11 October 2019

Undercover is shutting down by the end of the year. Thank you, it has been a great journey!



After 14 years of Undercover recovery successes, we need to inform you that we'll no longer be developing or supporting Undercover.

All Undercover support will stop on Jan. 1st 2020.
On the same date, the undercoverhq.com website and the Undercover recovery service will stop operations as well.Undercover uninstall instructions can be found below in this blog post.
If you want to continue protecting your Mac, we recommend switching to HiddenApp.

Established in 2010, HiddenApp has been recovering thousands of Macs, iPads and iPhones. Hidden not only offers a solution for protecting macOS devices but also has an offering for iOS, which means you can protect your entire suite of Apple devices with one solution. HiddenApp is fully road-tested and ready for the imminent release of macOS Catalina and also has a brand new iOS app that will be released in the coming weeks.

We have negotiated a 20% discount on all Hidden orders with the following coupon code: UNDERCOVER20

Switch To HiddenApp



Why are we halting Undercover development 


The main reason is that over the past 6 years, Apple has significantly increased security on macOS. While that’s a good thing in general, it makes it increasingly more difficult to reliably run hidden software like Undercover.

Another key point is that FileVault has become mainstream. This means that a thief won’t be able to access your files without your password - again a good thing. However, this also means that Undercover won’t be able to function properly, as third party developers don’t have access to the recovery partition that is being used when a thief boots your Mac without knowing your password. Only Apple has access to this recovery partition, where it can run FindMyMac.
Undercover (or any other third party application) can’t run on this recovery partition and will be useless if FileVault has been enabled.

A third reason is that with macOS Catalina, Apple is refreshing its FindMyMac app (now called FindMy) and will leverage its large installed base of Macs and iPhones to track stolen devices, even if they never connect to the internet. They do so by using Bluetooth connections of nearby devices that are connected to the internet. Again a great idea from Apple, but Undercover or any other third party application, do not have access to this functionality.

When launched in January 2006, Undercover was groundbreaking software. The fact that Apple has replicated Undercover-like functionality and embedded it deep into iOS and macOS shows the value of the theft-recovery genre that Undercover has pioneered. At this point, however, we feel that we can no longer deliver reliable software due to security restrictions, while having a hard time carving out a successful business model competing with free Apple software that is installed by default on every Mac and has access to system features that we can only dream of.

We're proud of the literally thousands of stolen Macs that have been recovered thanks to Undercover. We're also proud of the fact that Undercover helped bringing a little bit of justice in a world that's often unfair. Undercover even provided critical evidence to arrest a drug gang.

We would like to thank you, as a user, for your continued support over the past 14 years. It has been a great journey!


- The Undercover Team


Uninstalling Undercover


You can only uninstall Undercover if you are an administrator of your Mac.
Please follow these instructions:


  • Go to the following folder in the Finder: /Library/LaunchDaemons
  • Remove com.orbicule.uc.plist
  • Go to the following folder in the Finder: /Library/LaunchAgents
  • Remove com.orbicule.UCAgent.plist
  • Choose Go To Folder from the Finder's Go menu
  • Enter the following path: /usr/local/
  • Remove the uc folder in this folder
  • Reboot your Mac


This will remove Undercover from your Mac.

19 March 2019

The Complete Guide to Keeping your Mac Secure

You have Undercover up and running on your computer, so you know you won't be completely powerless in case your precious Mac gets stolen.

But what about the other scenarios? Is your data protected while you go online? If you are wondering how you can improve your Mac's security, the lovely folks at BestVPN have made a very good overview of all the things you can do to keep your Mac and data safe:

bestvpn.com/guides/mac-security


15 February 2018

Undercover on High Sierra...


If you have upgraded to macOS High Sierra, you may have noticed that this transition did not go very smoothly. Apple’s newest operating system suffers from security flaws and vulnerabilities, and developers of third-party apps are having trouble getting their software to run bug-free, including established brands like Adobe. They are still discouraging their users from upgrading to macOS 10.13, as they are experiencing compatibility problems with apps like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, and "working hard to resolve these issues in a forthcoming release."
Unfortunately, Undercover is affected as well - we saw issues with location tracking and with the registration procedure emerge with our app on High Sierra.
So instead of releasing a slightly modified Undercover version for High Sierra, we have decided to rewrite significant parts of Undercover. This, of course, takes a bit more time, but we estimate that we'll have a brand new version of Undercover ready early next month.

Thank you so much for your patience and understanding. Please let us know at support@orbicule.com if you are also seeing problems with Undercover on High Sierra, so we can help you with a temporary solution until the new version is available!

The Undercover Team

22 September 2016

Undercover is ready for macOS Sierra


We’re happy to announce that Undercover is ready for macOS Sierra!
With version 6.5 of Undercover already installed on your Mac, there is nothing you should do: this version fully compliant with the new macOS Sierra.
You can see which version is running on your Mac in the Info tab in your account at undercoverHQ.com. If it’s not the latest version, you will find a download link there, or you can download Undercover directly from here.

After upgrading macOS, you can verify that Undercover is still working in your account at undercoverHQ.com:

If Undercover is able to contact our servers, you should see a recent location under "Status" in the Info screen in your account ("Located ... ago").

If you don’t see a recent location there, make sure that Undercover is still allowed to obtain a location in the Location Services preferences on your Mac:
  • Open System Preferences
  • Go to the Security & Privacy panel
  • Go to the Privacy tab
  • Select Location Services
  • Grant access to "uc"

Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions, we’re here to help!

The Undercover Team

29 September 2015

Taking the Undercover experience to new heights


If you are ready for El Capitan, so are we! Undercover 6.5 fully supports the latest version of Mac OS X. You can find the new version ready for download in your account at undercoverHQ.com, or right here.

The new Undercover comes with a completely retinafied Undercover HQ. Granted, this will not help you recover your Mac any faster, but it may ease the pain a bit to do so in @2x resolution.

In this version we have also improved the location tracking, for which Undercover now fully relies on Apple’s Location Services.

After upgrading OS X, if Gatekeeper alerts you that Undercover has been placed in quarantine, it’s best to simply download and install the latest version again. Don’t worry: this does not mean that Undercover is not compatible with El Capitan.

Enjoy the view! ;)
The Undercover Team