Your journal stays yours

InnerNote was designed around one boundary: your journal is not sent to InnerNote's servers. The exceptions are words you choose to have read: a page you ask about, and, once you allow it, the sentences of your latest pages that InnerSelf reads for a reading. Both are relayed, encrypted, and never stored.

The current app stores pages (open and sealed), P.S. notes and the earlier versions of both, search indexes, bookmarks, local signals, InnerSelf readings, session ratings, preferences, and course progress locally. An InnerNote account is optional and holds only a sign-in and an email address, and there is no journal database on our servers. We could not read your current journal from our systems if we wanted to, because our systems never receive it; a page you send for a reply, and the sentences InnerSelf sends once you allow it, pass through and are not kept. Apple may separately carry an encrypted copy through a backup or device transfer that you control.

What leaves the phone

InnerNote sends journal content off the phone only when you ask for a reply on a page and, once you allow it, when InnerSelf reads your pages for a reading. InnerSelf measures your pages on the phone, with no analytics, and its readings stay there. Once you allow it, in a one-time note, a reading sends the sentences it chose about at most three topics (at most six from when each began, six from your latest pages) and, from page 10, the sentences of your last 20 sealed pages, through InnerNote's server to Anthropic, which says in one line what you are saying about each topic, whether it has changed, and what repeats in how you write; the server stores and logs none of it, and checks every line before your phone sees it. You can turn this off at any time in Settings › InnerSelf, with the switch InnerSelf reads with AI; without it, the reading uses InnerSelf's own lines. Apple may carry an encrypted copy when your backup or transfer settings allow it; InnerNote cannot access that copy.

A page typed on the web is sealed to your phone before it leaves the browser. If you link a computer at innernote.ai/write (Settings › Write on the web), the browser encrypts each page you type there to your phone's own public key, using libsodium's sealed box, before anything is sent. InnerNote's server stores that sealed envelope, which it cannot open, until your phone collects it, then deletes it; an envelope not collected within 30 days is deleted. The server keeps, for this, the link code for ten minutes, your phone's public key with the name it gave itself, and the sealed envelopes: never a page, and never a key that opens one. The web page shows nothing of your journal and keeps nothing after Seal. A page you choose to keep there before a phone is linked waits in that browser only, sent nowhere, until your phone collects it or 30 days pass. If you ask for a reply from that page, the words on it go from the browser through InnerNote's server to the AI provider exactly as they do from the phone, and nothing of them is stored or logged; the reply is sealed to your phone with the page. If you ask for the App Store link by email while a page waits, the server keeps that address, with the time you gave it, so that we can write to you once when the app is out; never the page. Its one honest limit is that the browser runs the JavaScript we serve for that page: a compromised server could serve a script that reads what is typed there, never the journal. The page carries no third-party script, a strict Content Security Policy and integrity hashes on every file it loads, to make that as hard as it can be made.

• Apple and Google handle optional Sign in with Apple and Sign in with Google. Apple takes App Store payments, Google takes Google Play payments, and Stripe takes payments on innernote.ai; InnerNote never receives card details. If you sign in, InnerNote's server keeps how you signed in, a one-way hash of the identifier Apple or Google gives, your email address, your emails choice, when the account was made, and your sessions, stored hashed. Email sign-in codes are sent through Resend and stored hashed for 10 minutes. Delete account removes all of it; your pages stay on the phone.
• If you don't sign in and save an address at "Where can we reach you?", the server keeps it against a hash of the pseudonymous app-user identifier until Delete all data asks it to delete it.
• Apple App Attest on iPhone, and Google Play Integrity on Android, verify genuine InnerNote installations before server-backed features are used. The integrity exchange contains installation keys, one-time challenges, build metadata, and a pseudonymous subscription identifier, never writing. Routine assertions are checked locally by InnerNote's server without contacting Apple.
• If you ask for a reply, the text of that one page goes through InnerNote's server to Anthropic, which writes the reply. Nothing else from the journal goes with it, and InnerNote's server keeps none of it.
• RevenueCat receives pseudonymous entitlement and transaction metadata, not writing, so the app can tell whether a subscription is active.
• Crash reporting is on: Sentry receives minimised technical crash data, with no IP address stored. Breadcrumbs, screenshots, view hierarchy, logs, traces, attachments, personal information, and journal content are excluded.
• If you choose Write to us, your mail app opens a draft with only the InnerNote version and iOS version added. You decide what to write and send.

InnerNote does not sell your data, advertise against it, or use it to train a model, and journal content is analysed off the device only when you ask for a reply on a page or, once you allow it, when InnerSelf sends the sentences of your pages it reads for a reading.

Protection on the device

InnerNote can lock on cold open and re-lock after the grace period you choose. Face ID or the device passcode is handled by iOS; the app receives only success or failure.

The journal database is encrypted with SQLCipher and also uses complete iOS Data Protection. Its device-generated key is held in the iOS Keychain. The current WHEN_UNLOCKED database-key class is migratory through supported Apple mechanisms but is not iCloud Keychain synchronisation. Every downloaded MP3 uses Complete Unless Open: it remains encrypted at rest while a track that is already open can continue when the phone locks. When InnerNote leaves the foreground, an opaque cover is placed over every app window before iOS takes its app-switcher snapshot. The optional Apple credential, an account's session and the App Attest key identifier remain bound to this device.

These controls reduce exposure. They cannot make an unlocked, jailbroken, malware-compromised, or physically controlled device risk-free.

Apple backup and transfer

Your journal and its encryption key may move to a new iPhone using Apple's direct device-to-device Quick Start transfer or by restoring an encrypted computer backup made with Finder, Apple Devices, or iTunes. InnerNote is designed to support those paths, but migration is not guaranteed recovery.

Restoring from iCloud Backup onto a different iPhone can restore the encrypted journal file without the non-synchronisable key needed to open it. InnerNote cannot recover a journal whose key did not transfer. A same-device restore is a separate case and does not prove that a new-device migration works. Successful migration depends on your Apple settings, the transfer method you choose, and successful completion of Apple's process.

Android backup and transfer

On Android, InnerNote opts out of Android Auto Backup and of the phone-to-phone copy that uses it (allowBackup is off). The encrypted journal is never written into a Google account backup, and never arrives on a new phone through one. The reason is the same trap as iCloud Backup, taken at its root: the journal's key is held in the Android Keystore, hardware-backed where the phone has it, and does not travel, so a copied database could never be opened; rather than leave an unreadable copy in Google's backup, nothing is copied. A new Android phone starts with an empty journal. Settings › Export your journal is the way to carry your pages across, as a PDF or plain text that you hold.

On Android the app's window also carries FLAG_SECURE, so the recents switcher shows a blank card and the system refuses screenshots and screen recordings of the app, including your own. The lock uses Android's biometric prompt (a fingerprint or face) or the screen lock; Android, not the app, checks it.

Export and erasure

Settings › Export your journal creates a copy that you control, as a PDF or plain text, earlier versions and InnerSelf readings included. Settings › Delete all data erases InnerNote's journal, its versions and readings, and its keys from the current iPhone with no undo, once you confirm with Delete everything. It cannot remove an existing Apple-managed or computer backup. An older encrypted snapshot may remain there until you replace or delete that backup using Apple's tools; InnerNote cannot read it.

Delete all data also asks the server to end this iPhone's sign-in session and to delete a contact address you saved; it does not delete an account. Delete account, from your account at the top of Settings, deletes the account from the server and leaves your pages on the phone.

Deleting the app or losing the phone may remove the only usable copy. InnerNote is local-first and does not operate a recovery service, so making and protecting an export is your choice.

What InnerNote AI Co. Ltd may hold

InnerNote AI Co. Ltd may hold a support or security email that you choose to send, an optional account (sign-in, email address, emails choice, hashed sessions), and an optional contact address. We may also hold or access minimised crash diagnostics, pseudonymous subscription status, the Stripe identifiers and status of a subscription bought on innernote.ai, and App Attest anti-replay records containing hashed installation/user lookups, an attested public key, receipt, and counter, and, against the hashed user lookup, the date the seven free days began and a two-day count of requests for replies. If you link a computer at innernote.ai/write, we also hold your phone's public key, the name it gave itself, and the sealed envelopes typed there until your phone collects them; if you ask there for the App Store link by email, the address you give, with the time you gave it. We do not hold the current journal record.

Security concerns and ordinary help can be sent to sophie@innernote.ai. It is a monitored inbox; please do not include journal passages in a support or security report.

---

Replies and InnerSelf, in detail

When you ask for a reply, the app sends the text of that one page through InnerNote's transient relay to Anthropic to write it. Nothing else from the journal goes with it, and no name or identifier is passed to Anthropic. InnerSelf's sentences, once you allow them, travel the same way. InnerNote's server stores and logs no page, sentence or reply; against a hashed pseudonymous identifier it keeps only the date the seven free days began and a daily count of requests. Under its Commercial Terms Anthropic may not train its models on what we send or what it returns (https://www.anthropic.com/legal/commercial-terms). Under its retention policy for API customers it keeps them for up to 30 days and then deletes them, up to 2 years if its automated safety systems flag a possible Usage Policy breach, and longer where law requires (https://privacy.claude.com/en/articles/7996866-how-long-do-you-store-my-organization-s-data). Nothing of a page or a reply is ever added to InnerNote's logs or crash reports, and the journal on your phone remains the only record.