Privacy Policy
- The Mote app collects no personal data. We have no servers that receive your notes and no account system.
- Your notes, pages, tables and attachments are stored on your devices and, if you use iCloud, in your private iCloud database. We cannot read them.
- Filing suggestions, calendar matching, answers and writing help run on your device with Apple Intelligence. No note is sent to an AI service in the cloud.
- The app contains no analytics, no advertising and no tracking. This website sets no cookies and uses no analytics.
1. Who is responsible
The controller within the meaning of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for this website and the Mote app is:
Marius LangHollergasse 9
96138 Burgebrach
Germany
Email: [email protected]
2. The Mote app
2.1 What the app stores
Mote stores what you put into it: the notes in your inbox, your pages and tables, attachments (images, videos, PDFs, documents and drawings), mails you add, links between notes, pages and calendar events or reminders, and the text Mote extracts from attachments and handwriting so you can search it. Mote also stores a mathematical summary of each note and page (an embedding) for semantic search and filing suggestions. All of this is kept in the app's storage on your device.
We, the developer, never receive this data. Mote has no account, no sign-in and no server of its own.
2.2 Sync with iCloud
If you are signed in to iCloud and iCloud is enabled for Mote, your notes, pages, tables, attachments, embeddings and the processing results are synced between your devices through Apple's CloudKit, in the private database of your own iCloud account. This data is stored by Apple under Apple's terms and the Apple Privacy Policy. We have no access to your private iCloud database. If you turn iCloud off for Mote, your notes stay on the device only.
2.3 Processing with Apple Intelligence
On devices with Apple Intelligence, Mote uses Apple's on-device language model (the Foundation Models framework) to suggest where a note belongs, to prepare it for filing, to score calendar matches, to answer questions about your notes and for the writing commands on a page (summarise, rephrase, continue, extract tasks, table from text). Text recognition in images and PDFs uses Apple's Vision and PDFKit frameworks. This processing happens locally on your device. Mote does not send notes to cloud-based AI services.
2.4 Permissions
Mote asks for the following permissions only when you use the related feature. You can withdraw each of them at any time in the system settings.
| Permission | What Mote does with it |
|---|---|
| Calendars | Reads events around the time a note was written, to suggest which event the note belongs to, and shows the events you place on a page or in a table. For a linked event, Mote keeps the event's identifier, title, time, location and calendar with the note or block (and syncs them via your iCloud), so the link stays readable on your other devices. Mote does not change or create calendar events. |
| Reminders | Shows the reminders you place on a page, creates a reminder when you ask for one, and marks a reminder as completed when you check it off in Mote. Mote keeps the reminder's identifier, title, due date and list with the block. |
| Camera | Takes a photo you choose to attach to a note. The photo is stored like any other attachment. |
| Microphone and speech recognition | Turns your dictation into text. Mote asks the system to recognise speech on the device. Where a device or language does not support on-device recognition, Apple's speech recognition service may process the audio under Apple's privacy policy. Mote does not store audio recordings. |
| Photos and files | Mote uses the system photo picker and file picker, so it only receives the items you select. |
2.5 Widget, Share Extension, Mail extension and shortcuts
The widget, the Share Extension and the App Intents (for example on the Action Button) exchange data with the app through a shared container on your device. Nothing leaves the device through them.
On the Mac, the optional Mote extension for Apple Mail looks at incoming mails only to check whether the sender is one you chose. Mails from those senders are copied into Mote's inbox through the same shared container; Mote keeps the sender, recipients, subject, date, a short preview, the attachments and the mail's identifier so it can open the original in Mail. Mails you drag or share into Mote are handled the same way. You turn the extension on and off in Mail's settings.
2.6 Web links and folder links
When you add a web link to a page, your device loads the title and icon of that page directly from the website, using Apple's LinkPresentation framework, the same way Safari would. That website then sees your IP address. The title and icon are kept with the link. A folder link keeps a security bookmark to the folder; it only works on the device that created it.
2.7 No analytics, no tracking
The app contains no analytics or advertising SDKs, does not track you across apps or websites and does not share data with third parties. If you have chosen to share analytics with app developers in your device settings, Apple may provide us with anonymised crash reports and usage statistics. These do not contain the content of your notes.
2.8 Deleting your data
Deleting a note or page in Mote removes it from all your devices once it leaves the trash. Deleting the app removes its local data. To remove synced data from iCloud, go to Settings › [your name] › iCloud › Manage Account Storage on iPhone, or System Settings › [your name] › iCloud on the Mac, and delete Mote's data there.
2.9 App Store
Mote is distributed through Apple's App Store. Downloads, purchases and reviews are handled by Apple; we only receive aggregated, anonymous sales reports. See the Apple Privacy Policy.
3. This website
3.1 Hosting and server logs
This website is hosted by Vercel Inc., 440 N Barranca Ave #4133, Covina, CA 91723, USA. When you open a page, your browser sends technical data that the server processes to deliver the page and to protect it against abuse: IP address, date and time, the page requested, referrer, browser and operating system. Vercel stores these logs for a limited time. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in delivering a secure website (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). We have a data processing agreement with Vercel. Vercel is certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, which provides the safeguard for transfers to the USA (Art. 45 GDPR). See the Vercel Privacy Policy.
3.2 No cookies, no analytics, no external content
This website sets no cookies, uses no analytics or tracking, and loads no content from other servers: images and scripts are served from this website itself. The App Store badges link to Apple; once you follow such a link, Apple's privacy policy applies.
4. Your rights
Under the GDPR you have the right to
- access the personal data we hold about you (Art. 15),
- have it corrected (Art. 16) or erased (Art. 17),
- restrict its processing (Art. 18),
- receive it in a portable format (Art. 20),
- object to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 21),
- lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority (Art. 77), for example the authority of the German state where you live.
As we do not receive the content of the app, most requests concern only the website's server logs. Write to [email protected] for any request.
5. Changes
We update this policy when the app or the website changes how it handles data. The date at the top shows the latest version.