HelloNotes is a local-first application published by Hello Tham Pty. Ltd. Your notes are stored as plain files on your own device, in a folder you select. We do not collect, transmit, sell, or have access to your notes or any personal data.
In short: no account, no analytics, no tracking, no servers of ours. Your notes never leave your device unless you choose to send them somewhere yourself — to a service you sync with, or to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute if you choose Cloud (Apple) as the AI model. Otherwise what the AI features send anywhere is a web search, and the pages it then reads, when a question needs them. Both are described below.
What we collect
Nothing. HelloNotes has no analytics, no telemetry, no advertising identifiers, and no user accounts. We do not operate any server that receives your data. Because we hold no data about you, there is nothing for us to disclose, share, or delete on request.
A few of the app’s settings — appearance, the view you last used, the names of your daily-note, template and attachment folders — are kept in step between your devices through your own iCloud account, as many apps’ settings are. They contain none of your notes, and we cannot see them.
If you write to us — a support request, a report of something the AI wrote, or any other email — we receive what you send, from your own mail app, and use it only to answer you.HelloNotes composes those messages for you to read and send; it sends nothing itself.
Your notes
Your notes are ordinary Markdown files in a folder on your device that you choose. They remain under your control and can be read or edited by any other application. HelloNotes reads and writes only the folders you explicitly open, using the OS's security-scoped file access.
Intelligence
The optional AI features — Summarise, Suggest Tags and Links, Rewrite, suggestions as you type, New Note from a Prompt and the Assistant — use Apple’s Foundation Models framework. By default they run on your device: on Local (Apple), the Apple Intelligence model, or on an open model you choose to download and run on your device with MLX. Your note content is then processed locally and is not sent to us or to any AI service. HelloNotes has no third-party AI services and stores no AI credentials; API keys stored by earlier versions are deleted from your device.
In the App Store version, Settings ▸ AI also offers Cloud (Apple), Apple’s server model, which runs on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute. It is used only if you choose it — as the default model, or in the Assistant for one conversation. Then what a feature works on — your question, and the notes or passages it reads to answer it — is sent to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute to be processed. Apple does not store it, and it is not accessible to Apple; it never reaches us. Settings says so under the model whenever it is chosen, and so does the Assistant, in a conversation on it, and its answers and suggestions say which model made them. When Apple’s daily allowance for it is used up, the work is done on your device by Local (Apple) instead, until the allowance resets.
Downloading an MLX model contacts Hugging Face to fetch the model’s files; none of your notes are sent. The Assistant can search the web — on its own, when a question needs it — and so can Research in New Note from a Prompt. The search terms the model writes go to DuckDuckGo, and they can include words from your question or from notes it has read; a page it reads is fetched from that page’s website.
Cloud storage and version control
If you keep a collection in iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Box, OneDrive or Google Drive, or connect one of those accounts directly, your files are handled by that service under its own privacy policy — the same as any other folder on your device. Similarly, if you use the built-in Git features with your own remote repository, your notes are sent only to the destination you configure. HelloNotes is not that destination and does not receive a copy.
Children’s privacy
HelloNotes does not collect data from anyone, including children, and is rated 4+.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted on this page with a revised date.
Contact
Questions about this policy: info@hellotham.com, or see the support page.