# PrivacyNotes Help Center > Every answer in the PrivacyNotes help center: 95 questions and 18 export and import guides, in full. PrivacyNotes is an end-to-end encrypted notes, tasks, journal and vault app. Everything is encrypted on the reader's own device before it is stored or synced. This file exists so an assistant can answer a question about PrivacyNotes from one fetch instead of crawling 113 pages. It is generated from the same catalogs the pages are generated from, so it cannot disagree with them. Read https://privacynotes.app/llms.txt first for the rest of the site. This file says how the app WORKS. For what CHANGED and when, and for where a menu path or a shortcut moved, fetch https://privacynotes.app/changelog.md instead: every release as plain text, newest first. For how it is BUILT - the encryption, what the server can read, how to verify it, how sync resolves a conflict - fetch https://privacynotes.app/docs/index.md, which routes to the four published security documents. They are not repeated here: together they are longer than this whole file, and most questions never reach them. Every answer below carries a "Source:" line naming its own page. End your reply with that URL, never this file and never the help center home. The same pages exist in 20 languages at https://privacynotes.app//help/. Single answers are also served as plain text at https://privacynotes.app/help/.md. ## Getting started https://privacynotes.app/help#g-gettingStarted ### Can I try PrivacyNotes without creating an account? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/try-before-signup Yes. The demo at [try.privacynotes.app](https://try.privacynotes.app) is the full app with sample content: no signup, no email, and nothing you type is saved. It runs entirely in your browser and never sends anything to our servers. Closing the tab clears everything, which is the point. When you are ready to keep your notes, create a real vault at [use.privacynotes.app](https://use.privacynotes.app) and start fresh: copy out anything from the demo you want to take with you first. ### Which sign-up option should I choose? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/signup-options Whichever matches your threat level. There are three of them. One: sign in with Google, Apple, or GitHub, with your key stored on our server. Two: the same sign-in, with your key kept on your device only. Three: "Generate a phrase", with no email, no name and no login at all. All three keep your notes encrypted on your device, and what separates them is who holds the key and how much we learn about you. Signing in with Google, Apple, or GitHub then asks where your key lives, starting on "Keep it simple & convenient". That option stores your phrase on our server, encrypted, so a new device can open your notes after provider sign-in and an authenticator code if 2FA is enabled. Save your phrase in case you lose the provider account, and keep your 2FA backup key if you enable two-factor sign-in. "Maximum security & privacy" keeps the phrase on your device: we could not read a note under any pressure, and a new device needs your 12 words or a QR scan from one already signed in. The phrase-only route has no email or name tying the account to a person. In exchange the phrase is yours alone, so losing it with no unlocked device left means nobody can recover it for you. Settings > Account > Key custody shows your current mode and lets you change it. A phrase account must first connect a provider under Account > Accounts before choosing server custody; connecting alone does not change custody. Every mode can add a PIN or biometric lock and optional two-factor sign-in. The full comparison is in [the threat-level ladder](https://privacynotes.app/help/threat-model-levels/). ### Do I need an email address to sign up? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/need-email No. A new vault is a freshly generated 12-word recovery phrase, nothing else. No email, no username, no phone number, no verification step. If you sign in with the phrase, we could not email you even if we wanted to, because we never learn who you are. Prefer a familiar flow? Sign in with Google, Apple, or GitHub works too. That route necessarily tells us the email tied to that login, but your notes stay encrypted on your device either way, and you still get a phrase under the hood. ### How do I move my notes in from another app? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import-from-other-apps Open Settings > Import & Export and pick your source. The list covers the apps people arrive from: Apple Notes, Obsidian, Evernote, Standard Notes, Notesnook, UpNote, Google Keep, Simplenote, Samsung Notes and Apple Journal. Bitwarden and your browser's saved passwords land in the Vault, your browser bookmarks come across as bookmarks, and a generic Markdown importer takes any folder of .md files. Imports run entirely on your device: your exported files are parsed, encrypted, and stored locally, nothing is uploaded for processing. Each imported note is tagged with its source so you can review the batch afterwards, and Google Keep checklists even convert to native task lists. ### Can I edit a folder of Markdown files from my own disk? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/markdown-folder Yes. Open the Markdown pillar in the sidebar, pick a folder of .md and .txt files, and edit them in the same editor you use for notes. Subfolders appear on their own, edits save straight back to the file, and nothing is converted, so the same folder keeps working in Obsidian, in a git repo, or in your own scripts. **Save to my notes** copies any file, or a whole selection, into your encrypted notes in one click and leaves the original where it is. All of it is free on every tier. Those files stay on your disk exactly as you left them: we never upload them, they never sync to your other devices, and nothing is converted on the way in or out. It works in the desktop app on any computer, and in Chrome, Edge or Opera in the browser, because opening a folder straight from disk is a desktop capability. ### Can I open a Markdown folder on my phone? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/markdown-folder-mobile Not today. [The Markdown folder](https://privacynotes.app/help/markdown-folder/) runs in the desktop app on macOS, Windows and Linux, and in Chrome, Edge or Opera on a computer, because a desktop hands the app a real folder it can read and write directly. Android and iOS hand an app no folder at all: every file reaches an app through the system's own document layer, one grant at a time, so reading a whole tree and saving back into it is separate work on each platform and it is not built yet. On a phone you can bring the same files in as copies: Settings > Import & Export > Import > "Markdown files" takes .md and .txt one at a time or as a .zip, and a zipped folder keeps its subfolders, images and attachments. They arrive as encrypted notes that sync to your other devices, and Export writes clean .md back out. The originals stay on your disk exactly where they are. ### Is the editor Markdown-friendly? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/markdown-support Yes. Type Markdown and it formats live: # headings, **bold**, lists, - [ ] task checkboxes, quotes, and callouts. Notes export as clean Markdown too, so what you write stays portable. You can also connect notes to each other: type [[ and an autocomplete offers your existing notes. A note-link opens its target with one click, and the outline panel plus find-in-note keep long documents navigable. ### Which Markdown syntax does the editor understand? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/markdown-syntax Standard Markdown formats live as you type: headings, emphasis, strikethrough and highlight, bulleted and numbered lists, task lists (Tab and Shift+Tab nest any list, checklists included), quotes, dividers, inline code and code blocks with syntax highlighting, inline and block math (KaTeX), and note-links between notes with autocomplete. The formatting toolbar and its Insert menu add the rest: tables, callouts that can fold closed, underline, superscript and subscript, text alignment, text and highlight colors, fonts, links, images, and file attachments. Everything round-trips as Markdown: "Show markdown" below any note reveals the raw source, and exports are clean .md files, so nothing you write is locked into a proprietary format. ### How do tasks work? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/tasks Any line you write as - [ ] in any note becomes a task, and the Tasks view in the sidebar collects them all in one place. Checking a task off there updates the note it lives in, and opening a task jumps to that note. There is no separate task database to maintain: tasks are just lines in your notes, encrypted like everything else. The quick-add box at the top of Tasks appends to a note called Quick Tasks (created for you on first use), so capturing a stray to-do takes one keystroke, not a filing decision. The same view offers three layouts (Hybrid, Aggregated, List), a completed-tasks toggle, and task search, and the New button on the All view can start a task note directly. ### How does the journal work, and what can I track? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/journal Journals is a dedicated view for dated entries: one tap creates today's entry, and the calendar button next to it backfills a recent day you missed. An entry is a normal note plus optional trackers: mood on a 1-10 scale with 24 emotion tags, sleep, activity, medications, energy, focus, and more. "Configure trackers" inside any entry toggles the built-ins, and Pro adds up to 10 custom trackers (scales, numbers, yes/no). Statistics (in Settings, or the stats icon in the footer) turns entries into trends under the Wellness tab: mood over time, sleep and activity charts, medication adherence. Exports are generated on your device: "Download JSON" is free, and Pro adds a "Doctor PDF" to bring to appointments, a copy-ready AI prompt for the chatbot of your choice, pattern insights, and a week in review. Tracker data lives inside the encrypted entry, so the server can read none of it. ### Can I save my browser bookmarks in PrivacyNotes? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/bookmarks Yes. Bookmarks are a pillar in the sidebar, next to Notes, Tasks and Journals, and they are free on every tier. Paste a link into the quick-add bar to save one. To bring your existing ones across, export a bookmarks .html file from your browser, then drop it into Settings > Import & Export > Import > "Browser bookmarks". Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Opera, Brave and Vivaldi all hold the same file, and your folders and dates come with it. Safari wraps it in a .zip, which you can drop in unopened. Your URLs never leave your device: we do not fetch the page behind a link, which is why a bookmark you add by hand carries its domain as the name until you type one. Site icons are the one exception, and you can switch them off. Export writes the same standard .html file, so your bookmarks leave as easily as they arrived ([import guide](https://privacynotes.app/help/import/browser-bookmarks/)). ### Can I keep an address book in PrivacyNotes? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/contacts Yes. Contacts is a pillar in the sidebar, next to Notes, Tasks and Journals, and it is free on every tier. A contact holds names, numbers, emails, addresses, websites, dates, a company and a note. Tap a number to dial it, an email address to write one, or any row to copy it. Anything else your phone wrote into the file stays under **Also in this file** and is written back when you export. To bring yours across, export a vCard (.vcf) from your phone, your Mac, or Google Contacts, then drop it into Settings > Import & Export > Import > "Contacts (vCard)". Import the same file again later and the people already there are matched rather than duplicated. Export writes a standard vCard back out, so your address book leaves as easily as it arrived ([more on importing](https://privacynotes.app/help/import-from-other-apps/)). ### What should I keep in Bookmarks, Contacts and the Vault? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/what-to-keep The parts of your life that do not belong in a browser profile or a phone address book. Bookmarks, Contacts and the Vault sit beside the ones your browser and your phone already sync to Google, Apple or Mozilla, and they hold what you would rather keep out of those. All three are free on every tier. - Links about health, money, law or a job hunt, on a computer you share with someone - Research for one topic, kept together instead of buried among thousands of browser bookmarks - The doctor, the lawyer, the landlord and the recruiter, kept out of an address book that syncs to iCloud or Google - A contact with the context around them: your notes, the dates, the file they sent you - Recovery phrases, license keys, safe codes and passport numbers, which are secrets but not logins - The few credentials you never want inside a browser extension Each one is a row in the sidebar. If a row is missing, open the sidebar options menu above your tags and switch **Show in sidebar** on for it. You can bring your existing ones in from a file and take them out the same way ([bookmarks](https://privacynotes.app/help/bookmarks/), [contacts](https://privacynotes.app/help/contacts/), [the Vault](https://privacynotes.app/help/vault/)). ### How do folders work, and do I need Pro for them? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/folders Folders nest as deeply as you like and live in the sidebar. Browsing them is free on every tier. Creating one, renaming it, or moving a note into it ("New folder" and "Move to folder") is where Pro starts, so a free account can always read a structure it imported or built while on Pro. An "Unfiled" row lists every note that sits in no folder. A note lives in one folder at a time, the way a file does. Reach for [tags](https://privacynotes.app/help/tags/) when something belongs in two places at once. The folder is stored inside the encrypted note, so the server sees your structure no better than it sees your text. ### How do tags work? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/tags Every open note has a tag row under the title. Type a word and press Enter, a comma, or #, and the tag becomes a chip. The sidebar lists every tag you use, and clicking one filters the list to those notes. You can rename a tag everywhere at once, favorite it so it pins to the top, or delete it, with or without the notes under it. Tags and folders solve different problems: a note sits in one folder but carries as many tags as you like, which is what you want when something is both "work" and "invoice". Imports tag by source, so everything that arrived from another app lands with its own tag and is easy to find, or to clean up later. ### How do I link one note to another? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/note-links Type [[ anywhere in a note and start typing a title. Pick a note from the list and it becomes a note-link you can click. If nothing matches, choose "Create" and the new note is made and linked in one step. The toolbar button "Link to another note" does the same thing. Note-links live inside the note, so they export with it and travel with an import: an Obsidian vault keeps its links, and Evernote note links are converted on the way in. To find what points at a note, search its title: every note linking to it carries those words. ### Can I change how the app looks? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/appearance Yes, in Settings > Appearance. Mode switches between Light, Dark and Auto, which follows your system. Text size has four steps and scales your writing surface only, so the interface around it stays put. View lays items out as a List or a Grid. Editor decides whether notes open Formatted or as plain Markdown. Color themes are the one part behind Pro: the default theme is free and Pro unlocks the rest, in light and dark alike. Zen mode, which hides everything except your text, is Pro too (Cmd+Shift+F). Mode and text size stay on the device you set them on. Everything else follows your account to your other devices. ### What keyboard shortcuts are there? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/keyboard-shortcuts Press ? anywhere in the app for the built-in cheat sheet, also available under Settings > About. Shortcuts cover navigation, note actions, formatting, and views - and on Windows and Linux, every Cmd reads as Ctrl and Option as Alt. The essentials: Cmd+K focuses search, J and K walk the list, Alt+Shift+N starts a new note, Cmd+Backspace trashes the selected one, Cmd+, opens Settings. While writing: Cmd+B bold, Cmd+I italic, Cmd+Shift+K inserts a link, Cmd+Shift+9 starts a task list, Cmd+F finds in the note, Cmd+Shift+O toggles the outline. Cmd+\ hides the sidebar, Cmd+Shift+L switches the theme, Cmd+Shift+F enters zen mode (Pro), and Esc backs out of almost anything. ### Is there a printable cheat sheet of the shortcuts? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/hotkey-cheat-sheet Yes. The [printable cheat sheet](https://privacynotes.app/help/keyboard-shortcuts/cheat-sheet) lays every shortcut out on a single A4 page in two columns, ready to pin next to your screen. It is generated from the same list the app itself shows, so it can never lag behind a release. Open it and press the Print button (or Cmd+P / Ctrl+P). To keep a file instead of paper, choose PDF as the destination in the print dialog. The sheet is also linked above and below the in-app shortcut list under Settings > About > Hotkeys, and in the footer of this site. ### Can I use my own AI agent to get help with PrivacyNotes? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/ask-an-ai Yes, and we built the help center for it. Every answer is published as one plain-text file at [llms-full.txt](https://privacynotes.app/llms-full.txt), so an assistant reads the lot in one go. The box at the bottom of any help page copies a ready-made prompt: paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or whichever assistant you already use, and ask in your own language. Sending you to a tool you already trust keeps us out of it entirely, and we never learn what you asked. A chatbot of our own would mean your questions landing on our servers, and questions about a notes app tend to carry the contents of the notes. This is separate from the app itself, which has no AI features at all ([details](https://privacynotes.app/help/no-ai/)). Never paste your recovery phrase, your PIN, or the text of a note into an assistant. No answer requires them, the copied prompt tells the assistant to refuse them, and anything you type into someone else's chat box has left your device. ## Security & privacy https://privacynotes.app/help#g-securityPrivacy ### What can PrivacyNotes see about my notes? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/what-can-you-see Notes, titles, tags, and attachments are encrypted on your device before they reach the server. Under self-custody, which every phrase sign-up starts with, no decryption key exists on our side. Signing up with Google, Apple, or GitHub asks where your key lives and starts on "Keep it simple & convenient", which stores your phrase on our server, encrypted under a key of ours. In that mode, our server can decrypt the phrase and therefore your notes. Settings > Account > Key custody shows your current mode and lets you switch. What we can see is the information needed to run the service: how much encrypted storage you use, how many devices you have linked, and sync timestamps. If you use only your phrase and have not connected a Google, Apple, or GitHub account, we do not know your email address. ### Why a recovery phrase instead of a username and password? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/phrase-vs-password It can feel backwards at first, but a single recovery phrase is the stronger construction. With a username and password, the username is not a secret (it shows up in every breach dump), so all the security rests on the password, and human-chosen passwords average maybe 30 to 40 bits of entropy. Your 12-word phrase is a guaranteed 128 bits, generated by your device, never chosen by a human, and never reused from another site. There is also no password for us to lose. A password login means the server stores at least a password hash, which can be leaked, cracked, or phished. Under self-custody, your phrase never leaves your device: it derives your encryption keys locally, and the server only ever sees encrypted data. There is no hash to steal and no password reset flow for an attacker to abuse. If typing 12 words feels clunky: you can save the phrase to your password manager with one tap (Settings > Security > Phrase), and signing in feels like any other login. Prefer a familiar flow? Sign in with Google, Apple, or GitHub works too: you still get a phrase under the hood, and you choose whether it stays on your device or we store it for you. ### Can I choose my own balance between convenience and privacy? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/threat-model-levels Yes, deliberately. Not everyone is defending against the same threats, so the account model is a ladder rather than a single dogma. Every rung keeps your notes encrypted on your device; what changes is who holds the key and what we know about you. The convenient end: sign in with Google, Apple, or GitHub and leave "Keep it simple & convenient" selected when asked, which is where that screen starts. We store your recovery phrase for you, encrypted at rest on our server, so a new device can open your notes after provider sign-in and an authenticator code if 2FA is enabled. In exchange we know the email behind that login, and our server can decrypt your phrase. Save your phrase in case you lose the provider account, and keep your 2FA backup key if you enable two-factor sign-in. The middle: sign in with Google, Apple, or GitHub but pick "Maximum security & privacy". Your phrase never touches our servers and the encryption is fully zero-knowledge; new devices need the phrase or a QR scan from a device that is already signed in. We still necessarily know the email behind that login, but we could not read a single note even under compulsion. The private end: skip the logins entirely and use only the 12-word phrase. No email, no name, no identity, and paired with an [anonymous Pro purchase](https://privacynotes.app/help/buy-pro-anonymously/), even paying leaves no name anywhere. In exchange, key custody is entirely yours: lose the phrase with no signed-in device left, and nobody can help. Settings > Account > Key custody shows both modes with their tradeoffs and lets you switch. Leaving server custody deletes our stored copy after you confirm three words from your saved phrase. Switching back uploads the phrase again and requires an explicit choice. Both directions are signed with your account key and need a fresh authenticator code when 2FA is enabled. A phrase account can connect a provider under Account > Accounts, then choose server custody separately; connecting the provider does not upload the phrase. Every mode can also use PIN app lock, biometric unlock and per-note protection. ### Is a 12-word recovery phrase secure enough? Why not 24 words like Bitcoin wallets? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/twelve-word-phrase Yes, 12 words is enough. A 12-word BIP-39 phrase encodes 128 bits of entropy. Brute-forcing 128 bits is not a "needs a bigger computer" problem, it is a "more energy than humanity produces" problem. There is no realistic attack that breaks 128 bits but fails at 256. The Bitcoin comparison actually shows why 24 words is mostly marketing: Bitcoin keys live on the secp256k1 curve, which itself only provides about 128 bits of security. A 24-word phrase feeds 256 bits of entropy into a lock that still only takes about 128 bits of work to break. That is also why many major wallets still default to 12 words. PrivacyNotes targets the same 128-bit security level end to end: your phrase is run through a key derivation function, and the encryption it protects (XChaCha20-Poly1305) is keyed to match. Adding 24 words would double what you write down and type without adding any practical security, so we stay at 12. What matters is where you keep the phrase, not how many words it has. Keep it in a password manager, type it nowhere else, and 12 words will outlive all of us. ### Can someone guess my 12 words or end up with the same ones? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/guess-phrase No. Nobody can guess your 12 words, and nobody else ends up with the same ones: no computer that exists, or that we can foresee, comes close. Only someone who gets your actual words can sign in, so keep them safe. Your device picks your phrase at random, and the number of possible phrases has 39 digits. Guessing yours on the first try is less likely than winning a 1-in-300-million lottery jackpot four times in a row. A computer that tried a billion billion phrases every second would still need about 10 trillion years to try them all, far longer than the universe has existed. Even if all 8 billion people on Earth each had a phrase, the chance that any two of them match is smaller than winning that jackpot twice in a row. The strength comes from that randomness, not from how the words look. Do not make up a phrase or add symbols to it: use the 12 words exactly as the app gives them to you. Capital letters do not matter. The last word works as a check, so the app refuses a mistyped or made-up phrase. ### Can someone else get the same recovery phrase as me? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/same-phrase No, not in practice. Your device picks your phrase at random from a huge number of possible phrases. Even if every person on Earth made an account, two matching phrases would be less likely than winning a 1-in-300-million lottery jackpot twice in a row. The same numbers are why [nobody can guess your phrase](https://privacynotes.app/help/guess-phrase/). Your Account ID comes from the phrase. So if you delete an account and sign in again with the same 12 words, you get a new, empty vault with the same Account ID. Nothing from the deleted vault comes back. After you move to a new phrase, remove the old one from your password manager, so you never sign in to the old account by mistake. ### How do I turn on two-factor authentication (2FA)? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/enable-2fa Turn on optional two-factor sign-in in Settings > Security > 2FA. Update PrivacyNotes on your other devices first. Scan the QR code with an authenticator app, or enter the setup key manually. Save the 2FA backup key outside PrivacyNotes, confirm the saved copy, then enter a current code to finish. After setup, a new server session needs your phrase or a connected provider, followed by an authenticator code. Self-custody users still need their phrase to decrypt notes. Manage provider accounts in Settings > Account > Accounts; connecting one does not change key custody. If you lose the authenticator, add the saved 2FA backup key to another authenticator app. Losing both means we cannot restore server access. Notes already unlocked on a device remain readable and exportable. Two-factor sign-in does not add encryption or protect an already unlocked device. ### Do you use the same word list as Bitcoin wallets (BIP-39)? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/bip39-wordlist Yes, the standard BIP-39 English wordlist: 2048 words, the exact same list Bitcoin wallets use. We generate phrases with [@scure/bip39](https://github.com/paulmillr/scure-bip39), an audited open-source library. No custom wordlist and no homegrown crypto. The list is designed for writing down by hand: the first four letters of every word are unique, so a smudged or abbreviated word is still unambiguous, and similar-looking words were deliberately excluded. Because it is the standard list, you can verify your phrase against any public BIP-39 reference, and our encryption code is [open source](https://github.com/LifetimeLabsDev/PrivacyNotes.app) so you can check the implementation yourself. ### Does searching my notes send anything to your servers? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/search-local No. Search runs against a full-text index built and stored on your device. Queries never leave it, results appear even with no connection at all, and nothing about what you search for is ever transmitted. This is not a policy choice we could quietly reverse, it is forced by the architecture: the server only holds ciphertext, so there is nothing readable on our side to index or search. A server that cannot read your notes cannot search them either. ### Does PrivacyNotes use AI on my notes? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/no-ai No. There are no AI features in the app, no AI processing running in the background, and no model training on your content. Your notes are always encrypted, on your device and on the way to the server, so there is nothing readable on our servers to feed into anything. If we ever ship a feature in this direction, it would have to run entirely on your device and be strictly opt-in. Sending plaintext notes to a cloud model would break the zero-knowledge promise, so it is off the table. ### What are burn notes? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/burn-notes A burn note is a self-destructing way to share a note with someone who does not use PrivacyNotes. The app encrypts the content with a one-time key and gives you a link. The key travels in the link fragment, which browsers never send to servers, so our server stores ciphertext it cannot read. The first time the link is opened, the server hands over the ciphertext and deletes it in the same step: one read, then it is gone. Unopened links expire on their own after the time the sender picks, from 1 hour to 7 days. Either way, nothing lingers. ### Can I share a note with someone else, or work on one together? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/share-with-someone Send a [burn note](https://privacynotes.app/help/burn-notes/): it turns any note into a one-time encrypted link that is destroyed the moment it is read, which covers handing over a password, an address, or a draft. For something the other person keeps, export the note as Markdown, HTML or PDF and send them the file. A note two people edit live is a different product: it would mean the server handing keys between people, and keeping the server out of your keys is the whole design here. One account is one person with one phrase, which is what makes "we cannot read your notes" a fact rather than a policy. ### What is the difference between read-only and PIN-protected notes? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/locked-vs-protected "Read-only" (in the note options menu, Pro) locks a note against edits so a finished document cannot be mangled by accident; it hides nothing. "Protect" (same menu, Pro) hides a note's contents behind your PIN or biometric unlock, for the things you would rather not have visible on a screen others sometimes see. Its title stays visible in the list, so keep the secret out of the title. Both are on-screen gates rather than a second layer of encryption. The flags travel inside the note's own encrypted data, and the note is deliberately not re-encrypted with your PIN, so a forgotten PIN can never destroy data. The phrase stays the real boundary: protect it first, and use these gates for the screen that other people sometimes see. ### Biometric unlock stopped working. What can I do? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/biometric-unlock You are never locked out. The lock screen always offers a fallback: "Unlock with PIN", or "Sign in with recovery phrase". The biometric is a local gate, not an encryption key, so your notes are untouched either way. Then fix the gate. Enrollment is per-device, so a new phone, a fresh browser profile, or a reinstall needs re-enrolling: Settings > Security > "Lock", disable, then "Enable biometric unlock" again. It also requires "Trust this device" (untrusted sessions clear when the tab closes) and hardware with a platform authenticator (Touch ID, Face ID, Windows Hello). If a password manager like Bitwarden or 1Password pops up instead of the system prompt, dismiss it and retry, or turn off its passkey capture for the site - the app requests the built-in authenticator, but some managers intercept anyway. ### Is PrivacyNotes open source? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/open-source Yes. The web, desktop, and mobile apps are published on [GitHub](https://github.com/LifetimeLabsDev/PrivacyNotes.app), together with the encryption code that scrambles your notes and the threat model spelling out what each piece protects. It is the same code our releases are built from. That is what turns a promise into something you can check. Read the encryption in one sitting, open your browser's network tab and watch your own notes leave as unreadable text, or build the app yourself and compare it against what we ship. You do not have to take our word for any of it. ### I found a security vulnerability. How do I report it? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/report-vulnerability Email privacynotes@lifetimelabs.dev. The same address is published in our PGP-signed [security.txt](https://privacynotes.app/.well-known/security.txt), so you can confirm it is genuine before you write, and our [public key](https://privacynotes.app/.well-known/pgp-key.txt) is there if you would rather encrypt the report. We reply, and where a fix needs coordinating we agree the disclosure timing with you before anything goes public. Reports reach the people who wrote the code directly, and a reporter who wants credit gets it. Test against the demo at try.privacynotes.app or a throwaway account, never against somebody else's notes. ## Account & recovery https://privacynotes.app/help#g-accountRecovery ### I lost my recovery phrase. Can you recover my account? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/lost-phrase If you are still signed in on any device: yes, you can recover it yourself. Open Settings > Security > Phrase and save it to your password manager right now. If you have no signed-in device and no phrase, it depends on who holds the key. If you let us store it when you signed up with Google, Apple, or GitHub, sign in with that login and you are back in. Under self-custody, nobody can: your phrase never reaches our servers, so there is nothing to reset and no support ticket that can help. Any service that can restore your encrypted data after a total loss is holding your keys. The fix costs ten seconds: store the phrase in a password manager the day you create your account. If it is already gone and you pay for a storage add-on, Paddle bills you directly and can cancel it without your phrase: see [changing or cancelling an add-on](https://privacynotes.app/help/manage-storage-addon/). ### I lost my 2FA codes. How do I get back in? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/lost-2fa Add your 2FA backup key to any authenticator app, then enter the code it shows when PrivacyNotes asks for one. The backup key is the one you saved when you turned on 2FA, and it works every time you need it. If you lost both your phone and the backup key, we do not reset 2FA, and our support cannot help with it. The notes already on your devices stay readable. To keep them, go to Settings > Import & Export > Export on a device that still has them. Then create a new vault and import the export there. ### I sign in with Google, Apple, or GitHub. What if I lose access to that account? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/oauth-recovery You still have a 12-word phrase under the hood, and the phrase alone signs you in on any device - no Google, Apple, or GitHub account required. Open Settings > Security > Phrase and save it to your password manager. Do that once and losing that account costs you nothing: just sign in with the phrase instead. ### My recovery phrase leaked. What do I do? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/phrase-compromised Treat the vault as burned. A phrase cannot be changed or rotated, because the phrase is the key everything is encrypted under - so the fix is moving to a fresh vault. First, in the old account, export everything: Settings > Import & Export > Export > "PrivacyNotes backup (.zip)". Sign out, create a new vault (new 12 words), and bring the export back in via Settings > Import & Export > Restore > "Full backup (.zip)". Then delete the old account from any device still signed into it: Settings > Account > "Delete account & data...". That removes its synced data and shuts out anyone holding the old phrase. If you signed in with Google, Apple, or GitHub, delete the old account first, then sign in with that same login again to start the fresh vault. Two things to handle first: cancel any active storage add-on, which deletion requires, and note that Pro stays with the account it was bought on rather than moving to the new vault. Then keep the new phrase in a password manager and nowhere else, which is the whole of the prevention. ### I lost a device. How do I protect my notes? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/lost-device From any signed-in device, open Settings > Account > "Registered devices" and remove the lost one. The next time that device comes online it is signed out and its local data is wiped, within about a minute of its next use. It stays listed under "Recently removed" for 72 hours so you can confirm it is gone. Set the app lock (PIN or biometric) on anything portable, and keep your OS screen lock on. A device wipes when it next reconnects, so those local gates are what stand between a lost phone and your notes until then. The phrase is the real key: anyone holding your 12 words can sign in again, so if you suspect the phrase itself leaked, follow the [phrase leak playbook](https://privacynotes.app/help/phrase-compromised/) instead. ### I forgot my PIN. How do I get back in? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/forgot-pin Nothing is lost, and you can clear the PIN yourself with your recovery phrase. The PIN is a screen gate rather than an encryption key: your notes are encrypted with keys derived from the phrase, so the phrase is what opens them. Tying encryption to four digits would mean a forgotten PIN destroyed data, and it never does here. Wherever the app asks for the PIN, choose **Forgot your PIN?** and type your 12 words. It is on the lock screen, on a protected note, and in **Settings > Security > PIN**. The PIN clears on every device, and you can set a new one straight away. Biometric unlock is not affected. ### How do I delete my account? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/delete-account In the app: Settings > Account, then "Delete account & data". This permanently removes your synced notes, files, devices, settings, and the account itself from the server. There is no retention window and no backup we could restore afterwards, so export anything you want to keep first (Settings > Import & Export). Two details: an active storage subscription must be cancelled before deletion (one already scheduled to cancel does not block it), and because a phrase account never included an email or a name, there is no profile or marketing list left to scrub. Wiping the local data on one device is a separate action and does not touch your account. ## Sync & devices https://privacynotes.app/help#g-syncDevices ### How do I sign in on a second device? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/add-second-device On the device you already use, open Settings > Security > Phrase. It shows your 12 words and a sign-in QR code. On the new device, choose "Phrase login", then scan that QR with the camera, upload a photo of it, or type the words in. Your notes arrive within seconds. A free account covers 2 devices and Pro covers as many as you like, and two browsers on one computer count as a single device. Treat the QR exactly like the phrase it carries: show it to nobody, and never let it land in a photo library that syncs to somebody else's cloud. ### What exactly syncs across my devices, and what stays local? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/what-syncs Everything you would expect, and all of it encrypted on your device: notes, tasks, journal entries, your vault, and the files in it. Your settings follow you too - favorite tags, sort and view preferences, color theme, your PIN (as a salted hash, never the PIN itself), app lock, tracker and medication setup, and trash auto-delete. Set something up once and every device picks it up. A few things stay deliberately device-local: light or dark mode (each device follows its own system preference), biometric unlock (tied to the hardware of each device), and your unlock state (closing the app always re-locks). The server only ever stores encrypted blobs and can read none of it. ### Does PrivacyNotes work offline? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/offline Yes. The app is local-first: your notes live in a database on your device, so reading, writing, and search all work with no connection. Changes sync automatically when you are back online, and a picture or file you add offline waits on this device and uploads then too. ### Can I stop a device from syncing without signing out? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/pause-sync Yes. Open Settings > ID & Sync and press "Pause sync". That device stops sending anything to the server: notes, settings and files alike. You keep writing exactly as before, everything queues locally, and the moment you resume it all goes up. The pause belongs to that device alone. It does not travel to your other devices and it never clears itself, because a switch that says "this device talks to nobody" must not be turned back on by anything except you. One thing keeps running on purpose: the small heartbeat that lets a removed device learn it was removed, which is how a [lost device](https://privacynotes.app/help/lost-device/) still wipes itself. ### Can I stop the app from uploading files over mobile data? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/wifi-only On Android, yes. Open Settings > ID & Sync and turn on "Files on wifi only". Your notes keep syncing on any connection, because text is tiny. Only images and attachments wait, and they go up the moment wifi comes back rather than sitting out the next retry. Android is where the switch lives, because Android is the one platform whose app view reports wifi against cellular reliably, and a switch that guesses is worse than no switch. On a metered connection anywhere else, ["Pause sync"](https://privacynotes.app/help/pause-sync/) does the same job with a bigger hammer and works everywhere. ### What happens if I edit the same note on two devices at once? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/sync-conflicts Your devices merge the note detail by detail when they sync again, so a change made on only one of them is kept. If both edited the text while apart (say, one was offline), the device that syncs second shows a conflict dialog: keep the version on this device, keep the other one, or keep both as separate notes. Both versions are kept until you choose. When both devices changed the same detail while apart, such as a pin, a folder or the title, the detail from the device that edited the note last is kept, without a dialog. A note deleted permanently on one device is deleted everywhere, including an edit another device made to it while apart. ### How do I remove a device I no longer use? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/remove-device Settings > Account lists every registered device. Remove the one you are retiring: the slot frees up immediately (useful on the free 2-device plan), and the removed device is signed out the next time it tries to sync. It stays visible under "Recently removed" for 72 hours so you can confirm it is gone. Removal frees the slot and signs that device out; the phrase is what controls access. Anyone holding your 12 words can sign in again, so if a device was lost or stolen, protect the phrase first and keep the app lock (PIN or biometrics) on. That is what keeps a found device from being an open door. ### What does "Device limit reached" mean? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/device-limit Free accounts sync on up to 2 devices, and this dialog appears when a third tries to register. Remove a device you no longer use directly in the dialog, or on an existing device under Settings > Account ([how removal works](https://privacynotes.app/help/remove-device/)). The slot frees immediately, and the removed device stays visible under "Recently removed" for 72 hours. Pro lifts the cap entirely. Several browsers on one computer count as a single device: they are grouped using privacy-preserving hashes of coarse machine signals, computed on your device with a per-account secret. A major browser update, or a hardened browser like Brave or Tor that randomizes those signals, can land the same machine in a new slot. Remove the stale entry and carry on. You are never locked out. ### What happens when I go over my storage limit? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/over-quota Nothing is ever deleted. When new changes stop fitting, sync says so: "Storage full. Some notes couldn't sync." Existing data keeps syncing, new growth does not. If you stay over the cap, a 90-day countdown starts, shown as an amber banner. Reading, editing things smaller, deleting, and exporting all keep working the entire time. After 90 days over cap, sync pauses: the banner turns red ("Sync paused. You've been over your storage limit for 90+ days."). The app still works fully on every device; changes just stay local until you are back under. Recovery is instant and self-serve: [free up space](https://privacynotes.app/help/storage-usage/) - emptying the trash counts - or add storage under Settings > Storage, and sync resumes on its own. This is the deliberate opposite of services that auto-delete over-quota data. ## Your data https://privacynotes.app/help#g-yourData ### Where is my data stored? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/data-location On your device first, and that is the copy you work with: the app is local-first, so your notes open and edit offline. The synced copy lives on servers in Zurich, Switzerland. What sits there is your public key, encrypted blobs of your notes, files and settings, plus the timestamps and sizes a sync needs. No titles, no text, no tags. The country matters less than the encryption does. Everything is always encrypted, on your device and on the way to the server, so that copy would be unreadable wherever it sat: Switzerland is a bonus, not the promise. [What syncs](https://privacynotes.app/help/what-syncs/) lists it item by item. The copy on your device is encrypted too. Notes are sealed on disk under a key derived from your recovery phrase when you unlock, so a copy of the app's storage on your device, or a stolen backup of it, carries ciphertext rather than your notes. ### Where on my disk does the app store my notes? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/data-on-disk In one folder per install, inside your account's app-data area. Where that folder is depends on the platform: - **macOS**: `~/Library/WebKit/app.privacynotes/WebsiteData/` - **Windows**: `%LOCALAPPDATA%\app.privacynotes` - **Linux**: `~/.local/share/app.privacynotes`, or `app.privacynotes.appimage` for the AppImage, which bundles its own web engine and so keeps its own profile - **Android, iOS**: the app's private storage, which no other app can open - **Browser**: your browser profile, under `use.privacynotes.app` What sits there is ciphertext. Each note is one sealed blob holding the title, body and tags, opened by a key derived from your recovery phrase when you unlock, so a copied folder carries nothing readable. Only what the local index needs stays in the clear: ids, timestamps, the kind of item, and flags such as pinned or deleted. To move your notes to another device, or to keep a copy of your own, use **Settings > Import & Export > Export** and pick "Encrypted full backup (.pnbackupz)". It holds everything, it is encrypted with your phrase key, and it restores with your phrase on any device. [More on backups](https://privacynotes.app/help/backup-strategy/). ### Can I export my notes, or am I locked in? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/export You can export everything at any time, generated entirely on your device: Markdown files in a zip with attachments included, plain JSON, or self-contained HTML - per note or for the whole account. The zip is the "PrivacyNotes backup (.zip)", and it restores, as the encrypted backups do; JSON and HTML are for reading and for your next app. Vault items get their own route, "Vault export (.json)", which writes Bitwarden's format and carries your usernames, passwords, URLs, card details and 2FA keys into Bitwarden, 1Password or KeePass. It all sits under Settings > Import & Export > Export. Import runs the same way, from Obsidian, Evernote, Apple Notes, Standard Notes, Bitwarden and more: the full list is in [moving in from another app](https://privacynotes.app/help/import-from-other-apps/). Lock-in is not part of the business model. ### Can I print a note or save it as a PDF? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/print Yes. Right-click a note, or open its share menu, and choose "Print / Save as PDF". Your system print dialog opens, so you can send it to a printer or save a PDF from there. The page renders clean on white with your formatting intact, whatever theme you use in the app. It is generated on your device like every other [export](https://privacynotes.app/help/export/), so nothing is uploaded to produce it. For several notes at once, select them and export as HTML: you get one printable page per note. The "Doctor PDF" under Statistics is a separate, purpose-built wellness report and needs Pro. ### What is the best way to back up my notes? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/backup-strategy Export "Encrypted full backup (.pnbackupz)" under Settings > Import & Export > Export. It encrypts everything - notes, journals, vault items, tasks, images, audio, and files - with your phrase key, so it is safe to park on a cloud drive or a USB stick, and it restores with your phrase on any device. It opens with the phrase that made it, so keep a "PrivacyNotes backup (.zip)" alongside it if you ever [move to a new phrase](https://privacynotes.app/help/phrase-compromised/): same contents, restores into any vault, and readable on disk, so store it somewhere you trust. "Encrypted backup (.pnbackup)" covers text and metadata rather than images and files, and "Text backup (.json)" and the HTML archive are portability formats rather than restore formats. Why keep local backups when everything syncs? Sync is not a backup: it faithfully propagates deletions, including a compromised server dropping data that your devices then mirror. A copy on your own disk is the one no server event can touch. Export before big imports, before leaving, and on a rhythm you will keep. ### How do I restore a backup? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/restore-backup Open Settings > Import & Export > Restore and pick the format you have. "Full backup (.zip)" takes the complete export: notes, journals, vault items, tasks, images, audio, and files. "Encrypted backup (.pnbackup, .pnbackupz)" takes either encrypted export. Your file is read and decrypted on your device, and restoring is free on every tier. A restore matches notes by id. A note you already have is updated only when the backup's copy is newer, a note in your trash comes back out, a note you lack is added once, and restoring the same file again changes nothing unless you edited a restored note in between, which brings the older copy back beside your edit. A file with no ids of ours, from another app or from a backup made by an older version of this one, adds its notes as new ones every time. Both encrypted formats open only in the account that created them, because they are encrypted with that account's phrase key, while a .zip restores into any vault ([which backup to make](https://privacynotes.app/help/backup-strategy/)). ### What happens if I clear my browser data or cookies? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/clear-browser-data The web app keeps your notes in your browser's own storage, so clearing site data for PrivacyNotes wipes the local copy and signs you out. Everything that already synced is safe: sign in with your 12-word phrase and it comes back. Anything that had not synced yet is gone, because we never had a copy of it. So do two things. Check that the footer says "Synced" before you clear anything, and keep your phrase in a password manager, because a cleared browser cannot ask you nicely for it. The desktop and mobile apps are not affected at all: they keep their own storage, which a browser cleanup never touches. ### Are my notes included in my Android phone backup? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/android-backup No. The Android app keeps its data out of the phone's cloud backup, so none of it reaches Google Drive. The reason is the key, not the notes: where you chose **Trust this device**, your 12 words are held on that device to keep you signed in, and a cloud backup is no place for the key that decrypts your notes. A new phone therefore starts empty: install the app, sign in with your 12 words, and everything that synced arrives. Restore waits for that first sync, so a backup you bring is matched to what the account holds rather than added twice. What never synced lives only on the old phone, so check the footer reads "Synced" first, or carry a "PrivacyNotes backup (.zip)" from Settings > Import & Export > Export ([which backup to make](https://privacynotes.app/help/backup-strategy/)). A direct phone-to-phone transfer at setup is different: some phones move app data across, and Android gives an app no dependable way to refuse. That copy never leaves your two devices, so wipe the old phone afterwards. ### What counts against my storage, and how do I free space? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/storage-usage Everything you sync, at its encrypted size: note text, images, audio recordings, and file attachments. The bar under Settings > Storage shows the total; each note's own footprint is listed in its note options as "Storage used". Trashed notes still count until the trash is emptied. To free space fast, open Files, sort by Size, and delete the biggest items - attachments dwarf text in almost every account. Then empty the trash: the Trash view shows how much space "Empty" will free. Text alone almost never fills a quota; even the free 50 MB holds tens of thousands of plain notes. ### I deleted files but my storage did not go down. Why? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/storage-after-delete Your space is already free. The moment the delete syncs, those bytes stop counting against your quota, on the server as much as on this device. If the bar still shows the old figure, press the refresh icon beside it: that recounts from the server and leaves out everything queued for deletion. A device that was offline keeps its own last count until it catches up. The "few days" the app mentions is about the encrypted file itself, not about your quota, and that wait is deliberate. Deleting a file from storage is permanent, with no trash to fish it back out of. A device that has not finished syncing holds an incomplete picture of your notes, so it could delete an image that another note still shows. A file therefore waits at least 24 hours, and only a device that has completed a clean sync removes it. The patience costs you nothing, because the space was credited the day you deleted. ### Does PrivacyNotes change or compress my images? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/image-quality Yes. Both settings are on by default because we love our users: we want you to save storage space and keep your privacy. Space saver shrinks a large image to fit 2048 pixels and saves it as JPEG at 85% quality, which keeps all the detail a screen can show. Remove location data strips the EXIF metadata a camera writes into a photo, including the GPS location, before the image is saved. Both apply to every image in the app: pasted into a note, added as a file, or imported. Turn either off under **Settings > Images**, where contact photos have a third switch that keeps them at 512 pixels. The settings apply to new images only; files that are not images are stored exactly as they are. HEIC and TIFF images are converted to JPEG, because only Safari can show them. A backup you restore is written back byte for byte. ### What files can I attach, and how big can they be? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/attachment-limits Any file type: images, PDFs, audio, archives, whatever you drop in. Every file is always encrypted, on your device and on the way to the server, exactly like note text, and the Files view collects all attachments in one place. The per-file limit is 5 MB on the free plan and 50 MB on Pro. Files count against your total sync storage (50 MB free, 500 MB on Pro, expandable to 5.5 GB with storage add-ons), and the storage bar in Settings > Storage always shows where you stand. ### Why did my file upload fail? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/upload-failed The error names which ceiling you hit. Per file: 5 MB on Free, 50 MB on Pro, 100 MB with any storage add-on. In total: everything you sync must fit your account's storage (50 MB Free, 500 MB Pro, more with add-ons), so a full quota fails an upload even when the file itself is small. Any file type is accepted. Check the storage bar in the Files view or under Settings > Storage, then pick the cheapest fix: [free up space](https://privacynotes.app/help/storage-usage/), upgrade, or shrink the file (phone photos are often multi-MB originals; a compressed JPEG is a fraction of the size). An upload that fails for want of a connection is kept, not lost: the file stays on this device and goes up by itself once you are back online, and Settings > ID & Sync counts it as waiting until then. ### Why did notes disappear from my trash? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/trash-auto-delete Trash is not an archive: by default, anything in it is permanently deleted after 30 days. The switch sits in the Trash view itself, labeled "Auto-delete after 30 days" - turn it off there if you want trash kept forever, and the setting syncs to all your devices. The cleanup runs on your device when the app opens, because the server cannot see which encrypted notes are trashed. Permanently deleted means gone: no device and nobody on our side can bring it back, only a backup you made earlier. If you use trash as a someday-maybe pile, disable auto-delete or restore notes before day 30. Until then, trashed notes still count toward [your storage](https://privacynotes.app/help/storage-usage/) - "Empty" in the same view frees that space immediately. ### Can I get an older version of a note back? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/note-history Yes, with Pro. Open the note's "..." menu and choose "Note history" to browse and restore up to 20 previous versions. Restoring loses nothing: the current text is saved as a version first, so you can step back and forth. Versions are encrypted like the note itself, so we cannot read them either. A snapshot is taken at most once a minute, so two edits seconds apart share one version. Note history is the one Pro feature that runs through the server, which is why the demo keeps its own local copy instead. Every tier has the [trash](https://privacynotes.app/help/trash-auto-delete/) as well, which holds a deleted note for 30 days. ### What is the Vault? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/vault The Vault is a dedicated section for structured secrets: logins with usernames and passwords, credit and debit cards, and SSH keys. Entries get proper fields instead of free text, logins display a site icon, and everything is encrypted on your device like the rest of your data. It gives the handful of credentials that otherwise end up scattered across notes a tidy, protected home. Pair it with the app lock and PIN protection for a second gate on your most sensitive entries. A Bitwarden import lands here automatically. ### Can the Vault store my 2FA authenticator keys (TOTP / MFA codes)? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/vault-totp Yes. A Vault login has a "2FA code" field that accepts either a base32 secret or a whole otpauth:// link, and a Bitwarden import carries existing keys across. The key is encrypted, saved and synced on every tier, free included. Pro turns it into the live rotating code with its countdown, so you do not need a second app open beside this one. A password and its one-time code in the same vault means one unlocked device holds both factors, which is the trade every password manager with built-in codes makes. For most accounts the convenience wins, especially with the app lock or a PIN in front of it. If you would rather keep the two factors apart for your email or your bank, put those codes somewhere else and let the [vault](https://privacynotes.app/help/vault/) carry the rest. ### How long can a single note be, and what do the size warnings mean? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/note-size-limit Type as much as you like - for normal notes, size never comes up. As a single note grows very large, a small hint appears beneath it and escalates in three steps: around 50,000 words it notes the note is getting long and may lag on slower devices; around 75,000 words it turns amber, meaning editing may start to stutter; and around 100,000 words it suggests splitting the note because you are nearing the sync limit. These are guides, not hard stops, and nothing prevents you from continuing. That sync limit is the only real ceiling. A single note can hold up to about 1 MB of text once encrypted - very roughly 120,000 words of typical English, and fewer with a non-Latin script or heavy formatting. A note past that keeps working and stays safe on the device you wrote it on, but that one note will not sync to your other devices (you will see a "failed to sync" notice). The rest of your notes are unaffected: one oversized note never blocks anything else. The fix is easy: split a very long note into a few smaller ones. The content is identical, it syncs without trouble, and the editor stays fast. A live word count under each note lets you watch the size as you go. ### How do I leave PrivacyNotes completely? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/leaving Export first, delete second - both self-serve. Settings > Import & Export > Export covers every exit route: "PrivacyNotes backup (.zip)" for a complete copy, portable Markdown and HTML for your next notes app, and "Vault export (.json)" in Bitwarden-compatible format for your next password manager. Exports are generated on your device. Then Settings > Account > "Delete account & data...": type DELETE, and your synced notes, files, devices, settings, and the account itself are permanently removed with no retention window ([details](https://privacynotes.app/help/delete-account/)). An active storage add-on must be cancelled first under Settings > Storage. A phrase-only account leaves nothing behind to scrub, because we never knew who you were. No dark patterns and no win-back emails - your data is yours, including on the way out. ### How does PrivacyNotes handle GDPR and my data rights? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/data-rights Mostly by holding as little as possible. Sign up with a phrase and there is no name, email, or identity on file to request: your data is ciphertext under a random public key, hosted in Zurich, Switzerland. Sign in with Google, Apple, or GitHub and exactly one identifier exists - the email behind that login, linked to that key. Billing details for Pro live with [Paddle](https://www.paddle.com), the merchant of record, not with us. Every right is self-serve and immediate, no request form needed: access and portability are Settings > Import & Export (full export in open formats), erasure is Settings > Account > "Delete account & data..." with no retention window, and rectification is editing your notes. The formal version, including how to reach us for anything the app cannot do itself, lives in the [privacy policy](https://lifetimelabs.dev/privacy/). ### Do you record which website I came from? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/referral-links Yes, and it is about advertising. We buy placements on other sites and pay creators, so we need to know which ones actually bring people. Wasted advertising money is a cost the product carries either way, so we measure it in the smallest form that answers the question. The marketing website counts the clicks on our links as totals, by link and country, without any identifier: no cookie, no visitor record, no third-party script. If you create an account, it stores two short words from a published list: which link you arrived from, if there was one, and how you installed the app, such as “android-play”. Both words are written once when the account is created, never updated, and deleted with your account. Nothing else about your arrival is kept. If you close the tab before signing up, or your browser strips the link, no word is stored. The apps carry no analytics of what you write, no pixels and no third-party trackers: open your network tab and check. ### What happens to my notes if PrivacyNotes shuts down? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/shutdown You keep them. Your notes, tasks, journal entries and vault items live on your device because the app is local-first, and exporting them to Markdown, JSON, or HTML works offline. A picture or file stays on a device once you add or open it there, and one this device never opened is fetched when you open it, so keep a full backup: it fetches every picture and file this device lacks, and says so if one cannot be fetched. The encryption code is [open source](https://github.com/LifetimeLabsDev/PrivacyNotes.app) too, so the format stays independently readable even in a world where our servers vanish overnight. ## Pricing & Pro https://privacynotes.app/help#g-pricingPro ### What is free and what is Pro? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/free-vs-pro Free is the full product, not a teaser: notes, tasks, journal, and vault, all encrypted on your device, offline use, import and export - on up to 2 devices with 50 MB of sync storage. Pro is a one-time purchase that adds unlimited devices, 500 MB of sync storage (expandable), note version history, larger file attachments, note locking and PIN protection, advanced wellness tracking, zen mode, and all color themes. ### How can a one-time payment fund a sync service forever? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/one-time-pricing Because the service is deliberately cheap to run. The app is local-first and notes are small encrypted blobs, so the server does little more than store them and relay them between your devices. No analytics of what you write, no pixels or third-party trackers, no AI features burning compute, no support department. The one cost that does grow over time is storage, and that is priced accordingly: storage beyond the included 500 MB is a small yearly add-on. One-time costs are priced once, recurring costs recur. The model only has to pay for itself, and it does. ### I bought Pro on one platform. Do I have it everywhere? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/pro-cross-platform Yes. Pro is attached to your account, not to a device, platform, or store. Buy it once, sign in with the same phrase (or the same Google, Apple, or GitHub login) anywhere, and Pro is active there too. That includes platforms that do not exist yet: when a new app ships, your existing Pro comes along at no extra cost. ### Can my family share one account or one Pro purchase? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/family-sharing Two accounts is the answer, and starting a second one costs nothing: each gets 2 devices and 50 MB free. An account is one 12-word phrase, and whoever holds that phrase holds everything in it: every note, every vault entry, on every device. Separate accounts is what gives each person their own private notes. Pro is bought per account. To hand over one specific thing, send a [burn note](https://privacynotes.app/help/burn-notes/) rather than your phrase. A shared household account works fine if that is genuinely what you want: keep the phrase in a shared password-manager entry, and treat anyone who has ever held it as having seen everything in it. ### My recovery phrase leaked. Do I lose Pro? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/pro-after-leak Pro stays with the account you bought it on, and your recovery phrase is the only key to that account. If the phrase leaks and you move to a new vault, Pro does not move with you, and nobody can move it by hand, us included. The app says this at sign-up and again before you sign out: the 12 words are the only way in. If you bought Pro in the last 30 days, you can get a [full refund](https://privacynotes.app/help/refunds/) and buy again on the new vault. Each refund costs us payment fees, so please keep it for a real leak. The steps to move your notes and close the old vault are in [what to do when your phrase leaks](https://privacynotes.app/help/phrase-compromised/). Keep the new phrase in a password manager, and type it nowhere else. ### Can I use PrivacyNotes at work, and is there a team plan? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/business-use You can use it at work, and plenty of people do. It is a single-person tool by design: your own account, your own phrase, your own Pro purchase, with each person on a team holding their own key. There is no shared workspace, admin console or central billing. Weigh that before you standardize on it. Zero-knowledge encryption means the notes belong to the person who wrote them, which is exactly what a journalist, a lawyer or a consultant wants, and it is why an organization that needs key escrow or audit logs runs those on a system built for them. For an individual professional it is the strongest position available: nobody can be compelled to hand over what nobody can read. ### I paid for Pro but it is not active. What now? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/pro-not-active Give it a minute, then reload the app. After checkout the app polls for about 20 seconds and unlocks by itself, and a reload re-checks Pro status on launch. If the payment landed but activation lags, a banner says "Payment received but Pro activation is taking longer than usual" - that state resolves itself in nearly all cases. In store builds, a purchase that fails to validate retries when you restart the app, and a purchase that never activates is refunded by the store automatically within 3 days. Still locked? It is almost always an account mismatch: Pro attaches to the account that was signed in at purchase, so a different phrase - or a Google, Apple, or GitHub login instead of your phrase vault - is a different account. Compare the Account ID under Settings > ID & Sync on the device that bought it. If it is genuinely stuck, [report it](https://github.com/LifetimeLabsDev/PrivacyNotes.app/issues) and include that Account ID: it identifies the purchase and reveals nothing about your notes. ### How do storage add-ons work? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/storage-addons Pro includes 500 MB of encrypted sync storage. If you need more, add-on packages stack on top: 1 GB for $4.80 per year, 2 GB for $8.40, or 5 GB for $18, up to 5.5 GB in total. Add-ons are the only recurring purchase in the product, because storage is the only thing that costs us money every month you use it. Everything is managed under Settings > Storage: switch to a bigger package (you pay only the prorated difference) or cancel anytime and keep the space until the period you paid for ends. Pro itself is yours forever either way. ### How do I change or cancel my storage add-on? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/manage-storage-addon Settings > Storage is the control panel. Upgrading to a bigger package applies immediately. On the web, the confirmation shows the exact prorated amount charged today before you commit, and the renewal date does not move; in the Play Store and the App Store the store's own sheet shows the charge, and Apple refunds the unused part of your current year and starts a new one. "Cancel storage" keeps your extra space until the end of the period you already paid for. To move to a smaller package, cancel the current one and buy the smaller one when the period ends. If your data still fits the remaining cap after expiry, that is the end of it; if not, nothing is deleted and the [90-day over-quota lifecycle](https://privacynotes.app/help/over-quota/) begins. A failed renewal shows a banner with an "Update card" link to fix payment in Paddle. Cancelling from outside the app works too, which is the answer when you cannot sign in. Paddle is our merchant of record and bills you directly: use the "Manage Subscription" link in your receipt email, or the support chat at [paddle.net](https://paddle.net). A store build is the same idea, so cancel there in the store's own subscription settings. ### Do purchases carry over between the web, Google Play, and the App Store? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/store-purchases Yes. Pro and storage attach to your account, not to a platform or store. Buy on the web and every app you sign into is Pro, including store builds; buy inside a store build and the web and desktop apps unlock the same way. Signing in is the restore, because the entitlement follows the account. A store build carries a **Restore purchases** button under Settings > Account as well, which asks Apple or Google what you own and unlocks it again after a reinstall. The one difference is who bills you. Web purchases run through Paddle and are managed in the app under Settings > Storage. Purchases made inside a store build (the App Store today, Google Play once that app ships) are billed by that store: recurring storage is cancelled in the store's subscription settings, and refunds follow the store's process. Either way it is the same account and the same Pro everywhere - including platforms that do not exist yet. ### What is the refund policy? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/refunds 30 days, no questions asked. If Pro is not for you, request a full refund within 30 days of purchase and it goes back to the original payment method. Customers in the EU additionally keep their statutory 14-day right of withdrawal. Payments are processed by Paddle, our merchant of record, so refunds are handled by Paddle directly: reply to your purchase receipt email or visit [paddle.net](https://paddle.net). The full policy lives in the [terms of service](https://lifetimelabs.dev/terms/#refunds). ### What do you learn about me when I pay? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/paddle-privacy Less than you might expect. Checkout runs through [Paddle](https://www.paddle.com), the merchant of record: your name, card number, and billing address go to Paddle for payment and tax purposes and never touch our servers. Paddle holds your billing details; what reaches our database is your public key, the amount and the order id, and for a storage add-on its size and renewal dates. Our Paddle account can see both sides, and we do not look you up. To keep your name off the purchase, pay with an [email alias and a masked card](https://privacynotes.app/help/buy-pro-anonymously/). ### Can I buy Pro without revealing who I am? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/buy-pro-anonymously Yes, with two standard tools. For the receipt, use an email alias: [Apple Hide My Email](https://support.apple.com/105078), [DuckDuckGo Email Protection](https://duckduckgo.com/email), [SimpleLogin](https://simplelogin.io), [Firefox Relay](https://relay.firefox.com), or [addy.io](https://addy.io) all forward to your real inbox without exposing it. For the payment, use a masked card: [privacy.com](https://privacy.com) in the US generates virtual cards that work with any name you type, and many banks and services elsewhere ([Revolut](https://www.revolut.com), for example) offer disposable virtual cards that do the same job. At checkout, Paddle asks for an email, a payment method, and a country (plus a postal code in some regions) to calculate tax. The alias receives the receipt, the masked card carries whatever name you gave it, and the tax location narrows you to a region, nothing more. Keep the alias alive though: the receipt email is your proof of purchase and your channel for a refund. Combined with a phrase account, no single party ends up holding the full picture: your bank sees a card top-up, Paddle sees an alias and a masked card, and we see a public key that became Pro, next to that alias in our Paddle account. ## Apps & platforms https://privacynotes.app/help#g-appsPlatforms ### Which platforms does PrivacyNotes run on? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/platforms Web, macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. Every app is built from the same core, encrypts your notes on your device the same way, and syncs through the same account. The [downloads section](https://privacynotes.app/en#downloads) always has the latest builds. The native apps need macOS 13 or newer, Windows 10 or newer, iOS 17.4 or newer, Android 7.0 or newer, or a Linux release with webkit2gtk 4.1 (Ubuntu 22.04+, Debian 12+, or equivalent). Below those versions the app will not install or start, so use the web app instead. The web app is a first-class citizen, not a fallback: it keeps your notes on your device and works offline, so any modern browser is always a way in. ### How do I check that the app I downloaded is genuine? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/verify-download Every build we ship is signed, and your operating system checks that signature before it runs anything. macOS builds are signed and notarized by Apple. Windows installers carry an Authenticode signature you can read under Properties > Digital Signatures. The Android APK is signed with our own key, which is why Android refuses any update that is not ours. The iPhone and iPad app is signed by Apple and only installs through the App Store. The desktop apps also reject an update that is not signed with our key. Download only from PrivacyNotes.app or from our [releases on GitHub](https://github.com/LifetimeLabsDev/PrivacyNotes.app/releases), which lists every version. The signature is the check that counts, and your system runs it for you: it is verified against a key that lives nowhere on our website, so a swapped file fails that check whatever the page beside it says. ### I asked for a feature or reported a bug. How long until it ships? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/feature-requests Often days. Small requests and bug reports usually land in the next release, and releases go out most weeks rather than a few times a year. The [changelog](https://privacynotes.app/changelog) is the record: every entry is dated, written in plain language, and says what changed. Read a month of it and you will know exactly what to expect from us before you commit anything to the app. That pace comes from how the work is split. The encryption core, the sync protocol and the sign-in flow were written by people, next to day jobs, long before the app had a name, and the crypto core is still maintained that way; nothing automated goes near it. Once that foundation was solid, in spring 2026, we started using AI coding tools under a fixed protocol: first for [translations](https://privacynotes.app/help/translation-quality/), then help articles, then interface features and non-critical bug fixes, where they are good at pinning down rare edge cases that would otherwise take weeks, and at writing the test scripts that hold several developers to one standard. That is why a request from one person is worth building instead of waiting behind the top of the list. Anything touching encryption, sync or sign-in stays with skilled developers who write every line, and that code is [public](https://github.com/LifetimeLabsDev/PrivacyNotes.app) so you can read it instead of trusting us. More on the team and how we work on our [about page](https://lifetimelabs.dev/about). The app itself has no AI features and never sends your notes anywhere ([details](https://privacynotes.app/help/no-ai/)). That promise is separate, and it does not change. ### Will the Android app update itself? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/android-updates Install it with [Obtainium](https://privacynotes.app/help/obtainium/) and yes: it reads our releases and offers each new version as it ships, which is why we recommend that route on Android. An APK taken straight from our website updates on your say-so instead, because Android auto-updates only apps that came from a store. The website APK tells you instead. The app checks for a newer version and shows an "Update available" notice with a "Download" button. Tap Download, then open the downloaded file to install it over the old version, with your notes and settings untouched. The check only asks whether a newer version exists, it never touches your notes, which stay encrypted the whole time. ### How do I install the Android app with Obtainium? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/obtainium Obtainium is a free, open-source Android app that installs other apps straight from their release pages, and it is now the way we recommend installing PrivacyNotes on Android, because it is the only route that keeps itself current. Already have it? Tap the badge and it adds PrivacyNotes for you. [![Get it on Obtainium](https://privacynotes.app/marketing/badge-obtainium.webp)](https://apps.obtainium.imranr.dev/redirect?r=obtainium://app/%7B%22id%22%3A%22app.privacynotes%22%2C%22url%22%3A%22https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2FLifetimeLabsDev%2FPrivacyNotes.app%22%2C%22author%22%3A%22LifetimeLabsDev%22%2C%22name%22%3A%22PrivacyNotes%22%7D) New to it? Install [Obtainium](https://obtainium.imranr.dev/) first, then add an app and paste this in: `https://github.com/LifetimeLabsDev/PrivacyNotes.app` Obtainium reads our releases, picks the APK, and installs every new version as it ships. No Google account is involved at any point. Obtainium is not our app, and Android still asks you to confirm each install, so an update arrives as a notification and one tap, not silently. The APK is the same build our download page serves, signed with the same key, so Obtainium adopts an app you already sideloaded: nothing to uninstall, nothing to sign in to again. Without it, the app can only [tell you in-app](https://privacynotes.app/help/android-updates/) that a version is ready. ### Obtainium, the direct APK, or Google Play: which Android download? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/play-vs-apk Take [Obtainium](https://privacynotes.app/help/obtainium/) if you want the app to stay current on its own, and the direct APK if you would rather not run a second app for it. Google Play is not live yet, so today the choice is between those two. They hand you the same file signed with the same key, so you can move either way at any time: Obtainium adopts an APK you already sideloaded, and the website APK installs over an Obtainium one. Either route is easy to change your mind about later. Before any switch that means uninstalling first, confirm the app reads "Synced" and have your 12 words or a sign-in QR from another device ready, because uninstalling clears the local copy. ### Which languages does the app speak? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/languages English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, Czech, Catalan, Turkish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Thai, Arabic, and Portuguese in both European and Brazilian variants. The app follows your system language by default, or you can pin one explicitly under Settings > Language on each device. Translations are free for everyone, not a Pro perk. More languages are planned; if yours is missing, tell us on [GitHub](https://github.com/LifetimeLabsDev/PrivacyNotes.app/issues) or [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacyNotes/). ### How are the app's translations made? Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/translation-quality We write the English first. An AI agent then translates each language against a shared glossary, in the register fixed for that language, and a second agent reviews every batch for accuracy, terminology and register before it ships. Native speakers review a sample, starting with the newest languages and the security, sign-in and billing text, and two automated checks fail the build while any translation is missing or out of date. Translations are free on every tier, never a Pro perk. You can improve any of them. If a sentence reads oddly in your language, [report the translation](https://github.com/LifetimeLabsDev/PrivacyNotes.app/issues/new?template=translation.yml): your language, the screen it is on, and what it should say instead. Corrections ship in the next release. ## Export and import guides https://privacynotes.app/help How to export from another app, and what arrives here. Imports run entirely on the reader's own device, so nothing readable is uploaded. Every guide ends with the same four steps inside PrivacyNotes: 1. Open PrivacyNotes and go to Settings > Import & Export. 2. Pick **the source app** as the source. 3. Drop in the file you just exported, or click to browse. 4. Check what the preview says will arrive, then start the import. ### Export your Apple Journal entries Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/apple-journal Apple Journal exports one HTML file per entry plus a folder holding every photo, video and voice memo. PrivacyNotes reads the whole export and rebuilds each one as a journal entry, dated the day you wrote it. **Export your journal on a Mac** 1. Open Journal and choose File > Export in the menu bar. 2. Pick a destination. Journal writes a folder named AppleJournalEntries, holding an Entries folder and a Resources folder. 3. Right-click that folder and choose Compress. AppleJournalEntries.zip appears beside it, and that is the file to import. **Export from an iPhone or iPad** 1. Open Journal. Under the Journals heading, tap your journal to open it (it is called Journal unless you renamed it, and shows how many entries it holds). 2. On the list of entries, tap the … button in the top right, choose Export, and confirm with the Export button. 3. Save it to your phone. 4. Open the Files app and find the folder it wrote, named AppleJournalEntries. 5. Press and hold that folder and choose Compress. The .zip that appears beside it is the file to import. **What comes across** Every entry lands in Journals rather than Notes, dated the day Journal shows above it, so your history keeps its shape. Photos and Live Photos import as pictures, videos and voice memos as attachments. Apple ships photos as HEIC, which most browsers cannot display, so PrivacyNotes converts each one to JPEG on the way in. That is the slow part of a big import: a few hundred photos can take several minutes, and the progress line counts them for you. Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, text colors, bulleted and numbered lists, and block quotes all survive. **Photos, videos and your storage** A journal full of photos is far bigger than a journal full of text, and it counts against your storage the same way anything else does. The import preview totals it up before you commit, and refuses to start if it would not fit. **Where your locations go** Journal records where an entry happened, and PrivacyNotes has no map of its own, so each place becomes a link in a Places list at the end of the entry. Places Journal recorded with coordinates open a pin on that exact spot on OpenStreetMap. Places it only named open a search for that name instead. Nothing is sent anywhere until you click one. **State of Mind** If you logged a State of Mind, PrivacyNotes fills in the mood and emotion trackers on that entry wherever Apple's wording matches one of ours. Anything it cannot match, and the life areas you tagged, are kept as a line of text so nothing is lost. **What does not come across** Journal's suggestion cards for workouts, contacts and media you played keep their text but not their artwork. Voice memos come across as recordings, but not with Apple's transcript of them: the exporter strips every space out of it, so what it writes is one unbroken run of characters. It is left behind rather than imported unreadable. Voice memos from a Mac export are CAF files, which no browser can play. They import and download fine, but you will not hear them in the app. An iPhone export writes the same recordings as M4A, which plays inline, so use the phone if you have the choice. ### Export your Apple Notes Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/apple-notes Apple Notes has no bulk export of its own, so the practical route on a Mac is the free Exporter app, which writes your notes out as Markdown. PrivacyNotes reads that export directly, including images. **Export your notes on a Mac** 1. Install the free "Exporter" app from the Mac App Store. 2. Open it and export your notes. You get a folder of Markdown files, organized by account and folder, with images alongside. 3. In Finder, right-click that folder and choose "Compress" to turn it into a .zip. **Coming from iPhone or iPad** Per-note zips shared from iOS (a small .zip containing the note's Markdown plus an Attachments folder) are accepted too: drop them in one at a time. For a whole library, the Mac route above is far faster. **What comes along** Folder structure, note text, and embedded images survive the trip. Notes keep their titles, and attachments land in the encrypted file storage alongside their note. ### Export your Bitwarden vault Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/bitwarden Bitwarden exports your whole vault as one unencrypted .json file, and PrivacyNotes files every item where it belongs: logins, cards, SSH keys, and secure notes. **Export your vault from Bitwarden** 1. Open the Bitwarden web vault (or the desktop app) and sign in. 2. Go to Tools, then "Export vault". 3. Choose the file format .json (the plain one, not ".json (Encrypted)"). 4. Confirm with your master password and download the file. **Where things land** Logins become Vault login entries (with their site icons), cards become card entries, SSH keys become SSH key entries, and secure notes plus identities arrive as readable notes. Bitwarden folders map to tags, and favorites arrive starred. Authenticator keys (TOTP) come along too, so your 2FA codes keep working. The export file holds your passwords in plain text, so import it, verify everything arrived, and then delete the file properly. Inside PrivacyNotes it is all encrypted again, on your device and on the way to the server. ### Export your browser bookmarks Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/browser-bookmarks Every desktop browser exports the same bookmarks .html file, and PrivacyNotes reads it with your folders and dates intact. Safari wraps that file in a .zip, which you can drop in unopened. No mobile browser can export at all, so turn on your browser's own sync and export from a computer. **Export from Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, or Vivaldi** 1. Open the bookmark manager: Ctrl+Shift+O, or Cmd+Option+B on a Mac. In Edge the same page is called Favorites. 2. Click the "..." button at the top right of the manager and choose "Export bookmarks". Edge says "Export favorites". 3. Save the file. It is an .html file with today's date in the name. **Export from Firefox** 1. Press Ctrl+Shift+O, or Cmd+Shift+O on a Mac, to open the Library window. 2. Click "Import and Backup" in its toolbar and choose "Export Bookmarks to HTML...". 3. Save it. The file is called bookmarks.html. **Export from Safari** 1. Choose File > "Export Browsing Data to File..." in the menu bar. 2. Switch off everything except Bookmarks, then click Export. 3. Safari saves a .zip. Drop that .zip in here as it is, or the Bookmarks.html inside it. Both work. 4. Older Safari versions say File > Export > "Bookmarks..." instead, and save a plain .html file. **Leave only the Bookmarks switch on** The same window offers History, Extensions, Credit Cards and Passwords. Leave those off. PrivacyNotes reads nothing but the bookmarks out of the archive, but an export you then have to delete is one more plain copy of your passwords sitting in your Downloads folder. **What comes across** Every folder you had comes across, nested the way you left it, inside one new folder called Bookmarks. The bookmarks bar is the exception: its contents move up a level instead of becoming a folder, because each browser calls that bar something different in every language. Safari marks nothing, so its Favorites does arrive as a folder. The day you saved each bookmark comes along. Safari is the one browser that writes no dates at all, so a Safari export arrives dated today. Firefox is also the only browser that stores tags and an address-bar keyword with a bookmark. When your file carries them, the preview offers a checkbox to keep them, and both arrive as tags here. Three things are left behind on purpose. Browser-only shortcuts like Most Visited are not real links, so they are counted and skipped. Website icons are not read out of the file either, because the copy saved inside it goes stale; PrivacyNotes fetches a fresh one instead. And a folder that held no bookmarks is not recreated. Importing the same file twice is safe. A bookmark whose address you already saved is skipped rather than added again, and the preview tells you how many. **Taking them back out** Go to Settings > Import & Export > Export and choose "Bookmarks file (.html)". You get the same standard file, folders and all, which every browser reads. Your bookmarks are never locked in here. ### Export your browser passwords Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/browser-passwords Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari all export their saved passwords as a plain .csv file, and PrivacyNotes reads every one of them, one login per row. Safari wraps its .csv in a .zip, which you can drop in unopened. **Export from Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, or Vivaldi** 1. Open your browser's Settings and go to its passwords page. In Chrome that is "Passwords and autofill" > Google Password Manager > Settings; in Edge it is "Profiles > Passwords". 2. Find "Export passwords" and choose "Download file". 3. Confirm with your device password or your fingerprint. The file is normally called passwords.csv. **Export from Firefox** 1. Type about:logins in the address bar and press Enter. 2. Click the "..." button at the top right and choose "Export Logins...". 3. Confirm with your device password. The file is called logins.csv. **Export from Safari** 1. Choose File > "Export Browsing Data to File..." in the menu bar. 2. Switch off everything except Passwords, then click Export. 3. Confirm with Touch ID or your Mac password. Safari saves a .zip holding Passwords.csv, and you can drop that .zip in here as it is. 4. The Passwords app on macOS 15 and later exports the same rows through File > "Export All Passwords...", as a plain .csv. **Leave only the Passwords switch on** The same window also exports your bookmarks, history and saved cards. Every switch you leave on writes another unencrypted file into the same archive, so turn them off. One exception: if you want your bookmarks here too, switch both on and drop the one .zip into both importers, because each reads only its own file out of it. **What comes across** Every row becomes a login with its site, username and password, plus the note the browser stored with it. Firefox is the only one of the three that writes dates, so its logins keep the day you first saved them and the others arrive dated today. Safari is the only one that exports an authenticator key, and only when you kept your verification codes in Safari; when it does, the code keeps working here. Browsers save a separate entry per sign-in page, so a big export often holds several rows for one company. They all import, and you can merge or delete them afterwards. A browser keeps passwords in one flat list, so there is no folder structure to rebuild. Every login arrives tagged instead, which pulls the whole batch up in one click. **Delete the export file when you are done: it is your passwords in plain text** Nothing in the exported .csv is encrypted, whether or not it arrives inside a .zip. Anyone who opens it reads every password you have saved, so keep it on your own machine, import it, check that everything arrived, and then delete the file and empty the trash. Inside PrivacyNotes it is encrypted again, on your device and on the way to the server. ### Export your Evernote notes Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/evernote Evernote exports one notebook at a time, from the desktop app only. Pick the ENEX format and your notes arrive whole: formatting, tags, attachments, web clips, and the links between them. **Export a notebook** 1. Open Evernote on Mac or Windows. The web version and the phone apps cannot write .enex files. 2. Right-click the notebook in the sidebar and choose "Export notebook...". 3. Pick "ENEX format (.enex)" and leave every box under Export note attributes ticked: they carry your tags, dates, reminders, and web clip URLs. 4. Save the file. Evernote names it after the notebook, and that name becomes the folder on this end, so keep it. 5. Drop that .enex in as it is. If you have more than one notebook, repeat the export for each, then zip the .enex files together and drop the zip in once. **Pick ENEX, not the HTML or PDF exports** The other three formats do not survive the trip. Both HTML exports bloat every note with a copy of the same stylesheet and lose the filename and the download link for every attachment that is not an image, and the PDF export fuses the notebook into one document with no note boundaries left. Drop one of those in by mistake and we will say so rather than import half a notebook. Leave "Split file size by" switched off unless the notebook holds gigabytes of scans. **One notebook at a time** There is no whole-account export, and a stack cannot be exported as a unit. Hand-picking notes caps you at 100 per export, so right-clicking the notebook is both faster and the only way past that limit. Stacks are not written into the file either, so your folders arrive flat. Free plans can export, with one catch: the free tier allows a single connected device and this needs the desktop app. **What comes across, and what does not** Tables, code blocks, highlights, underline, text color, and formulas all survive. Checklists become task lists, note reminders become a task at the top of the note, attachments and images are re-encrypted into your storage, web clips keep their source URL, and voice notes keep their transcript. Internal links become note-links, matched on the linked note's title, since Evernote exports no note ids. Tasks do not come across: the export leaves a "Content not supported" placeholder where each task block was, with no titles, due dates, or completion states left to read. Encrypted blocks stay encrypted, so decrypt them in Evernote first. Custom fonts, text alignment, and nested tag hierarchy are dropped. **If the export fails partway** Evernote keeps your notes on its servers and pulls them down as it writes the export, so a large notebook can stop at 13%, then 40%, then finish. Run the same export again: each attempt caches more of it locally and gets further than the last. ### Export your Google Keep notes Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/google-keep Google Keep has no export button inside the app itself; the official way out is Google Takeout. It takes about five minutes, and PrivacyNotes reads the Takeout file directly, no unzipping needed. **Export your notes from Google Keep** 1. Go to [takeout.google.com](https://takeout.google.com) and sign in with the Google account that owns your notes. 2. Click "Deselect all", then scroll down the product list and tick only "Keep". 3. Click "Next step" and keep the defaults: export once, .zip file. 4. Click "Create export". Google prepares the archive and emails you a download link; with Keep alone this usually takes minutes, not hours. 5. Download the .zip. You can leave it exactly as it is. **What comes along** Titles, note text, and formatting arrive intact. Keep checklists convert to native PrivacyNotes task lists, and your Keep labels arrive as tags. Drop the whole Takeout .zip into the importer. If you already unzipped it, a single .json note file from the Takeout/Keep folder works too. ### Export your iA Writer library Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/ia-writer iA Writer stores your writing as plain .md files in its Library, so the Library folder is the export. The one thing to get right is making iCloud hand over the real files first. **Take the folder out of iCloud, then zip it** 1. In iA Writer, right-click the folder in the Library sidebar and choose Show in Finder. 2. In Finder, right-click that folder and choose Download Now, so iCloud fetches every file instead of leaving placeholders. 3. Right-click it again and choose Compress. 4. Drop the .zip into the importer. **On iPhone or iPad** Open the Files app, go to iCloud Drive > iA Writer, press and hold the folder, and choose Compress. Share the .zip to PrivacyNotes, or open PrivacyNotes and pick it from Files. **The placeholder trap** With Optimize Mac Storage on, iCloud replaces files you have not opened lately with tiny placeholders. Zip the folder in that state and you get an archive of empty stubs: the import runs, reports success, and brings almost nothing. Download Now first, then check the .zip is roughly the size of your writing before you import it. **What comes across** Library folders become real folders, at any depth, and the images and files your notes link to come with them. Headings, tables, task lists, code blocks and footnotes survive, and bare URLs become clickable links. Front matter is read for the title, dates and tags. Content blocks, which pull one file into another as you write, arrive as the link they are written as rather than as the pulled-in text. ### Import Markdown files Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/markdown The generic path for everything else: any app that can export Markdown can move to PrivacyNotes. Single .md files work, and so does a .zip of a whole folder. **Prepare your files** 1. Export or collect your .md files. Any source works: another notes app, a static site, a folder of READMEs. 2. For more than a handful of files, put the folder into a .zip. 3. Drop the zip (or individual .md files) into the importer. **How files are read** YAML frontmatter is honored when present: title, created, updated, and tags fields are used directly, which also makes this the restore path for PrivacyNotes' own Markdown exports. Tags written as #hashtags in the prose are read too. Plain files without frontmatter use the filename as the title and the content as the body. The parser is deliberately lenient: .md, .markdown, .mdown, .mkd and .txt are all accepted. Zip the whole folder and the structure comes with it. Subfolders are rebuilt as real folders at any depth, and the images and files your notes link to are imported alongside them. Anything nothing links to is left behind and counted, so a folder full of stale screenshots does not eat your storage. ### Export your Nextcloud Notes Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/nextcloud-notes Nextcloud Notes needs no export step: every note is already a plain file in one folder on your own server, and Nextcloud hands you that whole folder as a .zip. Both file extensions it uses are read here, so there is nothing to convert first. **Download the Notes folder** 1. Open Files in your Nextcloud, in a browser. 2. Find the Notes folder. It is called Notes unless your administrator renamed it. 3. Open the "..." menu on the folder and choose Download. Nextcloud packs the whole folder into a .zip. 4. Drop the .zip into the importer. **What comes across** Categories are stored as subfolders, so they arrive as real folders. Note dates come from the files themselves rather than from the import. Headings, tables, task lists, code blocks, footnotes and math survive, and bare URLs become clickable links. This imports a copy. Nothing is deleted from your Nextcloud and nothing syncs back, so keep the server as your archive until you are happy with what landed here. **Either file extension works** Notes writes .txt out of the box and .md when you or your administrator change the setting. Both are read here, along with .markdown, .mdown and .mkd, so you do not have to rename anything or touch the server before you export. ### Export your Notesnook notes Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/notesnook Notesnook can write your whole account out as a folder of files. Choose the HTML export and nothing is left behind: formatting, notebooks, tags, attachments, and the links between your notes all survive the move. **Export your notes** 1. Open Notesnook and go to Settings > Backup & export. 2. Find "Export all notes" and open the "Export as" dropdown. 3. Pick HTML. This matters: it is the only format Notesnook writes without first stripping your formatting. 4. Notesnook saves a single .zip containing one file per note plus an attachments folder. That zip is your import file. **Pick HTML, not Markdown** Notesnook's export dropdown offers Text, Markdown, Markdown + Frontmatter, and HTML. Only HTML keeps everything. Both Markdown options flatten your notes before writing them: underline, font sizes, and text alignment are gone before the file ever reaches us. The plain Markdown option also writes no tags and no original dates, so every imported note would be untagged and stamped with today's date. We still accept both, and we will tell you what was lost, but HTML is the one to choose. The Text export has no structure to read and is not accepted. **What comes along** Your notebooks are rebuilt as real folders, not flattened into tags, at whatever depth Notesnook nested them. A note in Work > Projects lands in a Work > Projects folder. Pinned and favorited notes stay marked. Notesnook keeps Pin and Favorite as two separate properties; PrivacyNotes has a single Pinned list, so a note that was either one lands there. Highlights, math, and text alignment come across as themselves: highlighted text stays highlighted, formulas render again as math, and centered or right-aligned blocks keep their alignment. Custom fonts, font sizes, and text colors have no equivalent here, so that styling is dropped and the text is kept. **A backup file is not an export** Notesnook can also save a backup file ending in .nnbackupz. That is a different thing: it stores every attachment in Notesnook's own encrypted format, which only Notesnook can unpack. Drop one here and we will say so rather than importing half of it. Use "Export all notes" as HTML instead. ### Export your Obsidian vault Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/obsidian Obsidian has no export step and does not need one: a vault is already a folder of Markdown files. That makes this the easiest migration of all. Zip the vault, drop it in. **Export your vault** 1. Find your vault folder on disk. If you are unsure where it lives, Obsidian shows the path when you click the vault name in the vault switcher. 2. Compress the folder to a .zip: right-click > Compress on macOS, or Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder on Windows. 3. That zip is the import file. No plugins or exports needed. **What comes along** Your folder structure is rebuilt as real folders, not flattened into tags, no matter how deep it nests. A note in Work/Projects lands in a Work > Projects folder. Re-importing the same vault reuses the folders it already created instead of duplicating them. On the free plan you can browse these folders straight away; creating, renaming, and moving folders is a Pro feature, so an Obsidian import is a good way to try it before you upgrade. YAML frontmatter is understood: tags, aliases, and created dates are honored, and inline #tags in the body are merged into the tag field. You can also tick "Also tag notes by folder" during import to add each folder name as a tag too, handy if you also like filtering by tag. Your [[...]] links keep working: PrivacyNotes renders them as note-links, so the connections between notes survive the move. The .obsidian config folder and .trash are skipped automatically. ### Export your Samsung Notes Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/samsung-notes Samsung Notes exports one file per note, in two flavors. Prefer the Microsoft Word (.docx) export: it keeps your formatting, while the plain text export loses it. **Export your notes from Samsung Notes** 1. In Samsung Notes, long-press to select the notes you want (or Select all). 2. Tap the three-dot menu and choose "Save as file". 3. Pick "Microsoft Word file" (.docx) for formatted notes, or "Text file" (.txt) for plain text. 4. Samsung saves one file per note to your device storage. Collect them into a single .zip (select them in your file manager and compress) if you exported more than a few. **What comes along** From .docx exports: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, bullet and numbered lists, and checkboxes (which become native task lists) all survive. From .txt exports: the text, nothing else. Images embedded in a Samsung note come across by hand: the importer flags every note that had one, so you know exactly where to drop the pictures back in. The note text, titles and dates all arrive in the same pass. ### Export your Simplenote notes Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/simplenote Simplenote has a clean built-in export that takes three clicks, and PrivacyNotes reads the resulting zip directly. **Export your notes from Simplenote** 1. Log in at [app.simplenote.com](https://app.simplenote.com) (or open the desktop app). 2. Open the sidebar menu and go to Settings. 3. Under Account, choose "Export Notes". A .zip downloads immediately. **What comes along** The zip contains an authoritative notes.json with all your notes and their metadata: tags come along, and creation dates are preserved. Drop the whole .zip into the importer as-is. ### Export your Standard Notes Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/standard-notes Standard Notes offers a decrypted backup export, and that is the file PrivacyNotes reads. One important detail up front: it must be the decrypted variant, not the encrypted one. **Export your notes from Standard Notes** 1. Open Standard Notes (web at app.standardnotes.com, or the desktop app) and sign in. 2. Open Preferences, then the Backups section. 3. Download a data backup and choose the decrypted format when asked. 4. You get a .zip containing a file named "Standard Notes Backup and Import File.txt". Keep the zip as it is. **Super notes, checklists and 2FA codes keep their shape** Super notes keep their headings, lists, checklists, tables, code blocks, colors and collapsible sections. Checklists land in Tasks, spreadsheets become tables, and authenticator entries become logins in the Vault with their 2FA key. Nested tags become folders, and each note keeps its tags as well. Files you uploaded to Standard Notes stay on their server, so the backup holds only their names. Each imported note marks where a file was. Download those files from Standard Notes and add them to the note again. **Encrypted backups are not supported** An encrypted Standard Notes backup is ciphertext that only your Standard Notes password can open, so the importer cannot read it. If you exported the encrypted variant, export again and pick decrypted. Since the file contains your notes in plain text, delete it after the import is done. Drop the whole .zip into the importer, or just the .txt file if you already unzipped it. ### Export your Typora notes Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/typora Typora edits plain .md files that already sit in a folder on your disk, so there is no export step. Zip the folder and drop it in. **Zip the folder you write in** 1. Find the folder holding your .md files. Typora keeps no library of its own, so this is wherever you chose to save them. 2. Right-click the folder and choose Compress (macOS) or Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder (Windows). 3. Drop the .zip into the importer. **Settle where your images live before you zip** Typora can keep an image beside the note, inside an assets subfolder, or leave it wherever you dragged it from. Only the images inside the folder you zip can come across. Open Preferences > Image, set it to copy images into the note's own assets folder, and use "Format > Image > Copy image files to..." on any older note whose pictures still point somewhere else. **What comes across** Subfolders become real folders, at any depth. Headings, tables, task lists, code blocks, footnotes, math and highlights all survive, and bare URLs become clickable links. YAML front matter is read for the title, dates and tags. Tags come across both ways: from YAML front matter, and from #hashtags written in the prose. A hashtag inside a code block stays code, and a bare number like #4711 stays a ticket reference. ### Export your UpNote notes Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/upnote UpNote's export is called a backup: it writes your whole account to a folder on disk, free plan included. Zip that folder and everything moves: notes with their full formatting, notebooks, tags, pins, note links, images, and attachments. **Create a local backup** 1. Open UpNote on your computer and go to Settings > Backup. 2. Turn on "Backup attachments". It is off by default, and without it your images and files stay behind. 3. Click "Backup now" and wait for the "Last backup at" line to update. 4. Click "View backup folder". UpNote opens the folder it just wrote. **Zip everything in that folder** Zip the whole folder, not just the Markdown folder inside it. Those markdown copies are a flattened rendering: underline, colors, highlights, collapsible sections, and text alignment are already gone from them. Your notes' full formatting lives in the data folder, and that is what we read. Drop a zip without it and we will say so rather than import the flattened copies. 1. Select everything in the backup folder: data, files, and whatever sits beside them. 2. Compress the selection: right-click > Compress on macOS, or Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder on Windows. 3. That .zip is your import file. **On iPhone or Android: export notes one at a time** The HTML export brings your formatting across in full. What no per-note export carries is library structure: notebooks, pins, and dates only live in the backup, so once you reach a computer, the backup route above completes the move. Markdown exports are accepted too, with the flattening they bring. 1. UpNote's phone apps cannot write a backup. Instead, open a note and tap the three dots in the top corner. 2. Choose Export > "Export to HTML". Not Markdown: UpNote flattens callouts, text colors, alignment, and sub- and superscript before writing its Markdown, while the HTML keeps everything. 3. Share the result to your Files app or send it to yourself, then drop it here unmodified. 4. Moving several notes? Save the exports into your Files app, select them all, and Compress: that one zip imports in one go. **What comes along** Your notebooks are rebuilt as real folders, nested as deep as UpNote nested them. A note that lived in several notebooks lands in the first one and carries the others as tags. Pinned and Quick Access notes arrive as Pinned. Trashed notes land in the trash, templates import as notes tagged #template, links between notes become note-links, and every note keeps its original dates. Formatting survives: checklists, tables, code blocks, math, underline, sub- and superscript, text alignment, and highlights. Collapsible sections become foldable callouts and keep their open or closed state. Text colors and highlight colors are both matched to the editor's own palette, so a yellow highlight stays yellow and a green one stays green. Each note imports as it stands, at the version UpNote last saved. **If images or files are missing** A backup made before you ticked "Backup attachments" has no files in it, and the import preview will warn you that notes reference attachments the backup does not carry. If it does, cancel, turn the setting on in UpNote, click "Backup now" again, zip the fresh folder, and import that instead. ### Export your Zettlr notes Source: https://privacynotes.app/help/import/zettlr Zettlr works directly on a folder of .md files, so the workspace you already have is the export. Zip it and drop it in. **Zip the workspace** 1. In Zettlr, right-click the workspace at the top of the file tree and choose Show in Finder, or Show in Explorer on Windows. 2. Right-click the folder there and compress it. 3. Drop the .zip into the importer. **Zettelkasten links keep their text, not their target** Zettlr links notes by ID, so a link reads [[20260823120000]]. We keep note links exactly as they are written, which means an ID link only resolves here if a note is actually titled with that ID. Links written with the file name resolve normally, so switch your internal link format to the file name before you export if you rely on them. Citation keys like [@doe2026] are text to us. They come across unchanged and stop being clickable. **What comes across** Workspace subfolders become real folders, at any depth, and the images and files your notes link to come with them. Headings, tables, task lists, code blocks, footnotes, math and highlights all survive. Tags are read from YAML front matter and from #hashtags written in the prose, so a Zettelkasten built on hashtags keeps its filing.