Privacy-first backups for your Mac
A quiet menu bar app that backs up the folders you care about — encrypted on your Mac, on your schedule, to storage you own.
macOS 14+No subscriptionNo telemetryRestores with open tools
00 · See it
One menu bar item. That's the whole app.
First public beta on the way — screenshot to follow.
01 · Features
Built to be forgotten
Private by design
Your data is encrypted before it leaves your Mac. Passwords live in the macOS Keychain and are never written to disk or logs.
Out of your way
Lives in the menu bar — no Dock icon, no windows to manage. Set a schedule once and forget it.
No lock-in
Backups are written in a standard, open format — restorable with free open-source tools on any machine, with or without Keelhaven.
Real schedules
Hourly, daily, or weekly — pick a weekday and a time, and Keelhaven keeps your backups current.
02 · Guide
Three decisions, then silence
Pick your folders
Choose the folders you can't lose — documents, photos, projects.
Choose a destination you own
An external drive, a NAS, or any S3-compatible bucket. There is no Keelhaven server in the path.
Set the schedule
Hourly, daily, or weekly. Keelhaven runs in the background and only speaks up when something needs attention.
Runs on macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon and Intel, with everything it needs bundled. Download links will land here with the first public beta — beta builds aren't notarised yet, so macOS will ask you to allow the app once in System Settings › Privacy & Security.
03 · Pricing
Pay once. That's the entire model.
One-time purchase at 1.0 — bought once, updates forever, never a subscription.
- Unlimited backup plans and destinations
- Universal build — Apple silicon and Intel
- Backup engine built in — nothing else to install
- No account, no telemetry, no server of ours in the path
04 · Questions
Straight answers
Does this replace Time Machine?
No — run both. Time Machine is excellent at putting a whole Mac back the way it was, from a drive on your desk. Keelhaven is for the second copy: the folders you can't lose, encrypted, somewhere that isn't your desk.
Why pay for this when open-source tools are free?
Because the engine isn't the part that's missing. Keelhaven's backup engine is restic — free, open source, and excellent; you are not paying us for it. The price covers everything a command-line tool deliberately leaves to you: a schedule that actually runs, passwords held in the macOS Keychain and never written to disk or logs, a menu bar that stays quiet until something needs you, and setup that doesn't start with reading documentation. Our lock-in is zero by design, so we have to be worth paying for — that's the intended trade.
Am I locked into Keelhaven?
No. Every plan writes an ordinary restic repository, so you can list, verify, and restore your backups with the open-source restic CLI on any Mac or Linux box — with or without Keelhaven installed. If Keelhaven disappears tomorrow, your backups don't.
Is Keelhaven open source?
The app itself is a paid, closed-source product. Its backup engine is not: Keelhaven bundles and redistributes restic, which is open source under the BSD 2-Clause License — see Open source licenses for the full notice. So while you can't read Keelhaven's source, you are never dependent on it to reach your data.
Is my data readable by anyone else?
No. Backups are encrypted on your Mac before anything is uploaded, and the repository password is stored only in your macOS Keychain. There is no Keelhaven server, no account system, and no telemetry — the app has nowhere else to send anything.
Which destinations are supported?
An external or network drive mounted on your Mac, any S3-compatible bucket (AWS, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, Cloudflare R2, MinIO), and SFTP to your own server or NAS.
Do I need to install anything else?
No. Everything Keelhaven needs ships inside the app bundle, including its backup engine — no separate install step, no Homebrew requirement, nothing to keep up to date.
What happens if I forget the repository password?
The backup is unrecoverable, by design — repositories are encrypted end to end, and nobody, not us and not your storage provider, holds a spare key. Keelhaven keeps the password in your macOS Keychain and can copy it back out after a Touch ID check; put it in your password manager too.
Why isn't it on the Mac App Store?
App Store apps must run in the sandbox, and the backup engine needs to read the folders you point it at and open network and SSH connections. Keelhaven ships with the hardened runtime enabled and signed builds, just not through the store.