will initially be US-only, 18+, void where prohibited. Nothing about the draws is pay-to-play: paying for Pro will never grant entries, multipliers, or any earning advantage.
Does it work with Karabiner-Elements, Keyboard Maestro, Raycast, or Alfred?
Yes. Shortcuts triggered through well-known remappers and launchers (Karabiner-Elements, Keyboard Maestro, BetterTouchTool, Alfred, Raycast, espanso) count as real usage — power users are exactly who this app is for.
Events synthesized by unknown scripts are ignored for scoring, and the app shows you transparently when and why anything was ignored.
Which Macs and macOS versions are supported?
macOS 14 (Sonoma) and later, on Apple silicon and Intel. Keycito is a native Swift app.
Will the code be open source?
The capture layer — the part that touches keyboard events and aggregates them into counts — is planned to be published as open source, so the privacy claims can be verified by reading the code rather than trusting the marketing.
When can I try it?
Private beta invites go out in small waves from the waitlist, followed by a public beta anyone can download without an account. Join the waitlist and you'll get exactly one email when your invite is ready, plus a short build update every few weeks.
Something we didn’t cover?