Last updated: 21 July 2026

1. Overview

Notare is a free, open-source (MIT-licensed), local-first meeting notetaker and dictation app. This policy covers both the Notare desktop app and the notare.dev website. Its core principle is simple: your data stays on your device. Notare has no servers that receive your notes, your audio, or your account — there is nothing for us to collect, because your content never comes to us.

2. No accounts, no telemetry

Notare requires no sign-up and no account to use. The app ships with analytics and telemetry compiled out — it does not track your usage, measure your behaviour, or phone home. There is no usage identity of any kind.

3. Your content is stored locally

Your meeting notes are saved as plain Markdown files, and your audio recordings as ordinary files, inside a folder (a "vault") that you choose on your own device. These files are never uploaded to Notare. You control them, you back them up, and you delete them — exactly as you would any other file on your computer.

4. Transcription

By default, speech-to-text runs entirely on-device using local models (Whisper, Parakeet, or Voxtral). Audio does not leave your machine.

Optionally, you may connect a self-hosted companion transcription server that you run on your own hardware. If you do, audio is sent only to the server address you configure — not to Notare. You choose whether to use it, and where it runs.

5. Google Calendar (optional connection)

Connecting Google Calendar is entirely optional. If you choose to connect it:

• Notare uses Google's OAuth through a local loopback flow on your own machine (127.0.0.1).
• It requests read-only access to your calendar (calendar.readonly, calendar.events.readonly) plus your email address (userinfo.email) solely to identify which account is connected.
• The resulting OAuth tokens are stored locally, in your operating system's keychain or credential store, on your device.
• Calendar data is used only to display your upcoming meetings inside the app, so you can attach notes to them.

Notare's website and any Notare-operated servers never receive your Google account data, tokens, or calendar contents. The OAuth exchange happens directly between your device and Google. You can disconnect at any time, which removes the stored tokens.

Notare's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

6. Optional AI enhancement

If you choose to enable note enhancement with an external LLM provider you configure — for example a local Ollama or LM Studio server, or a third-party API — the note text you choose to enhance is sent to that provider, and is governed by that provider's own privacy policy. By default, enhancement runs locally; nothing is sent anywhere unless you configure a provider and invoke it yourself.

7. The notare.dev website

notare.dev is a static marketing site. It does not run user-behaviour analytics on app users. Like most websites, it is served through a CDN (Cloudflare), which may keep standard, short-lived request logs (such as IP address and timestamp) for security and reliability. These logs are not linked to any app identity — the app has no identity to link them to.

8. Data retention & deletion

Because your notes and recordings are local files, you retain and delete them yourself, at any time. The app also offers audio-retention settings so recordings can be cleaned up automatically. Disconnecting Google removes the stored OAuth tokens from your device.

9. Children

Notare is not directed at children under 13.

10. Changes

This policy may be updated from time to time. The "Last updated" date above always reflects the latest version.

11. Contact

Questions about this policy or Notare's data practices can be raised via the project's GitHub repository, or through the developer contact listed on the OAuth consent screen.