Privacy Policy

Last updated 7 August 2026

Writingale collects nothing about you. No account, no analytics, no usage statistics, no advertising identifiers, no tracking of any kind. Nothing you write is sent anywhere. There is no server to send it to.

This page explains that in more detail, because "we collect nothing" is easy to say and worth being specific about.

Your writing stays on your Mac

A book in Writingale is a folder of plain Markdown files on your own disk. Writingale reads and writes those files where you put them, and nowhere else. It has no cloud service, no sync, no backup service and no account system.

If you keep your book in a folder that something else syncs — iCloud Drive, Dropbox, a network share — then that service handles your files under its own privacy policy. Writingale is not involved in that and cannot see it.

What Writingale stores, and where

Everything below stays on your Mac. None of it leaves your computer.

What	Where
Your book: prose, characters, notes, pictures	The book folder you chose
Writing statistics and goal history	Inside the book folder, in .writingale
Which panes and tabs you had open	Inside the book folder, in .writingale
Your list of recent books, and permission to reopen them	Writingale's own storage on your Mac
Preferences — font, editor and timeline settings	Writingale's own storage on your Mac

Writingale is sandboxed, which is a macOS feature that restricts an app to what it has been given. Beyond its own storage it can only read and write folders you picked yourself — opening a book, or choosing where to export one. It cannot browse the rest of your disk.

When you open a book, macOS gives Writingale permission to that folder. Writingale saves that permission so the book reopens next time without asking again. It stays on your Mac, records only folders you picked yourself, and cannot be used by any other app — macOS ties it to Writingale. (Like other app settings it is an ordinary file in Writingale's storage, so you can read it, as can anything you have given full disk access, as can your backups.)

Purchases

Saving is unlocked by a one-time in-app purchase. That purchase is handled entirely by Apple. Writingale never sees your name, your email address, your payment details or your Apple Account — Apple does not share them with us, and the app has no way to ask.

What Writingale asks Apple is one question: has this Apple Account bought the unlock? Apple's answer comes back as a signed receipt, and the only parts of it the app reads are which product was bought and whether it was refunded. The check happens on your Mac, and it is what Restore Purchase reads when you set up a second Mac.

Apple's own handling of your purchase is covered by Apple's Privacy Policy.

What Writingale asks the App Store

Writingale talks to exactly one service, and it is Apple's.

On every launch it asks the App Store what the unlock costs, so it can show you the price in your own currency instead of guessing. It asks whether or not you have bought anything.

All Writingale supplies is the name of the product. macOS makes the request on the app's behalf, through the same system service that handles purchases — and because Apple has to know which store you buy from to quote a price, that request is tied to your App Store account in the ordinary way any App Store request is. None of that comes back to Writingale, and none of your writing goes into it.

When you buy or restore, Apple handles the transaction and tells the app whether this Apple Account owns the unlock.

That is all of it. Writingale has no server of its own, no account system, no sync, no update check and no telemetry. Nothing you write is transmitted anywhere, ever.

No tracking, no third parties

There are no analytics libraries, no crash-reporting services, no advertising networks and no third-party trackers in Writingale. No data about you or your writing is shared with anyone, because none is collected in the first place.

Children

Writingale is a writing tool with no social features and no way to share anything with other people through it. It collects nothing from anyone, including children.

Removing your data

There is no account to close, and nothing held anywhere for anyone to delete. Everything Writingale keeps is on your Mac:

• Your books are folders you chose. Move or delete them like any other folder — Writingale keeps no other copy.

• Recent books, saved folder permissions and preferences live in Writingale's storage folder. macOS does not delete that when you move an app to the Trash — it stays behind, as it does for every sandboxed app. To remove it, delete this folder as well:

  ~/Library/Containers/app.writingale

  In the Finder, choose Go ▸ Go to Folder… and paste that path. Your books are not in there and are untouched.

Changes to this policy

If this policy ever changes, the date at the top changes with it. If a future version of Writingale ever collected anything — which is not planned — that would be stated here plainly and before it happened.

Contact

Questions about privacy in Writingale: privacy@writingale.app