Your notes are yours.

In short

• No account: the app never asks for your name, email address or a password.
• Your boards and notes are stored on your device and, if iCloud is on, in your own iCloud account. Straw Technologies cannot access them.
• The app sends anonymous usage analytics (Firebase Analytics, by Google) to help us improve it. Never the content of your notes.
• No ads, no tracking across apps, no selling of data.
• Side Notes Plus purchases go through Apple: we never receive your payment data.

Your notes and iCloud

Side Notes uses CloudKit, Apple's sync service. Your boards are stored in the private database of your iCloud account, which only your Apple Account can open. We cannot read, change or delete them.

If iCloud is turned off for Side Notes, your boards stay on the device only. Deleting a board in the app deletes it from all your synced devices.

Apple is responsible for storing and securing this data, under its own privacy policy.

Side Notes Plus and purchases

Side Notes Plus is bought through the App Store. Payment is handled by Apple: Straw Technologies never receives your payment data, or your name.

The app checks your purchase status with Apple, on the device (StoreKit). No Side Notes account is needed, and no server of ours is involved.

Your custom templates and the list of locked boards sync through the key-value storage of your own iCloud, like your boards.

Face ID locking is handled by iOS: the app only receives the answer (unlocked or not), never your biometric data.

Anonymous usage analytics

The app uses Firebase Analytics, a Google service, to understand how it is used. It sends events such as a screen being opened, a board being created or deleted and its layout, the template or theme chosen, the Side Notes Plus screen being shown and purchases (with no personal data), along with the app version, the device model and the system version. Google also infers an approximate country.

These events are tied to a random identifier specific to the app install, never to your name, your email address or your Apple Account. The text of your boards and notes is never sent.

The app does not ask for permission to track you: it does not follow you across apps and shows no ads. This data is only used to improve Side Notes, and is kept for 14 months at most.

This website

side-notes.app sets no cookies and uses no audience measurement tool. Fonts are served from our own servers.

Like any website, our server and Cloudflare, which delivers it, process your IP address while serving the pages, in short-lived technical logs.

When you write to us

If you write to [email protected], we use your address and your message only to reply, and keep them no longer than needed.

Your rights

Under the GDPR, you can ask to access, correct or erase your data, and object to its processing. Since your notes live in your iCloud, you manage them directly from the app. For anything else, write to [email protected]. You can also file a complaint with the CNIL, the French data protection authority (cnil.fr).

Data controller

Straw Technologies SARL, 8 rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, 75010 Paris, France. Contact: [email protected].

If this policy changes, the new version is published on this page with its date.