Notes for IT departments.
An employee asked to run a small companion app on a work computer, and now you are reading this. Fair. Here is the complete picture: what runs, what leaves the machine, and what never does. It is a short read because there is genuinely little to disclose.
Document T, revision 1
1What runs.
A per-user status reporter. It installs no services or drivers, needs no admin rights, and does not integrate with your tenant.
1.1macOS: a sandboxed menu bar app
Distributed via TestFlight / the App Store, so it is sandboxed and notarized by construction. Entitlements: App Sandbox plus outgoing network. It never appears in the Dock.
1.2Windows: a per-user tray app
Runs entirely in the user's session; installs to the user profile. It never needs admin rights and creates nothing machine-wide, not even a scheduled task.
1.3Autostart: ordinary, inspectable
macOS uses a login item. Windows uses the per-user HKCU Run key. Both are visible in the standard system UI and trivially removable.
2How detection works.
The companion answers one question: is any process currently capturing from the microphone? It reads the same indicators the operating system already shows the user.
2.1macOS: CoreAudio, read-only
It reads the system-wide "is any process capturing input" flag. This requires no microphone entitlement and triggers no permission prompt, because the app never accesses audio. It cannot hear anything; it can only see that the light is on.
2.2Windows: registry, read-only
It reads the ConsentStore registry keys, the same data behind the microphone indicator in the system tray. It uses no hooks or audio APIs, and inspects no processes beyond that.
2.3Scope: nothing app-specific
There is no Teams, Zoom, or Slack integration and no tenant involvement. The signal is app-agnostic by design, which is also why no employer approval or configuration is needed.
3What leaves the machine.
Outgoing HTTPS to our API, authenticated with a per-device token. The entire payload, forever:
{ "status": "call" } or { "status": "free" }
plus a server-side timestamp. Nothing else: no app names, meeting titles, participants, audio, calendar or address book.
3.1Inbound: none
The companion opens no listening ports and accepts no inbound connections. It polls; nothing calls it.
3.2Revocation: per-device kill switch
Each device holds its own revocable token. When the user revokes a device from their phone, the reporter sees the rejected token and permanently stops itself.
3.3Data protection: minimal by construction
One boolean and a timestamp is the whole dataset, which keeps the GDPR story short. The service is operated from the EU by Riga Computing Company, a software studio in North Rhine‑Westphalia, with its heart in Riga.
3.4Uninstall: clean exit
macOS: quit and delete the app. Windows: the provided uninstaller removes the app, its config, and the Run key. No residue that requires admin rights to clean.
Questions, or a security review you would like us to walk through: hello@computing.lv