Privacy Policy

Your notes stay on your devices. The Varlig apps have no accounts, and nothing you write reaches a server of ours in a form we can read: only faster live editing, which is off unless you turn it on, passes edits through our relay, end-to-end encrypted. This policy explains exactly what personal data is involved when you use the Varlig apps for Mac, iPhone and iPad and visit varlig.com, who handles it, and what your rights are.

At a glance

• Your notes, attachments, tags and settings are stored on your devices and, if you turn on iCloud sync, in your own iCloud account. We never store them, and we can’t read them.
• Live editing, a preview you turn on, sends your typing as you write to the people a note is shared with, and to your own devices, through iCloud. Only if you also turn on faster live editing do your edits pass through our relay as well, end-to-end encrypted, and it keeps nothing.
• The app has no account, no advertising and no analytics. Crash and hang reports stay on your device unless you choose to send one.
• The app only goes online for the features listed below, such as exchange rates. Its lookups never include a note, only the link or place name they need.
• The website sets no cookies and uses privacy-friendly analytics that don’t identify you.
• If you email us, we use your message only to reply.

Who is responsible

The controller responsible for processing personal data under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is:

Lea-Salome Adler
Obolonskyi Ave. 26, Apt. 128
04205 Kyiv
Ukraine
Email: [email protected]

The Varlig app

Your notes

On a Mac, your library is stored in Varlig’s own container, ~/Library/Containers/app.varlig.notes.mobile/Data/Library/Application Support/Varlig/, together with its attachments. On iPhone and iPad, it’s stored inside the app on the device, and included in the device’s own backups. We can’t see, access or recover it.

• Locked notes are encrypted on your Mac, iPhone and iPad with AES-GCM and a 256-bit key derived from your password (PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256, 600,000 rounds, with a random salt for each note). We never receive your password and can’t recover it.
• Touch ID and Face ID: if you allow unlocking a note with Touch ID, Face ID or your Mac password, a key derived from your password is kept in the keychain of that device only. It’s never synced.
• Backups you make with File › Back Up Library… are saved wherever you choose. Notes that aren’t locked are readable in a backup, so keep backups somewhere private.
• Spotlight: if you turn on Include unencrypted notes in Spotlight, macOS indexes the text of your unlocked notes on your Mac so you can search it from Spotlight. It’s off to begin with.
• Widgets and sharing: a widget you add shows the titles and open tasks of pinned, unlocked notes, or an answer from a note you choose. Content you share to Varlig from other apps is saved on your device until Varlig imports it.
• Reminders: reminders are stored in your library on the device where you set them. If you choose Also add to Apple Reminders, Varlig adds the reminder’s title, time and a link back to the note to Apple’s Reminders app on that device, never the note’s text. From then on, Apple’s Reminders app handles it, including any syncing it does, under Apple’s privacy policy.

When the app goes online

Most of Varlig works entirely offline. The features below connect to the internet. Apart from faster live editing, which carries end-to-end-encrypted edits as described in Live editing, none of them send a note, only the link, place or figures a lookup needs, and none include an account, device or advertising identifier. Like any internet connection, each request reveals your IP address to the service it goes to, which handles it under its own privacy policy. Faster live editing connects to our own relay; we don’t receive any of the other requests.

You can turn off automatic rate updates with Refresh currency and crypto rates hourly in Settings › Calculations, link titles with Auto-fill titles when pasting web links in Settings › General, and each lookup of places and weather in Settings › Calculations › Live data. Faster live editing is off until you turn on Faster live editing in Settings › Sync & Backup on the Mac, or Settings › Sync on iPhone and iPad.

iCloud sync and shared notes

• iCloud sync: if you turn on Sync notes with iCloud on your Mac, and whenever you use Varlig on iPhone or iPad while signed in to iCloud, your notes and attachments are stored in the private iCloud database of your own Apple Account and synced to your other devices. Apple provides this service under its own privacy policy. We have no access to your iCloud data. Password-protected notes are uploaded only in encrypted form.
• Shared notes: if you share a note with other people, Apple’s iCloud sends it to the people you invite, identified by the email address or phone number you enter, and their changes back to you. The people you invite can read the note, and change it if you allow that, and they may keep a copy. Password-protected notes can’t be shared.

Live editing

Live editing is a preview, off unless you turn on Live Editing (Preview) in Settings › Sync & Backup on the Mac, or Settings › Sync on iPhone and iPad. With it on, the people a note is shared with, and your own devices, usually see each other’s typing and carets within a second or two.

• Through iCloud: while a note is open live, your device saves small records beside it in the note owner’s iCloud, where the note already is, shared with the same people as the note, if any. They hold your latest edits, where your caret is, your name, an identifier iCloud gives your account (so your caret has the same color on every device), a random identifier for your device, and that you’re in the note. On a Mac, the name is the one iCloud gives you on the note’s share if the note is yours, and otherwise your Mac’s user account name. On iPhone and iPad, it’s the one iCloud gives you on any note you share, whoever’s note this is, and otherwise the kind of device. The people in a shared note see each other by the names on its share, usually as their Apple Accounts give them; in a note you haven’t shared, a Mac shows your other devices under its user account name, and iPhone and iPad show them under the name iCloud gives you on a note you share, or else the name each device saved. If people you share a note with use live editing, their devices save these records in your iCloud even if you don’t. Someone who can only read a note saves no records, and shows to the others only through faster live editing, under the name their device sends. So that your own devices can join each other in a note you haven’t shared, each of them, while live editing is on and it has any of your notes open, also keeps one small record in your own iCloud listing the notes of yours it has open: up to 32 note identifiers, under the device’s random identifier, with no text or titles. It rewrites the record when that list changes, and every 25 seconds while it has one of your notes open, even if no other device has it open. Apple provides this under its own privacy policy, as for shared notes, and we receive none of it.
• How long the records stay: as a note is edited live, older records are merged and deleted, and a device’s record goes at the first such tidy-up after it has gone unused for 30 days. Removing someone from a note doesn’t delete their records at once. The note owner’s devices delete all of a note’s records when its owner stops sharing it, deletes it permanently or gives it a password, and once it has gone a month without live editing and the note itself holds everything in them, but only while live editing is on there, so the records can stay longer if the owner doesn’t use it. Turning live editing off stops your device saving new records, but doesn’t delete those already saved. A device’s list of open notes is replaced each time it’s written, and usually written empty once the device has none of your notes open or live editing is turned off. Varlig never deletes it, and it can keep the identifiers last listed until that device writes it again, for example if the device went offline or quit before writing it empty, or had already stopped updating it. The records count toward the owner’s iCloud storage, and each device’s list toward yours.
• Faster live editing: off unless you turn on Faster live editing in Settings › Sync & Backup on the Mac, or Settings › Sync on iPhone and iPad. Then, in a note open live, your edits, caret and name, which kind of device you’re using, and the same account and device identifiers as in iCloud also go through our relay at varlig.com, which is faster than iCloud alone, to the other people and devices in the note that have it on too, your own among them. iCloud still carries everything. Before they leave your device, they’re end-to-end encrypted with a key that only the note’s people, and your own devices, receive through iCloud, so the relay can’t read them. After someone is removed from the note, the owner’s devices change the key. A note’s owner can keep that note off the relay by turning off Allow faster live editing for this note in Share with People. It’s on for a note you share, unless you turn it off, and off for a note shared with an older version of Varlig until you turn it on. A note you haven’t shared has no such switch, and takes the relay between those of your devices that have faster live editing on.
• What the relay processes: while you’re connected, the relay and Cloudflare, which delivers varlig.com, process your IP address and the connection’s details: an identifier for the note’s room that reveals nothing about the note, which connections are in the same room, and the size and timing of what’s sent. The relay runs on our server at Hetzner in Ashburn, Virginia, USA, described under Hosting, so this data is processed in the United States. The relay passes the encrypted edits on to the others in the room and stores nothing: a room exists in memory only while someone is in it, and the relay itself keeps only totals, such as how many connections were open, never IP addresses, room identifiers or what was sent. Cloudflare may also process this data in the United States; it is certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. The legal basis is providing the feature you turned on (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR) and our legitimate interest in a secure, reliable relay (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Connections you turn on

• AI assistants (MCP): if you turn on Allow local MCP connections in Settings › Advanced and connect an AI assistant, that assistant can read the notes you allow, and it may send them to its own service under its own terms. It’s off to begin with.
• Automation: if you use Varlig’s URL automation with another app, results are passed to the address that app provides.

Crash and hang reports

When Varlig crashes, stops responding or uses unusual amounts of power or storage, your Mac, iPhone or iPad gives the app a report through Apple’s MetricKit. Varlig keeps the most recent ones on the device, cut down to the Varlig and system versions, the device model, what happened, and where in Varlig’s own code it happened. They contain no note text, titles or file names, and the app never sends them by itself.

If you choose Send Report… (Settings › Advanced on the Mac, Settings › About Varlig on iPhone and iPad), you see everything the report contains before you email it to us or share it another way. We use a report you send only to find and fix the problem, and handle it like any other email (see Email). You can delete the kept reports there at any time.

Separately, if you’ve allowed your device to share analytics with app developers in its privacy settings, Apple may pass crash reports to us under Apple’s own privacy policy.

No tracking in the app

The app contains no analytics, advertising or third-party crash-reporting software, and it doesn’t check for updates over the internet. It learns whether you have a plan only from Apple’s App Store, as described below.

Buying and downloading Varlig

• App Store: Apple handles downloads, purchases, subscriptions and payment under its own privacy policy. To show the plans and their prices, and to know whether you have one, the app asks the App Store on your device through Apple’s StoreKit; this never includes your notes. We don’t receive your name, Apple Account or payment details. Apple gives us only sales reports that don’t identify you.

The website

Hosting

varlig.com is served from a server we rent from Hetzner Online GmbH (Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany) in its Ashburn, Virginia, USA data center, and delivered through Cloudflare, Inc. (101 Townsend St, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA). To deliver pages and protect the site against attacks, both process technical data for each request, such as your IP address, the page requested, your browser’s user agent and the time. Cloudflare may process this data in the United States; it is certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in a secure, reliable website (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Analytics

To understand which pages are useful, the website uses Plausible Analytics, loaded from plausible.crashatlas.com. Plausible doesn’t use cookies, doesn’t store your IP address and doesn’t follow you across websites. It counts page views using the page address, the referring website, your browser, operating system and device type, and the country derived from your IP address. Visits are counted with an identifier that is recalculated daily and can’t be traced back to you. It also counts a few clicks, such as on Get Varlig buttons and on the example notes you choose on the homepage, recording only which button or example it was, where it sits and the page’s language, never what you type. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in improving the website (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Cookies

The website sets no cookies. When you choose a website language, we save that preference in your browser’s local storage so it is remembered on your next visit. Automatic language selection uses the language and region in your browser’s locale settings, without an IP lookup or a location request. Fonts are served from varlig.com itself, and the site embeds no third-party content, except the Varlig web beta at varlig.com/web, which loads Apple’s CloudKit JS from Apple (cdn.apple-cloudkit.com) to sign you in to iCloud. Links to the App Store take you to Apple’s service, whose own privacy policy applies there.

Email

When you email [email protected], we use your email address and message to answer you, and keep them only as long as needed for your request and any legal retention obligations. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in answering your inquiry, or taking steps toward a contract at your request (Art. 6(1)(f) and (b) GDPR).

Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to:

• access the personal data we hold about you
• have it corrected or deleted
• restrict or object to its processing, including processing based on legitimate interests
• receive it in a portable format

To use these rights, email [email protected]. Because the app keeps your data on your devices and in iCloud, in your own account or, for a note someone shares with you, in theirs, and our relay keeps nothing, most of what we could hold about you is limited to emails you send us. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority, in particular in the EU country where you live or work.

Children

Varlig isn’t directed at children under 16, and we don’t knowingly collect their personal data.

Changes

We update this policy when Varlig or the website changes how data is handled. The date at the top shows when it last changed.