Sworn

Sworn for Mac

Your Mac,
under the same promise.

The same filter as your phone, the same partner, one alert stream. Pause it or remove it and your partner hears — exactly like the phone.

Download on the Mac App Store Get the phone app

  • Pairs with the Sworn app on your phone. Get that first
  • Covers every app on the Mac, not just the browser
  • No screenshots, no browsing history, no device names

macOS 13 Ventura or later, Apple silicon or Intel · free with your Sworn subscription. One subscription covers up to seven devices.

Install

Four steps, about a minute.

Sworn for Mac lives in the menu bar. There's no window to keep open and no icon in the Dock. It doesn't change anything about your Mac until you pair it with your phone.

  1. Install it from the Mac App Store. The Sworn wordmark appears at the top of your screen, in the menu bar, with a line struck through it. Struck through means “not protecting yet”.
  2. Get a code from your phone. In Sworn on your phone: Settings → Add a computer. It shows a short code that's good for ten minutes.
  3. Pair. Click the wordmark and type the code into the panel that drops down. Your partner is not emailed for adding a computer.
  4. Turn it on in System Settings. macOS asks you to approve the change yourself, in its own settings rather than in ours, and the panel shows an Open System Settings button that takes you straight there. The path is System Settings → Network → VPN & Filters, then set the Sworn row's status to Enabled. The panel's shield fills in and the strike through the wordmark clears.

Step 4 is not optional, and it's the one people miss. Until you switch Sworn on in System Settings, macOS keeps the configuration installed but inactive — the Mac is not filtered, and the panel says so rather than claiming you're protected. If the wordmark stays struck through after pairing, this is why.

What it does

The phone's rules, on the Mac.

Every lookup, from every app and browser, goes through your Sworn account. The same categories you chose on your phone, the same personal block list, the same partner. Blocked attempts count toward the same tally your partner already sees; the Mac is never named in an email.

Quitting Sworn does not turn the filter off. On a Mac the filtering is done by macOS itself, using the settings Sworn installed, so it keeps working when the app isn't running — after a quit, after a restart, even after you delete the app. The menu says so plainly rather than letting a quit look like an escape hatch.

Pause from the menu stops filtering on this Mac and emails your partner. The toggle on your phone does the same thing. Switching Sworn off in System Settings instead is not a way around that, because the app notices, and once the change has stuck for a few minutes your partner gets one email saying Sworn stopped filtering on a device. Flip it off and back on inside a minute and nothing is sent — a blip is not an event.

Removing this Mac from Your devices in the phone app takes the filter off and tells your partner. The Mac's own panel notices within five minutes, puts your normal DNS back, and offers to pair again.

Worth knowing

Where it stops.

A VPN can take over your DNS. If you run a VPN that supplies its own DNS servers, macOS uses that instead, and Sworn sees nothing while it's connected; Tailscale with its DNS option on does this, and so do many corporate VPNs. Sworn's panel reports this honestly (“DNS is not reaching Sworn”) rather than showing a shield that isn't doing anything. Turning the VPN's DNS override off, or disconnecting it, brings filtering back on the next refresh.

Some browsers carry their own DNS. Brave and Firefox ship with encrypted DNS turned on, which bypasses any system-wide filter, including this one. Our support page shows how to turn that off in each.

It's a filter, not a leash. Sworn for Mac is detection rather than tamper-proofing, and anyone who wants it gone can remove it in a minute. What they can't do is remove it quietly — that's the whole design.

Sworn for Mac is distributed through the Mac App Store, which is the only way Apple allows an app to install DNS settings on macOS. It's the same app record as the iPhone app, so it's covered by the same subscription, and there's nothing extra to buy.

Other computers

Windows and Linux.

Sworn for Windows is a signed installer with the same design in the system tray. Sworn for Linux installs with one line. All three pair the same way, with a code from your phone, and all three report to the same partner. If something's off on any of them, tell us — the message is read by the person who wrote it.