Offline-First Resilience & Security
Modern software often leaks sensitive financial and personal numbers to remote servers under the guise of cloud synchronization, AI autocomplete, or telemetry analytics.
Kalc is engineered with a strict privacy-first and offline-first ethos: your calculations belong exclusively to you, on your Mac.
Zero Telemetry & Complete Privacy
- No Remote Tracking: Kalc contains zero analytics trackers, tracking pixels, or diagnostic beacons.
- No Crash Telemetry: Error logs and crash traces stay on your local machine; nothing phones home.
- No User Accounts: There is no account registration, login wall, license activation server, or cloud subscription ping.
- Private Data Stays Private: Whether you are modeling corporate mergers, personal net worth, sensitive tax returns, or server credentials, your numbers never traverse the public internet.
100% Offline Computational Core
Every calculation subsystem in Kalc executes entirely on your Mac's CPU:
- Mathematical, Scientific & Transcendental Functions: Pure local execution.
- Date, Calendar & Timezone Conversions: Evaluated against macOS system timezone databases.
- Dimensional Unit Conversions: Computed via
UnitCatalogwith static physical ratios. - Developer Functions & Cryptographic Hashes: Executed on-device via Apple's native
CryptoKit.
You can take your MacBook on an airplane, work in remote off-grid locations, or run Kalc inside air-gapped corporate environments without losing calculation capabilities.
Offline Currency Store & Background Refresh
While currency exchange rates fluctuate continuously, Kalc ensures that an internet outage never interrupts your workflow:
- Bundled Currency Baseline: Kalc ships with a pre-compiled local store of exchange rates for 170+ ISO currencies and major cryptocurrencies (BTC, ETH, SOL).
- Offline-First Fallback: If your Mac is offline, Kalc calculates conversions seamlessly using the latest available cached rates.
- Staleness Tracking: The header bar displays a live freshness badge:
Live: Rates refreshed recently.2h ago: Time elapsed since last update.Offline: Operating in disconnected mode using local cached baselines.
- Customizable Refresh Cadence: In Preferences > Rates & Daemon, you can configure the background update interval (e.g., every 6 hours, 24 hours, or manual refresh only).
Localhost-Only Daemon Binding (127.0.0.1)
The embedded calculation daemon (KalcDaemon) provides a headless HTTP REST API (POST /calculate) for integrations with Raycast, Alfred, and local terminal scripts.
To guarantee local security:
- Strict Loopback Binding: The daemon binds exclusively to IPv4 loopback
127.0.0.1:15055. - No Remote Network Exposure: The service rejects external interface bindings (
0.0.0.0or local network IPs). Devices on your local Wi-Fi cannot access or invoke your calculation daemon. - No Cross-Origin Exploitation: Rejects foreign origins and runs without elevated permissions.
Sandboxed JavaScriptCore Extension Engine
To prevent malicious or poorly written third-party plugins from compromising your system:
- Isolated
JSContext: Extensions execute inside Apple's nativeJavaScriptCoreruntime. - No Filesystem Access: Plugins cannot read, write, or scan files on your disk.
- No Process Execution: Plugins cannot invoke shell commands, spawn child processes, or run binaries.
- No Outbound Sockets: Plugins cannot open raw network connections or exfiltrate document text.
- Controlled Bridge: Plugins communicate exclusively through the declarative
kalcJS API to register custom functions, units, and templates.
Zero External Package Dependencies
The entire Kalc codebase compiles without pulling a single third-party Swift package, CocoaPod, or dynamic library. It depends strictly on Apple's standard system frameworks:
├── Foundation (Decimals, strings, dates, regex, formatting)
├── AppKit (Windows, views, layout, menus, dialogs)
├── TextKit 2 (Line fragments, text storage, baseline rendering)
├── Carbon (HIToolbox system-wide global hotkeys)
├── Network (Network.framework loopback HTTP socket)
├── CryptoKit (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256 cryptographic digests)
├── JavaScriptCore (Secure extension sandboxing)
└── Testing (Modern Swift Testing automated test harness)By eliminating external dependencies, Kalc eliminates software supply-chain vulnerabilities, library bloat, and deprecation churn.