NotesagePrivacy Policy
Last updated: 29 September 2026
This policy covers both Notesage apps — the iPhone app and the Mac app. They are built from one codebase but they do not behave identically, and where they differ this policy says so rather than averaging them.
The short version
Neither app collects anything. No account, no analytics, no crash reporting, no identifier. The analytics and crash-reporting libraries are not merely switched off — they are not compiled into either app at all, and there is no setting that could turn them on.
Your notes stay in the folder you chose. The one time note content leaves your device is when you use an AI feature on the Mac, and then it goes to the provider you configured — never to us.
There is no Notesage server. Not for your notes, not for diagnostics, not for anything. We have nothing to keep, nothing to lose, and nothing to hand over.
What Notesage stores, and where
Notesage reads and writes files only inside the folder you grant it access to — typically a folder in iCloud Drive, or one under On My iPhone. On iOS the system enforces this: the app cannot see anything outside that grant.
Kept on your device, outside your library:
- The grant itself, as a security-scoped bookmark.
- Your recently-read list, and your view, sort and grouping preferences.
- On the Mac, your settings. Any API keys you enter for AI providers go into the macOS keychain, not into a file and not into your library folder, and are sent only to the provider they belong to.
Kept inside your own library folder, alongside your notes:
- Your notes, folders, and anything you capture with the share sheet.
- Your pinned items (
.notesage/pins.json) and reading progress (.notesage/reading-progress.json), so the two apps agree.
None of this is transmitted to us, and we have no way to read any of it.
When each app uses the network
Everything below goes to the site, provider or service named — not to us. There is no Notesage server for any of it. These requests carry no identifier we assign, and nothing about you beyond what any web request carries.
| What | iPhone | Mac |
|---|---|---|
| Saving a shared link — see "Saving a link" below, which is more involved than it looks | Yes | Yes |
| Loading images a note points at, from wherever the note references them | Yes — and in the background for saved articles, see "Saving images for offline" below | Yes |
| iCloud sync between your own devices, handled by Apple under Apple's privacy policy | Yes | Yes |
| Checking GitHub for a new version shortly after launch (you can turn this off) | No — updates come from the App Store | Yes |
| Fetching release notes from GitHub when you open Settings → System, and when the update check finds a new version — not covered by the update-check setting | No | Yes |
| AI features — see below. Mostly only when you ask, but inline completions send as you type, and the assistant can search the web on its own | No — the iPhone app has none | Only with a provider configured |
| Things you set up yourself — MCP servers, skill scripts, local models and agents. See "Things you set up" below | No | Once set up |
| Usage or crash reporting | Never — not compiled in | Never — not compiled in |
Saving a link
This is the part of the app that touches the network most, and the details are not obvious from the outside, so here they are.
On iPhone, the share sheet contacts the site as soon as it opens — before you tap Save, and whether or not you go through with it. Two requests: one reads the response headers to work out whether the link is a page or a file, so the sheet can offer the right format; the other fetches the link preview card you see at the top. If you change your mind and cancel, the site has already been contacted.
Building the note loads the page the way a browser would. Both apps render it in a hidden web view and read the settled page, because many sites assemble their content with scripts. That means the page's own scripts run, and whatever it loads — fonts, images, third-party trackers and analytics belonging to that site — is loaded too, exactly as if you had opened it in Safari. Nothing from that reaches us, but it is not a quiet fetch either.
Links to X (Twitter) additionally call X's public syndication
endpoint (cdn.syndication.twimg.com), because the page
itself does not carry the post's text.
Video links on iPhone call the video provider's public oEmbed endpoint to build the embed. The Mac has no Video capture format and does not make this call.
Updating a saved article on iPhone ("Update from source") fetches its original page again, when you ask for it.
Link preview cards on the Mac fetch the linked page when you create one or accept one while pasting. Cards already in a document do not fetch until you allow it, and their remote images are off by default.
Saving images for offline (iPhone)
Saved articles often point at images on the web. So that they read offline, the iPhone app downloads those images and stores them in the article. It does this in the background when the app starts and each time you return to it, for new articles in your Inbox, without you opening them. Each image comes from the site that hosts it. It is on by default; turn it off with "Save images for offline" in the library's ⋯ menu.
Things you set up
Several Mac features reach the network once you have set them up, and some of them then do so without asking each time. They go where you pointed them, or to the places named here:
- MCP servers you have added and enabled start
automatically when the app launches — you do not have to open anything.
One you pointed at a URL connects to it then. A server that runs on your
machine does its work there, but servers from the built-in catalog are
started through
npxoruvx, which can contact the npm registry or PyPI while starting. Where a server uses OAuth, the app refreshes its token in the background, without asking again. - Skill scripts run with network access. That includes some skills bundled with the app: the web-page downloader fetches the page you give it and installs its packages from npm, and the diagram renderer can fall back to fetching a renderer from npm. The app asks before running a skill script. Scripts are wrapped in the operating system's sandbox for file access where that can be set up — but the sandbox does not currently filter the network, and if it cannot be built at all the script runs without it. Treat a skill script as you would any script.
- Local models. Downloading one fetches it from Hugging Face. Opening the Local AI or Voice settings also asks Hugging Face for details of the models listed there, and searching for a model searches Hugging Face.
- Agents. Setting up the local agent downloads its
components from GitHub releases. Installing the Node-based agent bridge
fetches Node from
nodejs.organd packages from the npm registry. Opening Settings → AI checks installed agents for updates on GitHub and npm, at most once an hour.
The .html viewer does not block a document's external resources
by default — opening a saved web page loads what that page references. You can
turn blocking on in Settings.
AI features (Mac only)
The Mac app can send text to an AI model. It goes to the provider you configured, under that provider's privacy policy and terms, using your own API key or your own account with that provider — there is no default provider, so until you set one up none of this happens at all.
Most of it happens only when you ask: a chat message, an editor action like Improve or Summarize, an agent run. Inline completions are the exception, and worth knowing about: once a connection is assigned to them, the app sends the text around your cursor about a third of a second after you stop typing, without you asking each time. The first connection you add that can do completions — GitHub Copilot, Ollama, the bundled local model, or an OpenAI-compatible endpoint — is assigned to them automatically, and they are on unless you switch them off. Where the text goes depends on the connection — a local model keeps it on your machine; any other sends it to that provider. You can switch inline completions off in Settings.
Web search is the other thing the assistant does on its own. In a chat, the assistant can query DuckDuckGo whenever it decides a search would help, without asking you each time. It is available whenever Tool Calling is on, which it is by default. Turn on "Require confirmation for every tool call" to be asked first, or turn Tool Calling off to remove it along with the assistant's other tools.
Automations are the case where nobody is present: if you set one up with an AI step, it calls the provider when it is triggered — on a schedule, when a file changes (including one arriving through iCloud from another device), or when another event in the app fires.
Depending on what you invoke, that can include the text you selected, the document you are working in, and material the assistant is given access to. Treat it as you would pasting the same text into that provider's own app.
Providers are yours to choose and include Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, GitHub Copilot, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint you point at, and any MCP servers you connect. Notesage can also run a model entirely on your machine — through Ollama or a bundled local model — in which case nothing leaves the device at all.
Agent programs from other vendors — Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Copilot CLI, Goose — can be installed and run from Notesage. Each is that vendor's own software, signed in with your account, and it talks to its vendor under that vendor's terms, which can include the vendor's own usage reporting. Notesage does not change those programs' reporting settings.
We never receive any of it. There is no Notesage server in this path; the app talks to your provider directly.
What Notesage does not do
- No accounts, sign-in, or profiles — on either app.
- No advertising, and no tracking of you by us — not across other apps, not across websites. (A page you save runs its own scripts while it is being captured, as described above. That is the site's doing, not ours, and nothing from it reaches us.)
- No selling or sharing of personal information.
- No collection of any kind, by either app.
- No reading of your notes by us, on any platform, ever.
Children
Notesage is a note-taking tool with no social features, no feeds, and no communication between users. Neither app collects anything from anyone, of any age.
Deleting your data
Your data is your files. Delete them as you would any files — in Notesage, in the Files app, or on your Mac. Removing the app's access (Change library folder) or deleting the app removes the grant and the local preferences; your notes stay where they are, because they were always yours.
There is nothing on our side to delete, because nothing reaches us.
Changes
If this policy changes, the updated version is published at the same URL with a new "last updated" date.
The substantive changes in September 2026: earlier versions of the Mac app could send anonymous usage and crash reports, off by default — that was removed from the code and the accounts with both providers were closed; and the account of what the apps do on the network was rewritten after auditing it against the code, which corrected three claims that were wrong. A second audit against the code, at the end of September, found more the policy had missed or got wrong: web search was described as something you switch on, when the assistant has it by default; inline completions are assigned automatically; the iPhone app saves images for offline in the background; and several Settings panes, agent programs and bundled skills contact services the policy did not name.
Your rights
Under the GDPR you have the right to ask us for access to personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict how we process it, to receive it in a portable form, and to object to processing. Where processing rests on consent, you can withdraw it at any time.
In practice these rights have nothing to bite on here, and the reason is worth stating plainly rather than dressing up: no personal data reaches us at all. We hold nothing about you, so there is nothing to show you, correct, erase, restrict, port, or object to. Everything the app stores stays on your device, where you can inspect and delete it directly without asking us.
If you think we have handled your personal data wrongly, you can complain to a supervisory authority. In Sweden that is Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten (IMY), imy.se.
Contact
ADDABLE AB — peter.blenessy@addable.se