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Paullo9 merged 1 commit into from
Nov 6, 2026
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docs: support and privacy pages cut to the minimum #16

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119 changes: 13 additions & 106 deletions privacy.html
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<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

<title>Privacy policy — mac4DSTEM and macTEM</title>
<meta name="description" content="Privacy policy for the mac4DSTEM and macTEM applications and this website. Neither application collects data or sends your work off your machine.">
<title>Privacy — mac4DSTEM and macTEM</title>
<meta name="description" content="mac4DSTEM and macTEM collect no data. Everything runs on your Mac.">
<link rel="canonical" href="https://mac4dstem.com/privacy.html">
<meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark">
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
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<div class="wrap">
<article class="doc">

<h1>Privacy policy</h1>
<p class="updated">Last updated 5 November 2026</p>

<p class="lede">
mac4DSTEM and macTEM collect no personal data. Both applications perform all analysis on
your own machine, have no user accounts, and send nothing to me. macTEM makes no network
connection at all; mac4DSTEM's one network request is a Materials Project fetch that you
start yourself.
</p>

<h2>Both applications</h2>

<p>
mac4DSTEM and macTEM are local desktop applications. Neither contains analytics, telemetry,
advertising, crash reporting, or any other component that transmits information about you
or your work.
</p>

<ul>
<li><strong>Your datasets and results stay on your Mac.</strong> Datasets you open, the results you compute, and the parameters you choose are read from and written to your own storage only.</li>
<li><strong>No accounts.</strong> There is no sign-in, no licence server, and no activation.</li>
<li><strong>No tracking identifiers.</strong> Neither application generates or stores a device or user identifier.</li>
</ul>

<p>
Both applications run inside the macOS App Sandbox. They receive access to a file only when
you select it in a system Open or Save panel. Where one needs to reopen a file you chose
earlier — for example to update the session file saved next to your data — macOS stores a
security-scoped bookmark for that specific file on your machine. Those bookmarks stay local
and can be removed by deleting the application's container.
</p>

<h2>mac4DSTEM</h2>

<ul>
<li><strong>One network request, started by you.</strong> “Materials Project…” in the phase picker sends an HTTPS request to api.materialsproject.org carrying your own Materials Project API key and the material ID you typed. The key is kept in the macOS Keychain. The application makes no other connection.</li>
</ul>

<h2>macTEM</h2>

<ul>
<li><strong>No network access.</strong> macTEM is not granted network access by the App Sandbox and makes no connection of any kind.</li>
</ul>

<h2>This website</h2>

<p>
The site is a static page. It sets <strong>no cookies</strong>, runs no analytics, and
embeds no third-party fonts, scripts, or trackers. Nothing you do here is profiled or
recorded by me.
</p>

<p>
The site is hosted on <strong>GitHub Pages</strong>, with DNS provided by
<strong>Cloudflare</strong>. As a technical necessity of delivering any web page, the
hosting provider processes your IP address and request metadata in server logs for
security and operation. I have no access to those logs and cannot connect them to you.
See the
<a class="u-link" href="https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-general-privacy-statement">GitHub Privacy Statement</a>
and the
<a class="u-link" href="https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/">Cloudflare Privacy Policy</a>.
</p>

<p>
The legal basis for this processing is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR — the legitimate interest in
presenting a functioning, secure website.
</p>

<h2>If you email me</h2>

<p>
Writing to <a class="u-link" href="mailto:mail@mac4dstem.com">mail@mac4dstem.com</a> means
your address and the content of your message are processed so that I can reply. The legal
basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR where your message concerns the application, and otherwise
Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR.
</p>

<p>
Correspondence is kept only as long as needed to deal with the matter and to meet any
retention obligation that applies, then deleted. Your address is not added to any mailing
list and is not passed to third parties.
</p>

<h2>Your rights</h2>

<p>
Under the GDPR you have the right to access your personal data, to have it corrected or
erased, to have its processing restricted, to object to processing, and to receive it in a
portable form. To exercise any of these, write to the address below.
</p>
<h1>Privacy</h1>

<p>
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority,
in particular in the member state of your residence, workplace, or the place of the
alleged infringement.
mac4DSTEM and macTEM collect no data. Everything runs on your Mac. There are no accounts,
no analytics, and nothing is sent to me. The one exception is the Materials Project lookup
in mac4DSTEM, which you start yourself and which sends your own API key and the material ID
to materialsproject.org.
</p>

<h2>Changes</h2>

<p>
If this policy changes, the revised version is published here with a new date at the top.
Material changes affecting an application will accompany a release of it.
This website sets no cookies and runs no analytics. It is hosted on GitHub Pages, which
keeps the usual server logs
(<a class="u-link" href="https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-general-privacy-statement">GitHub privacy statement</a>).
If you e-mail me, I keep your message only to reply. Under the GDPR you can ask me to
access, correct or delete your data at any time.
</p>

<h2>Controller</h2>

<div class="contact-block">
Paul Lobpreis<br>
Adolf-Reichwein-Straße 28<br>
57076 Siegen<br>
Germany<br>
mail@mac4dstem.com
<a href="mailto:mail@mac4dstem.com">mail@mac4dstem.com</a>
</div>

<p>
Full provider identification is on the <a class="u-link" href="/impressum.html">Impressum</a> page.
</p>

</article>
</div>
</main>
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<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

<title>Support — mac4DSTEM and macTEM</title>
<meta name="description" content="Support for mac4DSTEM and macTEM: system requirements, supported file formats, known limitations, and how to report a problem.">
<meta name="description" content="Support for mac4DSTEM and macTEM: e-mail or GitHub issues.">
<link rel="canonical" href="https://mac4dstem.com/support.html">
<meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark">
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow">
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<article class="doc">

<h1>Support</h1>
<p class="updated">Last updated 28 October 2026</p>

<p class="lede">
Questions, bug reports, and feature requests for <a class="u-link" href="/">mac4DSTEM</a> and
<a class="u-link" href="/mactem/">macTEM</a> all go to one address. I read everything.
<p>
Questions, bug reports and feature requests for mac4DSTEM and macTEM: e-mail me, or open
an issue on GitHub for
<a class="u-link" href="https://github.com/mac4DSTEM/mac4DSTEM/issues">mac4DSTEM</a> or
<a class="u-link" href="https://github.com/mac4DSTEM/macTEM/issues">macTEM</a>.
</p>

<div class="contact-block">
<a href="mailto:mail@mac4dstem.com">mail@mac4dstem.com</a>
</div>

<p>
Both applications are developed by one person alongside other work, so replies are not
instant — but every report is looked at. There is no support contract and no charge; the
applications are free. Reports can also be opened as issues on GitHub:
<a class="u-link" href="https://github.com/mac4DSTEM/mac4DSTEM/issues">mac4DSTEM</a>,
<a class="u-link" href="https://github.com/mac4DSTEM/macTEM/issues">macTEM</a>.
</p>

<h2>Requirements</h2>

<ul>
<li><strong>macOS 26 or later</strong> for mac4DSTEM 5.1 and macTEM 1.1. For macOS 14–25, <a class="u-link" href="https://github.com/mac4DSTEM/mac4DSTEM/releases/tag/v3.0.0">mac4DSTEM 3.0.0</a> remains available.</li>
<li><strong>Apple silicon</strong> — M-series Macs. Intel Macs are not supported.</li>
<li>No external runtime, toolchain, Python environment, or library installation. Every dependency ships inside the application bundle.</li>
<li>Enough free disk space for your datasets and any exported products. Memory needs scale with the size of the scan, detector, image or spectrum image.</li>
</ul>

<h2>What each application opens</h2>

<ul>
<li><strong>mac4DSTEM</strong>: 4D-STEM datasets from py4DSTEM and other EMD/HDF5 files, Gatan DM3/DM4, Merlin MIB and EMPAD RAW, and EDX spectrum images on their own or with the 4D scan.</li>
<li><strong>macTEM</strong>: images, stacks and spectrum images from DigitalMicrograph (.dm3, .dm4), Velox (.emd), TIFF and MRC.</li>
</ul>

<h2>Reporting a problem</h2>

<p>
A report is most useful when it lets me reproduce what you saw. Where you can, include:
</p>

<ul>
<li>Which application, what you did, what you expected, and what happened instead.</li>
<li>The application version and your macOS version and Mac model.</li>
<li>The file's format and shape (scan and detector shape for 4D-STEM, image size or channel count otherwise).</li>
<li>The room or step where it went wrong, as named in the sidebar.</li>
<li>A screenshot of the window, including any diagnostics shown alongside the result.</li>
</ul>

<p>
Please do not send datasets as email attachments. If reproducing an issue needs the data,
say so and we can arrange a transfer.
</p>

<h2>Known limitations</h2>

<ul>
<li>In mac4DSTEM, the <strong>Merlin MIB</strong> and <strong>EMPAD RAW</strong> readers are preview-grade, pending further vendor data. If a file from either detector loads incorrectly, a report with the file's header is particularly valuable.</li>
<li>Where a measurement is not yet validated against a dataset with known truth, the result is labelled as such in the interface. Those labels are deliberate — treat them as part of the result.</li>
<li>Verification is numerical: every number is tested against the Python package it is ported from, within that package's own tolerance, rather than against the rendered output.</li>
</ul>

<h2>Results and interoperability</h2>

<p>
mac4DSTEM exports Bragg vectors, calibrated datacubes, and preprocessed products to
<strong>EMD</strong>, readable directly in
<a class="u-link" href="https://github.com/py4dstem/py4DSTEM">py4DSTEM</a>. macTEM exports its
measurements as CSV, spectra as MSA, and images as PNG with a scale bar. If you need a result
in a format that is not currently offered, that is a reasonable thing to ask for.
</p>

<h2>Citing the methods</h2>

<p>
The numerics are ported from the Python packages the field already uses and validated
against them; the <a class="u-link" href="/suite/">kits page</a> names each one. Work
published using mac4DSTEM should cite py4DSTEM for the underlying methods; work using macTEM
should cite the package behind the method used, for example HyperSpy and exSpy for
spectroscopy.
</p>

<h2>Licence</h2>

<p>
Both applications are released under the
<a class="u-link" href="https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html">GNU General Public License v3.0</a>.
They are free software, provided without warranty of any kind.
</p>

</article>
</div>
</main>
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