Your notes are none of our business.

Who we are

This policy covers the CatchDo iOS app and the catchdo.com website. "We" is the CatchDo team; "you" is the person catching notes. If anything here is unclear, write to us at the address at the bottom.

Your notes stay on your device

Everything you capture in CatchDo — voice recordings, photos, videos, text, and drawings — is stored on your device, and every piece of AI processing happens on your device: speech-to-text, reading text out of images, summaries, translation, hashtag suggestions, to-do extraction, and chatting with your notes. The AI models are downloaded to your phone once and run locally from then on, which is why the app works fully offline.

There is no CatchDo account, no sign-up, and no CatchDo server that receives, stores, or processes your note content. We cannot read your notes, we cannot hand them to anyone else, and we cannot train AI models on them — the content never reaches us in the first place.

The one thing that ever travels from CatchDo to us is a feedback report you write and send yourself — described under Feedback you send us below, and never sent until you press Send.

Research briefs: the one way your notes go out

A note, and a hashtag's topic, each carry a Research button. It turns what you wrote into a research brief — the note's or the topic's own words, written out as a question with the background, the open questions, and the to-dos — for an outside assistant to research. The brief is built on a page of its own, in three steps, and nothing leaves until you press a send button on the last one. Before that you can reword any of it, take out anything you would rather keep, choose what you are asking for, or close the page without sending.

The last step shows the brief word for word and lets you choose where it goes: Google, ChatGPT, or Claude, starting from the one you picked in Settings. Google receives a short search line only — the one shown on the page, which you can rewrite. ChatGPT and Claude receive the brief as you left it: it is put in the address the chat opens on and copied to your clipboard as well, in case the chat opens without it. A photo or video from the note goes only if you tick it, and then through your phone's share sheet, to the app you pick there. Audio never goes.

Once it arrives, what you sent is covered by their privacy policy and their training practices, not ours — the same as if you had typed it into their app yourself. We are not a party to it: the brief does not pass through any server of ours, and we never see it.

Nothing is sent automatically. No brief is generated or transmitted in the background, no other note travels with the one you send, and a note or topic you never send a brief for never leaves your device. If you paste an assistant's answer back into CatchDo, that answer is read on your device and stays there like any other note.

Links in your notes

When you attach a web link to a typed note — with Attach a Link as you write it, by sharing a web page into CatchDo from another app, or in a note somebody sent you as a CatchDo file — the app fetches that one page so it can read it for you, on your device, with the same local models that read your other notes, and keeps what the page says with the note. Addresses written inside a note's words are never fetched; they stay links you can tap.

That fetch is an ordinary web request to the linked site: the site receives the address, the app's name and version, and your preferred languages — and, as with any web request, your IP address — and nothing else. Your note is never sent with it, and no other service is involved. A page that asks for a sign-in or a subscription is left unread, and the note says so. Nothing is fetched while Low Data Mode is on, and you can switch the whole thing off under Settings › Catch › Links.

Downloading the AI models

The first time you use transcription or an AI feature — and again if you pick a different model, in Settings or on the welcome tour's setup page — the app downloads the model files it needs from a public content delivery network such as Hugging Face. This is an ordinary file download in the direction of your phone: no note content, no recordings, and no account information go out with it. Like any download, it shows your IP address to the network serving the file. Once a model is on your phone it runs there, which is why the app keeps working with no signal at all.

Backup and sync: your own iCloud

If you leave sync on, your notes, checklists, and audio are mirrored to the private iCloud database of your own Apple Account using Apple's CloudKit. That data lives in your iCloud storage, under your Apple credentials, protected by Apple's security and governed by Apple's privacy policy. We have no access to it — it is not a CatchDo server, and we hold no keys to your iCloud.

Sync is optional. You can switch it off in the app's Settings, and you can remove CatchDo's iCloud data at any time from your device's iCloud storage settings. Deleting a note in the app deletes it from your iCloud copy too.

Where a note was made

CatchDo can offer you the places around you — the café, the office, the park — to attach to a note, and a note remembers roughly where it was made so that the offer still makes sense when you read it back a week later. This is off unless you allow location access, and there is a switch for the whole feature in Settings › Places.

Where you are stays on your phone. Nothing about your location is sent to us, added to analytics, or attached to a note unless you tap a place to attach it; a place you do attach is part of that note and travels only with your own notes, through your own iCloud. Finding what is nearby asks Apple Maps what is around those coordinates, under Apple's privacy policy — your notes are never part of that request.

Analytics and crash reports: what we do measure

The app uses Google's Firebase Analytics so we can tell which features are used and where the app needs work. What Firebase receives from your device:

• Anonymous usage events — for example that a voice note was recorded or a setting was opened, which screens are opened, and how many taps each screen gets. A tap is counted, never located: not where it landed and not what was under it. Events describe that a feature was used, never what you captured: no note text, audio, images, transcripts, or tags are ever included.
• Basic device and app information — device model, iOS version, app version, and language, plus an approximate, city-level region that Google derives from your IP address. Nothing from the app's own Places feature is ever added to analytics: where you are stays on your phone.
• A random app-instance identifier generated by Firebase. It is not your name, email, phone number, or Apple ID — we never collect those in the app.

This data is processed by Google LLC on our behalf under the Firebase privacy terms. We use it only to understand aggregate usage and improve the app; we do not sell it or use it for advertising.

The app also sends crash reports through Google's Firebase Crashlytics: when the app crashes, the stack trace, app version, iOS version, and device model; and when something fails, such as a save or a photo the camera could not take, the kind of error, its code, and the place in the app's code that reported it. Never the error's message, which could quote your notes, and never your content.

Turning them off: you can turn usage statistics and crash reports off entirely in Settings › Usage Analytics, on any plan: a subscription buys more of the app, never the right to decline being counted. Turn it off and the app stops sending analytics data and crash reports to Firebase entirely, discards any crash report not yet sent, and discards the app-instance identifier, so turning it back on later starts a fresh one. Deleting the app resets it too.

In the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, nothing is collected until you turn usage statistics on: the switch starts off there, and CatchDo counts nothing — and starts nothing — until you say it may.

Feedback you send us

CatchDo has one way to reach us from inside the app. Shake your phone, or open Settings › Send Feedback, and a card appears where you can say what went wrong or what you wish the app did. Nothing leaves your device until you press Send, and you can turn the shake off in Settings.

A report carries the kind you pick — something's wrong, transcription is wrong, an idea, something else — and the message you type, up to 5,000 characters. With it goes a short block of context, so that a bug can be reproduced rather than guessed at: your app version and build, your iOS version, your device model, your language, whether you are on the free or the paid tier, which transcription engine is selected, which screen you were on, roughly how many notes are on the phone as a bucket rather than an exact count, and — when the app has recorded one — the code of the last error it hit. It also carries a pseudonymous identifier created on this install — it exists only to tell one person's reports apart from another's — and an Apple App Attest proof, a cryptographic statement from Apple that the report came from a genuine copy of CatchDo, which is there to stop automated abuse.

A report never carries your notes on its own. No transcripts, no recordings, no photos, no videos, no drawings, no hashtags, no chat questions. You can choose to add one screenshot — the screen you shook the phone on, or a screenshot from your photo library. Nothing is attached unless you add it; the picture is shown on the form before you send, you can remove it, and it is re-encoded without its metadata (no location, no date). A screenshot shows whatever was on your screen, so if it shows a note, that part of the note is sent with the report. It carries no advertising identifier (IDFA), no vendor identifier (IDFV), and no device fingerprint.

If a report cannot be sent — you are offline, or our service is down — it waits on your device and goes out the next time you open the app. A report still unsent after seven days is discarded, and nothing about it is kept.

Reports we receive are deleted automatically 12 months after they arrive. To have one removed sooner, write to privacy@catchdo.com with roughly when you sent it and what it was about; because there is no account, that is how we find it.

Purchases

CatchDo Premium is billed through the Apple App Store, as an auto-renewing subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase. Payment is handled entirely by Apple — we never see your card details, billing address, or Apple ID password.

To remember that you have Premium across launches and devices, the app uses RevenueCat. It receives your App Store purchase receipt and a randomly generated anonymous identifier, and answers one question: is Premium active. That identifier is not your name, email, Apple ID, or notes — the app never collects those, so there is nothing for it to be linked to. RevenueCat's handling of this data is described in their privacy policy.

Permissions the app asks for

iOS asks before the app can touch any of these, and each one is used for the single purpose below and nothing else:

• Microphone — to record the voice notes you choose to record. Audio is transcribed on the device and stays there.
• Speech Recognition — only if you choose the Save space transcription setup, which transcribes with the speech recognition built into iOS, on the device.
• Camera and photos — to capture or pick the images and video you turn into notes, and to save a photo or video to your library when you ask. They are read on the device, and one leaves only if you tick it into a research brief or share it yourself.
• Calendar — only if you put to-dos on your calendar. Adding one asks for permission to add events, which can't see the events already there. Keeping your dated to-dos in step with a calendar you pick asks for full access, so CatchDo can update and remove the entries it made. Nothing from your calendar is collected or sent anywhere.
• Location — only if you use Places, to offer you the spots around you to attach to a note. Finding them asks Apple Maps what is around you; your notes are never sent, and your location is never sent to us.

You can withdraw any of these at any time in iOS Settings; the rest of the app keeps working.

The website

If you join the waitlist on catchdo.com, we store the email address you submit so we can tell you when the app is available, and for nothing else. Write to us to have it removed.

The site uses no analytics and sets no advertising cookies. It uses Google's reCAPTCHA Enterprise to help prevent automated waitlist and idea-board submissions. The idea board uses Google sign-in so you can vote and post ideas. These are website features only — none of them exists in the iOS app.

What we never collect

The one thing that ever travels from CatchDo to us is the feedback report you write and send yourself, described above. Apart from what you choose to put in a report — your message, and a screenshot if you add one — none of the following ever reaches us:

• Your notes, recordings, photos, videos, drawings, transcripts, to-dos, or hashtags — including anything in a research brief, which goes from your phone to the assistant you chose without passing through us
• Your contacts, your existing calendar events, or where you are — Places reads your location on the phone and never sends it on
• Your name, email, or phone number (the app has no account)
• An advertising identifier (IDFA), a vendor identifier (IDFV), or anything that fingerprints your device
• Anything for advertising, tracking across apps, or sale to third parties

Data retention and deletion

Your content is yours to delete: remove notes in the app, or delete the app and its iCloud data to remove everything. Analytics data is retained by Firebase for a limited period (we use Firebase's standard retention, currently up to 14 months) and only ever in the anonymous form described above.

The only thing we ever hold on our side is a feedback report you chose to send us. Those are deleted automatically 12 months after they arrive; to have one removed before then, write to privacy@catchdo.com.

Children

CatchDo is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them — the app collects no personal information from anyone.

Changes to this policy

If we change how the app handles data, we will update this page and the date at the top before the change ships. The promise that note content stays on your device is the foundation of the product, not a temporary policy.

Contact

Questions, or a request about your data: privacy@catchdo.com