Privacy Policy

This policy covers the Penman app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and the website at penmanai.app including its free browser tools. The short version:your notes live on your device and in your own iCloud account — we don't run a note server and can't read your content.

The Penman app

Your notes and files

Notes, notebooks, Spaces, recordings, and attachments you create in Penman are stored on your device. If you enable sync, they sync through your iCloud account using Apple's CloudKit — the data sits in your private iCloud database, not on any server we operate. We have no access to it.

Microphone & speech recognition

With your permission, Penman uses the microphone and Apple's Speech framework to transcribe what you say. Depending on your device and settings, recognition may run on-device or send audio to Apple's servers for processing — that's governed by Apple's own privacy policy. Audio recordings you choose to save are stored with your notes, on your device and your iCloud.

AI features

When you use AI features — summaries, flashcards, quizzes, note rewriting, Space Chat, or reminder suggestions — the relevant note text is sent through our cloud function to a large language model provider (OpenAI) solely to produce the result you asked for. The text is used only to answer that request; it is not used to train models and is not retained by us beyond what is needed to deliver the response.

Camera, scanning & imports

Document scanning and text recognition (OCR) run on-device using Apple's Vision framework. Images, PDFs, and YouTube links you import are processed to create your note content and stored like any other note. When you import a YouTube video, we fetch its publicly available transcript/metadata to build the note.

Reminders

If you grant Reminders access, Penman can create items in your Apple Reminders app when you confirm a suggestion. We read reminder suggestions from your note text via the AI features above; your Reminders database itself stays under Apple's control.

Purchases

Penman Premium is billed by Apple through the App Store. We use RevenueCat to manage subscription status — RevenueCat receives an anonymous app user ID and purchase receipts, never your card details or your notes.

Analytics

We collect basic, privacy-conscious usage analytics via PostHog — events like "a note was created" or "the paywall was shown," plus coarse device info. Analytics never include your note content, transcripts, or recordings. You can reset your analytics identity by reinstalling the app.

Notifications & widgets

Notifications are local (for example, reminder alerts you set). Widgets read note data through an on-device App Group — the data never leaves your device for widget purposes.

The website & free tools

Every tool at penmanai.app/tools — notepad, speech-to-text, voice recorder, text utilities, and the rest — processes your content in your own browser. What you type, paste, dictate, or record is stored only in your browser's local storage and is never transmitted to or stored on our servers.

The AI-powered tools are the one exception: when you use them, the text you submit is sent to a language model running on Cloudflare's network (Cloudflare Workers AI) to produce a result, then discarded. It is not logged, stored, or used for training.

We use Cloudflare Web Analytics — a privacy-friendly service that uses no cookies, does not track you across sites, and collects no personal information. It tells us things like how many people visited a page and which country they were in.

Third-party processors

• Apple — iCloud/CloudKit sync, Speech framework, App Store billing, Vision OCR
• RevenueCat — subscription status management
• PostHog — app usage analytics
• OpenAI (via Google Cloud / Firebase) — AI features in the app
• Cloudflare — website hosting, Workers AI for the free AI tools, web analytics

Data retention & deletion

Because your content lives on your device and in your iCloud, deleting notes or the app deletes your data — no account deletion request is needed. Website tool content lives in your browser's local storage; clearing site data removes it. Anonymous analytics events are retained for up to 12 months.

Your rights

Depending on where you live (EU/UK GDPR, California CCPA, and similar laws), you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or port your personal data. Since we hold almost none of it — no accounts, no note content, no uploads — most requests are satisfied by the app's own controls. For anything else, email us and we'll help.

Children

Penman is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we'll update the date at the top. Material changes will be announced on this site.

Contact

Questions about this policy? Emailhi@penmanai.app.