Privacy Policy

Privacy is a core feature, not a footnote

MinkNote was built from the ground up around three pillars: native macOS quality, local-first file ownership, and privacy by design. These are not marketing positions — they are architectural decisions baked into every part of the app.

Most note-taking apps are built around a server that stores your content. MinkNote is not. There is no MinkNote server that holds your notes. There never has been, and building one is not on the roadmap.

We never see your content

Your notes are plain Markdown files that live in a folder you choose on your own Mac. MinkNote reads and writes those files directly — it does not upload them, index them remotely, or transmit them anywhere. The content of your notes is completely invisible to us. We have no servers that receive it, no pipelines that process it, and no way to access it even if we wanted to.

This is not a privacy policy promise that could be quietly changed in a future update. It is a technical fact. The app has no networking code that touches your note content.

Your data never leaves your local network

All of your notes remain on your Mac and within your own iCloud account if you choose to use iCloud Drive as your notes folder. iCloud sync is handled entirely by Apple using their own end-to-end encryption — MinkNote plays no part in that process and receives no copy of your data.

MinkNote does not require an internet connection to function. It works fully offline, always, because it is a local app working with local files.

No account, no identity

MinkNote requires no account, no email address, and no sign-in of any kind. There is no user profile, no user ID, and no way for us to associate the app with a specific person. As far as MinkNote is concerned, you are anonymous by default.

Analytics and telemetry

MinkNote currently collects zero analytics and zero telemetry. There is no crash reporting service, no usage tracking, and no third-party SDK embedded in the app that phones home.

In the future, we may introduce optional, anonymous analytics to help us understand which features are most useful. If and when we do, it will be:

Opt-in. Analytics will be off by default. You will be asked once, clearly, and you can change your choice at any time in Settings.

Anonymous. No note content, no file names, no personally identifiable information will ever be included. Any data collected will be limited to high-level usage signals such as which features are used and how often.

We will update this policy before any analytics are introduced, and we will never retroactively apply analytics to users who have not opted in.

Third-party services

The MinkNote website (not the app) loads fonts from Google Fonts. This is a standard web practice and involves your browser making a request to Google's font CDN. No note content is involved. If you prefer to avoid this, you can use a browser extension that blocks third-party font requests.

The app itself makes no third-party network requests.

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes to this policy — particularly around analytics — we will update the date at the top of this page and, where appropriate, notify users within the app. We will never introduce data collection without updating this document first.