Privacy

What NotaBene does with your notes, your mail and your permissions — and what it never does.

No ads, no upgrade prompts, no account

NotaBene shows no ads and no prompts to upgrade, and there is no NotaBene account to create or sign in to.

Your notes stay yours

Your library is a folder of ordinary files on your device, mirrored to your own private iCloud. Sync goes through your iCloud account; there is nothing else to sign up for. Your notes are files you own, and you can take all of them out as Markdown at any time.

Each device keeps its own search index of your notes, on the device.

Permissions are asked for when they are needed

The welcome tour never asks for a permission. Features that need the camera, your calendar or notifications are named in it, and the system asks you for permission the first time you use one of them. If you have turned the microphone off for NotaBene, recording says Microphone Access Is Off and offers a button to the setting where it is changed.

Your mail

When you connect a mailbox over IMAP, NotaBene opens your Inbox read-only, so nothing it does can change your mail. Reading a message in NotaBene does not mark it read, and a flag is never cleared. Your password is never written into your library or into iCloud Drive; it is kept in the keychain. Disconnecting a mailbox removes it from all your devices and changes nothing on the server.