Privacy Policy

Effective date: August 9, 2026 · Last updated: August 9, 2026
Applies to: Clarity Atlas for Android and Clarity Atlas for Windows
Published by: Clarity Atlas LLC ("we", "us") · Contact: [email protected]
Canonical URL: https://clarityatlas.app/privacy

1. How Clarity Atlas is built, and why that matters

Clarity Atlas is a "local-first" note-taking app. Your notes are stored as plain Markdown text files with YAML frontmatter:

• On Android: in the app's private storage directory. Other apps on your device cannot read it.
• On Windows: in a folder you choose. The default is Documents\ClarityAtlasVault.

These are ordinary files in an open format. You can read them, back them up, move them, edit them in another program, or delete them, with or without Clarity Atlas installed.

The app needs no backend to work. Installed and used on its own, there is no Clarity Atlas account, no login, and nothing of yours on our side — the app simply reads and writes files on your device.

Clarity Atlas Cloud is the single, optional exception: a subscription in which we run the AI relay and hold your synced notes for you. Even then we hold only ciphertext your device produced, because Clarity Atlas Cloud requires an encryption passphrase we never receive. Section 4.3 sets out exactly what that means. If you don't subscribe, none of it applies.

2. Data we collect

From the app itself, none. Two optional things you can choose do involve us — Clarity Atlas Cloud (Section 4.3) and the support chat on this website (below) — and each is described in full. Otherwise, Clarity Atlas contains:

• No analytics or usage tracking SDK
• No crash or error reporting service
• No telemetry: the app never reports your usage, your content, or your configuration to us or to anyone else. (The Windows app's optional update check, Section 4.6, contacts GitHub to ask whether a newer version exists. It carries no information about you beyond your IP address and a random per-install ID, and you can turn it off.)
• No advertising SDK, no ad targeting, and no advertising identifier use — the Android build does not hold the advertising-ID permission at all (see Section 9)
• No user accounts, sign-up, sign-in, or profile
• No contact list, calendar, location, or device identifier collection

Without a Clarity Atlas Cloud subscription, we do not know how many notes you have, what they say, when you open the app, or whether you use it at all. With one, we know your subscription status and a count of AI requests — never their contents.

If you email us for support, we will have whatever you choose to put in that email. We use it only to answer you. Please do not paste sensitive note content into a support request.

Download counts: when you click a download link on this website, we add 1 to a daily tally. The tally records the file, the platform, the country your request came from, and the hostname that referred you — never the full referring URL, because those sometimes carry personal data in a query string. There is no cookie, no identifier, and no row per visitor: it is a running total, and there is no way to work backwards from it to a person. We keep it because it is the only measure we have of how many people use Clarity Atlas — the app itself reports nothing, so without this we would be guessing.

Notify-me list: if you enter your email address on this website to hear about news such as an iPhone build or a major release, we store that address, the date, whether you ticked the box saying you'd use Clarity Atlas on an iPhone or iPad (so we can count how many people want it), and a salted one-way hash of your IP address — the hash exists only so we can spot someone submitting thousands of addresses, it is never stored raw, and it cannot be turned back into your IP. We use the list for those announcements and nothing else: no newsletter, no cadence, and we do not share or sell it. Reply to any message from us, or email [email protected], and we delete your address.

Website support chat: the chat assistant on this website is the one place we do keep something. Messages you type there are processed by Anthropic (our AI provider) to generate answers, and we retain chat transcripts for up to 30 days — associated only with an anonymized visitor hash, never a name or account — to spot recurring problems, after which they are deleted automatically. Please don't paste note contents or personal details into the chat.

3. Data the app accesses on your device, and why

Android permissions we request

• INTERNET — required for the optional AI, sync, and web-clipping features. If you use none of them, no network traffic is generated by the app's features.
• RECORD_AUDIO — to record voice memos when you tap record. The microphone is not accessed at any other time.
• MODIFY_AUDIO_SETTINGS — to configure audio routing/levels during voice memo recording.
• Camera and photo access (via the system camera and file picker) — only when you choose to attach a photo or take a picture for a note.

4. Optional features that send data off your device

Every feature in this section is off by default and requires either credentials you supply or a Clarity Atlas Cloud subscription — except 4.6, the Windows update check, which is on by default and can be turned off. If you configure no credentials and no subscription, the update check is the only thing that leaves your device.

In sections 4.1 and 4.2 the requests go directly from your device to the provider using your own key, so we are not a party to them: we receive no copy and keep no log. Section 4.3 covers the case where you've asked us to run that plumbing instead.

4.1 AI features (require your own API key)

Notes and attachments processed by these features are subject to the receiving provider's terms, retention practices, and security. Please read their policies before enabling a feature. Your relationship with each provider is your own, under your own API key and account.

Local-only notes are excluded. Any note you flag as local-only is never sent to any AI service, regardless of which AI features are enabled.

4.2 Sync to your own storage (requires your own bucket credentials)

Clarity Atlas can sync your vault to an S3-compatible object storage bucket — for example Cloudflare R2 — using credentials you provide.

• The bucket belongs to you. It is not our infrastructure, and we have no access to it.
• Notes and attachments are uploaded there so your devices can stay in sync.
• Your storage provider's own privacy policy and terms apply to the data in your bucket.

4.3 Clarity Atlas Cloud (optional subscription — the one service we operate)

Everything above assumes you brought your own keys and your own bucket. Clarity Atlas Cloud is the alternative for people who don't want to: we run the plumbing so AI and sync work with no setup. If you don't subscribe, none of this applies to you and nothing in this section ever runs.

Clarity Atlas Cloud is $6.99 a month with a 14-day free trial, and one subscription covers up to five devices. Subscriptions are started on Android and extended to your computer by linking in Settings — see Section 4.4.

When you subscribe, here is precisely what happens:

• AI requests pass through our relay. Your note text travels to the same providers named in Section 4.1 (Anthropic, Voyage AI, Deepgram), but on our API keys rather than yours. We do not log, store, or retain the content of those requests — the relay counts requests and tokens for billing and abuse limits, and nothing more. Fair-use monthly ceilings apply, sized for heavy personal use: about 2 million tokens of AI reading and 400,000 of AI answering per month, 5 million for search indexing, and two hours of voice transcription. They reset on the 1st, and bring-your-own-keys remains available in Settings with no ceilings from us.
• Synced notes are stored on our infrastructure as ciphertext — names included. Clarity Atlas Cloud requires an encryption passphrase, and your notes and attachments are encrypted on your device before upload. The stored objects' names are encrypted too, so our storage learns neither your note titles nor your folder structure — on your own devices, the files keep their readable names, which is the point of the design. We never receive the passphrase and cannot decrypt what we hold. If you lose it, neither can we — the stored copies become unrecoverable. Sync storage is capped at 10 GB per subscription.
• What we can see: your subscription status, an anonymous subscriber ID, how much storage you use, request counts, and which devices you have linked. Not your notes.
• Payment is handled by Google Play through RevenueCat. We never see your card details. See Section 4.4.

4.4 Purchases

The only thing for sale is the Clarity Atlas Cloud subscription. The app itself is free, there are no ads, and there is nothing else to buy.

Purchases are processed by Google Play, with RevenueCat as our billing intermediary. They provide us with an anonymous subscriber identifier and your entitlement status so the app knows what you're entitled to. We do not receive your payment method, card number, or billing address — those stay with Google.

Because billing runs through Google Play, a subscription is started on an Android device and then extended to your computer by linking it in Settings — one subscription, up to five devices. If you only use the Windows app there is currently no way to subscribe on that device; you would need an Android device to start the subscription. We are working on a direct purchase path for Windows. In the meantime the Windows app is fully usable for free, or with your own API keys.

Cancelling is done in Google Play, not in the app. What happens to your synced data afterwards is in Section 6.

4.5 Web clipping

If a note contains a URL and you use the clipping/summarizing feature, the app fetches that web page directly from your device so it can be summarized. The site you fetch will see the request the same way it would see a browser visit. We are not involved in that request.

4.6 Automatic updates (Windows only — on by default, and you can turn it off)

The Windows app can keep itself up to date. This is the one network request the app makes without you enabling anything, so here is exactly what it does.

• What happens: on launch, and about every four hours while the app is open, it asks GitHub for the list of published Clarity Atlas releases. If there is a newer one, it downloads it and installs it the next time you restart. Comparing versions happens on your device.
• What GitHub can see: your IP address, and a random identifier generated once for your installation and reused on later checks. That identifier is not linked to you, to any account, or to anything you do in the app — it exists so update rollouts can be staged.
• What is never sent: your notes, your file names, your settings, your API keys, and any information about how you use the app. We receive nothing — GitHub hosts the download; the request does not reach a server we run, and we get no report that it happened.
• How to turn it off: setup asks you when you first run the app, with the box ticked. You can change it at any time in Settings → Updates. When it is off, the app makes no update request at all — it is not that the check runs and the result is ignored. You would then update by downloading a new version from clarityatlas.app yourself, which is worth doing occasionally for security fixes.

The Android app has no update checker: Google Play handles updates there, under Google's own terms.

5. Sharing and selling

We do not sell, rent, or share your personal information, and we never will.

The only transfers of your content are the ones you enable, listed in Section 4: the AI providers (on your API keys, or on ours if you subscribe to Clarity Atlas Cloud), the object storage provider whose bucket you configured, our own encrypted storage if you use Clarity Atlas Cloud, and any website you choose to clip. Payment processing involves Google Play and RevenueCat. The Windows update check (Section 4.6) contacts GitHub but transfers none of your content. There are no other recipients — no advertisers, no data brokers, no analytics vendors.

6. Retention

• On your device: your notes stay until you delete them. There is no expiry and no automatic upload.
• With us, without a subscription: nothing, because we receive nothing.
• With us, on Clarity Atlas Cloud: your encrypted notes stay while the subscription is active. If you cancel or it lapses, they are kept for a 30-day grace period so you can resubscribe without losing anything, then deleted automatically. Relay usage counts (no content) are kept for billing and abuse prevention. You can ask us to delete everything sooner at any time.
• With third parties you enabled: governed by that provider's retention policy. Check their documentation and your account settings with them.
• In your own sync bucket: your data stays there until you delete it or your storage provider's lifecycle rules remove it. You control those settings.

7. Your control and how to delete your data

Unless you subscribe to Clarity Atlas Cloud, there is no request form because there is nothing on our side to erase. Subscribers can email us to have everything deleted immediately.

• Delete individual notes: delete them in the app, or delete the corresponding .md files.
• Delete everything on Windows: delete your vault folder (default Documents\ClarityAtlasVault).
• Delete everything on Android: uninstall Clarity Atlas, or use Android's Settings → Apps → Clarity Atlas → Storage → Clear storage. Uninstalling removes the app's private vault directory and all app data, including any stored API keys.
• Stop all outbound data: remove your API keys and sync credentials in the app's settings. The features turn off and no further requests are made.
• Delete data already sent to a third party: contact that provider or use their console. Because the data was sent under your own account and API key, you are the account holder who can request its deletion. We cannot make that request for you.
• Delete synced data: delete the objects in your own storage bucket.
• Delete Clarity Atlas Cloud data: unlink the device in Settings and cancel the subscription — your encrypted notes are purged after the 30-day grace period. To have them removed immediately instead, email us and we will confirm when it's done.

Support contact for questions about any of this: [email protected].

8. Security

• In transit: all network requests made by the app use HTTPS/TLS.
• At rest, on Android: the vault lives in app-private storage, which the Android sandbox prevents other apps from reading.
• At rest, on Windows: the vault is a normal folder protected by your operating system account permissions. Use full-disk encryption (for example BitLocker) if the device may be lost or shared.
• Optional passphrase encryption: if you set a passphrase, local-only notes and all attachments are encrypted with AES-256-GCM. The key is derived with PBKDF2 at 310,000 iterations using a per-vault salt. This encryption also protects those items at rest in your sync bucket, so your storage provider holds ciphertext for them.
• Your passphrase is not recoverable. We do not have it, cannot reset it, and cannot decrypt your data. If you lose it, encrypted content cannot be recovered by anyone.
• Your API keys are stored on your device and sent only to the service they authenticate. Treat them like passwords, and revoke them in the provider's console if your device is lost.

No system is perfectly secure. The data most at risk in this design is data on your own device and data you have chosen to send to third parties, so device security and provider account security are the meaningful controls.

9. Children

Clarity Atlas is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect any information from children. The app collects no information from any user, so there is nothing for us to identify or remove; if a child has a Clarity Atlas Cloud subscription in error, contact us and we will delete the associated data. Parents or guardians with questions may contact us at [email protected].

10. Your rights (GDPR, CCPA, and similar laws)

Privacy laws such as the GDPR and the CCPA/CPRA give you rights to access, correct, delete, and port your personal data, and to know whether it is sold or shared.

How you exercise them depends on which setup you use.

If you brought your own keys and your own bucket (the default), we hold no note content at all, so these rights are exercised directly:

• Access and portability: your data is already in your possession, as plain Markdown files in an open, portable format.
• Correction and deletion: edit or delete the files (see Section 7).
• Sale/sharing: we do not sell or share personal information, and we do not process it for targeted advertising.
• Rights against third parties: for data you sent to an AI provider or stored in your own bucket, exercise your rights with that company directly, as their account holder.

If you subscribe to Clarity Atlas Cloud, we do hold data connected to you — an encrypted copy of your vault, your subscriber ID, your linked devices, and usage counts (Section 4.3). We treat that as personal data we are responsible for, even though the note content is ciphertext we cannot read. Email [email protected] to access, correct, export, or delete it, and we will confirm when it's done. Note the practical limit: because we never hold your passphrase, we can delete the encrypted copy but cannot hand you a readable export of it — the readable copy is the one on your own devices.

You can also complain to your local data protection authority. We do not discriminate against anyone for exercising these rights.

11. International transfers

With your own keys and bucket, we transfer nothing. Your data goes from your device to the provider you selected, which may be located in another country. Their policies describe how they handle international transfers.

With Clarity Atlas Cloud, data does cross borders. Our relay and storage run on Cloudflare's global network, so your encrypted vault and the request counts tied to your subscription may be processed in the United States or wherever Cloudflare handles the request. AI requests go to Anthropic, Voyage AI, and Deepgram, all United States companies. We rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK addendum) with those providers where they apply. Note content in storage is encrypted on your device before it ever leaves, so what crosses a border is unreadable to us and to the host.

12. Changes to this policy

If the app changes in a way that affects privacy, we will update this policy, change the effective date at the top, and post the updated version at https://clarityatlas.app/privacy. Material changes will also be noted in the app's release notes and in the Play Store listing.

Clarity Atlas does not show ads. There is no advertising SDK in the app, no advertising identifier is read, and no data about you goes to any advertiser. We have no current plans to add advertising. If that ever changed, this policy and the Play Data Safety declaration would be updated before a single ad shipped, and the advertising partner and its data practices would be named here.

Two things back that up in the build rather than in our word, and you can check both yourself in the APK: the Google AdMob library is not present, and the advertising-ID permissions are stripped from the manifest, so the ID cannot be read even in principle. An earlier plan for a free-tier banner did put AdMob in the app; it was never switched on, and it was removed outright in August 2026 rather than left sitting there unused.

If you go looking, one thing will turn up that we would rather explain than have you wonder about: a class called AdvertisingIdClient, under a package path containing the word "ads". That is not an ad library and it shows no ads — it is the small Google component that reads the advertising ID, and it arrives as part of the billing library we use for Clarity Atlas Cloud subscriptions, not from anything advertising-related. Because the app does not hold the advertising-ID permission, it has nothing to return: on current Android versions the call comes back as zeros. The parts of AdMob that actually request and display ads — MobileAds, AdView, AdRequest — are gone.

13. Contact

Clarity Atlas LLC
13309 Crest Valley Dr
Reno, NV 89511, USA
Email: [email protected]