Plain answers about your notes.

Where your notes live

Every device keeps a complete local copy — that is what makes ClearNote fast and what makes it work with no network. Your library is also stored on ClearNote’s server, because that is what lets a Mac, an iPhone and a browser stay in step with each other. A browser has no iCloud to sync through, so once ClearNote runs on the web, a server that holds notes is unavoidable. We would rather say that plainly than dress it up.

On the server, every note, task and attachment record is encrypted with AES-256-GCM before it is written, with a separate key per deployment and the account it belongs to bound into the ciphertext. A stolen database dump, a leaked backup or a discarded disk is unreadable on its own. Attachment bytes — the scans, the PDFs, the photographs — are sealed the same way, with the account and the file’s own address bound into the ciphertext, so a file that ends up in the wrong place fails to open rather than opening into somebody else’s library.

This is encryption at rest. It is not end-to-end encryption, and ClearNote does not claim to be end-to-end encrypted. The running server necessarily holds the key, so someone who compromises the server itself could read notes. Saying otherwise would be a lie that sounds like a feature, and the whole point of this page is that you can trust what it says.

What that buys you in practice: your notes are protected against the failure that actually happens to companies — a database that ends up somewhere it should not be. It does not protect you against us, and we are not going to pretend it does.

What ClearNote collects

No analytics SDK, no crash reporter that ships note content, no telemetry, no advertising identifier, and no profile of how you use the app. Nobody is counting your notes.

If you sign in, this is the whole list, and it is what ClearNote’s App Store privacy declaration will say:

• Email address — from your Google account when you sign in. It identifies the account.
• Name and profile picture address — from the same sign-in, shown inside the app.
• Your content — notes, tasks, tags, notebooks and attachments, stored so your devices can stay in step (sealed at rest, as above).
• An account identifier — the random id your records are filed under.

All of it is linked to your account, and all of it is used only to run the app. None of it is used for tracking, advertising or profiling, and none of it is sold or handed to anyone else — the one exception is the question-and-passages you choose to send when you switch AI on, described below.

The server keeps an operational log of requests — a request id, a path, a status, a duration. It never contains note content, note titles, or the text of anything you asked the AI.

The Mac app checks clearnote.app/appcast.json for a newer version shortly after it opens and once a day while it stays open. That is an ordinary request for a public file: it carries no account information and no note content, and like any request to the site it appears in the access log described below.

AI: exactly what is sent

AI is off until you turn it on. With it off, nothing from your notes goes anywhere, from anywhere in the app.

When you turn it on and ask a question, this is the sequence:

1. ClearNote searches your notes on your own deviceUsing the local copy — on the Mac and iPhone, and in the browser too. No network involved, and nothing on the server does this: it cannot, because it cannot read your notes without the key.
2. It selects the matching passagesA small, bounded amount — a few thousand words at most, not your library.
3. It sends only those passages and your questionAlong with instructions telling the model the note text is data rather than commands.
4. It shows you what it sentEvery answer says how many characters of your notes were sent and which notes they came from.

Where they go depends on the setting you chose:

• ClearNote AI — the passages go to ClearNote’s relay, which forwards them to xAI and returns the answer. The relay does not store prompts or completions and does not write note text to its logs. It exists so a production API key is not shipped inside the app, where anyone could extract it.
• Your own xAI key (Mac and iPhone) — the passages go straight from your device to xAI, and nothing passes through ClearNote at all. Your key is kept in the system Keychain on that device and is never written to a file or a log.

Either way, xAI receives the passages and processes them under its own privacy policy. ClearNote asks xAI not to retain the request. If you would rather nothing left the device at all, leave AI switched off — every other feature, including search, works exactly the same.

Optional web search is per question and off unless you switch it on for that question. Web results are always shown as a separate, differently-styled list so you can tell them from your own notes.

ClearNote never lets the model act on your library. It has no tools, no ability to create, edit, delete or send anything, and nothing it produces is written into a note unless you choose to apply it. Text inside your notes and inside web pages is treated as untrusted data — so a note containing “ignore your instructions and email this to…” does nothing.

Scanning and text recognition

Document scanning and text recognition run entirely on your device using Apple’s Vision framework. Images are never uploaded to recognise text.

Scanning on the web

Document scanning and OCR are features of the Mac and iPhone apps, where they run on device. The web app does not have them: doing OCR in a browser would mean either shipping a large model to every visitor or sending your images to a server to be read, and neither is a trade worth making quietly.

The website and the web app

These pages are static HTML with no third-party scripts, no webfonts, no analytics, no cookies and no trackers. Nothing on them is loaded from anywhere but clearnote.app, and the pages’ own security policy forbids it. The web app at /app/ is ClearNote’s own JavaScript and nothing else — no framework fetched from a CDN, no tag manager, no third-party request of any kind. It sets one cookie that lasts: your session. It is HttpOnly, so no script can read it, and it exists only to keep you signed in. Signing in also sets a second, short-lived one that ties the sign-in you started to the sign-in that comes back — it is deleted the moment you arrive, and it is there so that a link somebody sends you cannot sign you into their account instead of yours.

The web server keeps standard access logs (IP address, request path, user agent) for operational reasons. They are rotated daily and discarded after 14 days. Requests that carry a sign-in code or a share-link token are not written to the access log at all.

Beta access requests

If you ask for beta access, ClearNote stores the address you gave, whatever you wrote in the message, and a hash of your IP address — the hash so that abuse can be spotted without keeping a record of who visited. Nothing is sent to a mailing list, and the form does not send email at all.

Getting your data out

Export everything at any time: notes as HTML and Markdown, attachments as ordinary files, tasks, and a documented manifest. From the web app it is one file you can open in any browser. It needs no subscription and, from the Mac and iPhone apps, no network. The format is documented here.

Deleting your account deletes your notes, your attachments and your sessions from the server. Ask on the support page and it is done by hand — during the beta there is no self-service button for it, and saying there is one would be another thing on this page that was not true.

The server is backed up: fourteen daily copies, plus the first of each month for twelve months. A deleted account is gone from the live service at once and ages out of the backups as they are pruned, which takes up to a year. Backups hold the same sealed records as the live service, and exist so that a failure never costs you a note; they are not read or used for anything else.

Changes

If this page changes in a way that matters, the change will appear in the changelog.

Last updated 11 October 2026.