Perkbar sits in the notch all day, so the fair questions are about what it costs your machine and what it can see. Here are the honest answers.
No. Perkbar draws a small text pill in the notch and talks to our server once per ad. There is no video, no background scraping, and no constant polling. Expect the footprint of a menu-bar clock.
When earning is off it does even less: a clock that redraws once a minute.
It is a small native SwiftUI app, not a browser wrapped in a window. Idle CPU is effectively zero between ads, and memory sits in the tens of megabytes.
macOS 13 Ventura or newer, on both Apple Silicon and Intel.
Yes. Without a notch the pill becomes a small floating bar at the top of the screen, with exactly the same earning and rewards.
The pill follows your active display and repositions itself when you plug in or unplug a screen, so it stays where your attention is.
None of the sensitive ones. No screen recording, no accessibility access, no camera, no microphone, no full disk access. It reads only whether your Mac is idle or locked, so that points pause when you step away.
Never. We record which ad was shown, how long it was visible, the points earned, and basic anti-fraud signals. Nothing about your files, your apps, or the sites you visit.
The full detail is in the privacy policy.
No. Brands see counts: impressions, clicks, spend. They never receive your name, your email, or anything that identifies you.
No, it is a switch. Off, Perkbar is just a clock in your notch. On, one short brand line rotates through and points accrue. Turn it off any time, mid-session if you like.
From the brands that pay to appear in the notch. Their prepaid budget funds the AI credits, vouchers and payouts. If no campaign is running you earn nothing, and we pay nothing out.
One point per second an ad is visible, and 10,000 points equals $1 of reward value. The honest full answer, including how many campaigns are live today, is on the earnings page.
Yes, as a $25 stablecoin payout to a wallet you choose. Because a transfer cannot be undone, we review each request and send it by hand rather than automatically.
Not yet. Perkbar is pre-launch: the app is built and running, and the waitlist is how you get in first. Join and we will email you the moment your access is ready.
Mandatory Hustle Studios, an independent studio. You can reach us directly at hello@perk.bar and a person will answer.
Curious about the numbers? See how earnings work