Privacy Policy

Chests (“the app”) is made by Styves Goupil, an independent developer in Québec, Canada (“I”, “me”). This policy explains what happens to your information when you use the app and this website. If anything here is unclear, write to support@chests.app.

What the developer collects

Nothing. I don’t collect, receive, store, sell or share any personal information or any content from the app. The app contains no analytics, advertising, crash-reporting or tracking code, and no third-party software development kits (SDKs). Its only outside library, GRDB, is a database library that works entirely on your device.

In Apple’s App Store terms, Chests is “Data Not Collected”.

This website has no cookies, no analytics, no tracking and no third-party scripts or fonts. Like every web server, the server that hosts chests.app may keep short technical logs (such as IP address, date and page requested) to keep it running and secure; they are not used to identify or profile visitors.

Where your chests are stored

Your chests and everything in them (links, titles, pictures, notes, tags, bookmarks, clean copies of articles and your settings) are stored:

• On your device, in the app’s own storage.
• In your iCloud, if you’re signed in to iCloud, so they sync between your iPhone, iPad and Mac. They are kept in the app’s private iCloud database (CloudKit) in your Apple Account, and a few preferences, such as each chest’s sort order, in iCloud’s key-value storage.

iCloud is provided by Apple and is governed by Apple’s terms and the Apple Privacy Policy. Apple encrypts iCloud data in transit and on its servers; the app does not add end-to-end encryption of its own. I have no access to your iCloud data.

Chests shares its iCloud storage with Graphoscope, my Markdown app, so that both apps can show the same chests and so that a note sent from Graphoscope can be opened in Chests. This happens only within your own iCloud.

When you use Export a backup in Settings, the app creates a file with all your chests and gives it to you through the share sheet. Where it goes next is up to you.

Sharing a chest

If you share a chest, it is shared through Apple’s iCloud sharing. The people you invite can see what’s in that chest; with full access, they can also add, change and remove items. Apple shows them your name or contact as it does for any iCloud share. You can stop sharing at any time. A chest someone shares with you lives in their iCloud; your device keeps a copy so you can see it, which is removed when you leave the share.

The websites you save

To make an item useful, the app reads the page you save, directly from the website, the same way your browser does when you visit it. No server of mine is involved. This happens when you add a link and, later, to show covers and to make a clean copy for the reader:

• Title, description and picture. The app requests the page and reads its title, description and preview picture. For Facebook links, it asks the way Facebook’s own link previews do.
• Covers. Pictures are downloaded from the servers that host them. Pictures from Facebook and Instagram are stored inside the item because their links expire.
• Clean reader. To make a clean copy of an article, the app loads the page in a private, temporary web view that keeps no cookies or website data afterwards. The site’s own scripts may run while it loads, as they would in a browser.
• Video channel names. When a YouTube or Vimeo page doesn’t give its channel’s name, the app asks YouTube or Vimeo for it with the video’s link (their public “oEmbed” service).

As with any web visit, those websites receive your IP address and standard technical information about the request, and their own privacy policies apply. The app does not send them anything else about you.

Apple Intelligence, translation and voices

On devices that support Apple Intelligence, Chests can suggest a title and the chest a link belongs in, using Apple’s on-device language model. For photos and reels with little text, it can also use Apple’s Vision framework to recognise what the picture shows and the words on it. All of this runs on your device: the page’s text and pictures are not sent to me, to Apple or to anyone else for these features.

Illustrated covers. When you tap to make a cover, Chests opens Apple’s Image Playground with the item’s title, its tags and its chest’s name (people’s names left out). Image Playground is Apple’s: the picture is made under Apple’s privacy policy, and Chests itself sends these words nowhere. Nothing happens unless you ask for a cover.

Translation. Articles are translated with Apple’s Translation framework, on your device. The first time, the languages are downloaded from Apple, as for Apple’s own apps.

Natural voices. To read aloud in a natural voice, Chests downloads the voice model once, if you agree, from Hugging Face, where it is published. That download is a plain file request: nothing about you or your articles is sent. The voice then runs on your device, offline.

Chests for Chrome

The Chests extension for Chrome (and Brave, Arc or Edge) adds the page you’re on to Chests for Mac. It talks only to the Chests app on the same Mac, at 127.0.0.1, never to a server of mine or anyone else’s, and only when you turn on Settings › Browser › Add from Chrome in the app.

• What it reads. When you click its button or press its shortcut, it reads the current tab’s address, title, description, preview picture and author, to show them in its sheet. Under YouTube videos, it reads the video’s title, channel and length when you click the Chests button. It doesn’t read other tabs or your browsing history.
• What it sends. Those details, with the chest, title and tags you choose, go to the Chests app on your Mac, which saves the item as if you had added it there. For Apple Intelligence’s titles and chest, it sends the page’s title and description to the app, which runs them on your Mac.
• What it keeps. In the browser’s extension storage: the key the app gave it when you connected it (you can disconnect a browser in Settings › Browser at any time). Nothing else.

The extension contains no analytics, advertising or tracking code, and nothing it handles is collected by the developer.

Clipboard and photos

• Clipboard. The app reads the clipboard only when you ask it to, for example with “Add from Clipboard” or ⌘V on the Mac. To know whether to show “Add from Clipboard”, it checks only whether the clipboard holds a link, without reading it. iOS and iPadOS ask your permission (“Allow Paste”) before an app reads the clipboard.
• Photos. When you choose a photo as a cover, you pick it in Apple’s photo picker; the app receives only the photo you choose and has no access to the rest of your library.

The app does not use your location, contacts, camera, microphone or advertising identifier, and it does not send you notifications.

Information Apple provides

Apple runs the App Store and may provide me with aggregated information, such as numbers of downloads, and, if you have chosen to share analytics with app developers in your device’s settings, crash reports and usage statistics that do not identify you. This is governed by Apple’s privacy policy and settings, and I use it only to fix problems and improve the app.

Keeping and deleting

• Your content stays until you delete it. Deleted items wait in Deleted Items for 30 days, then are removed automatically; you can also delete them for good right away.
• Deleting a chest deletes everything in it, on all your devices. Deleting a chest you share also ends the share.
• Deleting the app removes its data from that device. To remove the app’s data from iCloud, delete your chests in the app, or use your device’s iCloud storage settings (Settings › your name › iCloud › Manage Account Storage), where it may be listed under Chests or Graphoscope.
• Clean copies of articles and cached pictures can be made again from the websites at any time; cached pictures that go unused are removed after 90 days.

Children

Chests is a general-audience app and isn’t directed at children under 13. Since the developer collects no information from anyone, no information about children is collected either.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, laws such as Québec’s Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, Canada’s PIPEDA, the GDPR in Europe or privacy laws in the United States give you rights over your personal information, including access, correction and deletion. Because I hold no personal information about users of the app, you exercise these rights directly in the app and in your iCloud settings. You can still write to me with any question or request, and I’ll answer within 30 days.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be posted on this page with a new effective date. If a change were ever to affect how your information is handled in a meaningful way, it would be announced in the app’s release notes before it applies.

Contact

Styves Goupil, Québec, Canada
support@chests.app