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Privacy policy

What Margin sends off your Mac, when, and why: nothing unless you ask it to.

Effective 7 September 2026 · feedback@gomargin.app

Margin is made by J4 Code LTD, a company registered in Cyprus, which is the data controller for anything described here. Questions about this policy: feedback@gomargin.app.

The short version

  • Your notes are Markdown files in folders on your Mac. Margin never uploads them.
  • Three things can leave your Mac: text you choose to send to an AI, anonymous usage statistics you can switch off, and small technical requests (update checks, link previews, model downloads, licence checks). Each is described below.
  • There is no account. We do not know who you are unless you email us or buy a licence — and purchases are handled by Polar, not by us.

Your notes

A "space" is a folder you choose. Your notes are plain .md files inside it, readable by any editor, owned by you. Margin keeps a small .margin/ folder beside them for things like pinned notes and sort order, and a .margin/trash/ folder for notes you delete. Nothing in a space is sent anywhere by Margin, ever, except by an AI action you run (next section).

AI actions

Margin sends text to an AI only when you run an action (for example Reword or Ask), and only the text that action needs — the selection or the note you ran it on. Where it goes depends on the mode you chose in Settings → AI:

  • Anthropic API — the text is sent to Anthropic using your own API key, under Anthropic's privacy policy. Your key is stored in the macOS Keychain and never written to disk by Margin.
  • Claude Code or Codex CLI — a program already installed on your Mac runs the action. It may send text to its provider under that provider's terms; Margin does not see or control that.
  • On-device model — a model file is downloaded once from our release host and runs entirely on your Mac. After the download, nothing leaves your machine.
  • Ollama — Margin only ever talks to the Ollama running on your Mac, so nothing leaves it. The one exception is yours to make: Ollama's own cloud models (names ending in -cloud, which need an ollama.com sign-in) are forwarded by your Ollama to ollama.com under Ollama's privacy policy.

If you never run an AI action, no note text ever leaves your Mac.

Anonymous usage statistics

Margin sends anonymous usage events to PostHog, an analytics service, under PostHog's privacy policy, so we can see which features are used and where the app crashes. We collect: which features are used (for example "note created", "export run"), the app version and channel, your macOS version, crash and error reports, and a random identifier that is not linked to you. We never collect note contents or titles, file names or paths, tags, search terms, AI prompts, licence keys, or your email address, and error reports are scrubbed of file paths and text before they are sent.

You can switch this off in Settings → Privacy → Share anonymous usage data. Usage data is kept for 12 months.

Small technical requests

  • Update checks. On launch, and about every six hours while it stays open, Margin asks our release host (releases.gomargin.app) whether a newer version exists. The request carries your operating system, processor type and current version — nothing that identifies you. Pre-release builds also read a small file from the same host that says when the free alpha period ends.
  • Link previews. When you paste a link, Margin fetches that page to show a preview. The site you linked to sees the request, as it would if you opened the link in a browser.
  • On-device model download. When you choose a model, Margin downloads it from Hugging Face (huggingface.co) — or, if that fails, from ModelScope (modelscope.cn) — third-party hosts that see the download request under their own privacy policies (Hugging Face, ModelScope). Margin sends nothing about you; the file is checked against a checksum built into the app before it is used.

Purchases and licences

Margin is sold by Polar Software Inc., our merchant of record. When you buy, Polar collects your payment and billing details under Polar's privacy policy; Margin receives none of them. Polar issues you a licence key and emails your receipt. Buying from inside Margin goes through a small service at gomargin.app: the app sends the plan you picked and its version number to open the checkout page, and asks the same service for current prices so what you see matches what Polar charges. Restore purchase sends the email address you type; the service uses it once to look up your purchase with Polar and does not store it.

When you activate a licence in Margin (from version 1.0), the app sends Polar your licence key, the name of your Mac as it appears in System Settings, and an anonymous hash of its hardware identifier, so that a licence can count the two Macs it covers. Every licence is then re-checked about once a day while you are online, with the same details and nothing else. If the check cannot reach Polar, nothing changes. You can remove a Mac from your licence in Margin's Settings or in your Polar customer portal.

What we hold about you

Almost nothing. There are no accounts. If you joined the waitlist, your email address is held in a database we run on Cloudflare (under Cloudflare's privacy policy), sent through Resend (under Resend's privacy policy), and used only to tell you about Margin; every email has an unsubscribe link, and asking at feedback@gomargin.app removes it too. If you email us, we keep the conversation for as long as it is useful to help you.

Your rights

If you are in the UK or the EU you have the right to access, correct or delete personal data we hold, and to object to its processing. Because we hold so little, this usually means removing you from the waitlist and deleting our email thread — write to feedback@gomargin.app. Usage statistics cannot be tied back to you, so there is nothing there to retrieve or delete. You can complain to your local data-protection authority; in the UK that is the ICO.

Children

Margin is not directed at children under 16 and we do not knowingly collect data from them.

Changes

We will post changes here with a new effective date. If a change matters — a new place data goes — the app's release notes will say so.