Ghost.md

Privacy

Last updated 5 October 2026

Ghost.md is a notes app made by Matt Wisniewski ("we", "us"). This page says what happens to your notes and your data when you use the Ghost.md apps for Android, iPhone and Mac, the web version, and the ghostmarkdown.com site.

The short version

On your device

Your notes, their recordings and their pictures are stored on your device, as plain Markdown files and the files beside them. Voice transcription and note formatting run on your device, using models the app downloads once. We can't see anything that stays on your device.

Your device's own backup (for example Android's backup to your Google account) may include the app's files. That backup is between you and your device's maker, under their terms.

Your account, if you make one

An account is optional. It keeps your notes the same on each of your devices. When you have one, our sync service stores:

We don't store your IP address with your account. Our service uses it briefly, in memory, to limit repeated sign-in attempts. Our web server keeps ordinary access logs (IP address, time and the address requested) for security and troubleshooting, and we don't use them for anything else.

Organizations and notifications (optional)

You can make an organization, a team, and invite other Ghost.md accounts to it by handle. So that an invitation can reach another account, an organization is not encrypted the way your notes are. For each organization you make or join, our service stores and can see: its name and colour, who owns it, when it was made, and who is in it by handle, each with their role (owner, admin or member), whether they have joined or are invited, who invited them and when. If someone declines an invitation, that is kept for a day so the organization can't ask them again at once.

Inviting someone tells you whether a handle exists ("No one has that handle."). That is the one place a signed-in account can learn this, and it is limited to thirty invitations an hour per account and per network address.

Your account also has a list of notifications. For those the service writes itself (an invitation, someone joining or leaving a team, a rename), it can see the kind, when, who caused it, which organization, and the few words in it, such as the organization's name. For those your own devices or a connected AI assistant write about your own notes (a note the assistant created or edited, a meeting written up, a note kept twice by a sync), the contents are encrypted on the device like a note, and the service sees only the kind and the time. For every notification, the service can see when you read it and whether you hid it, so that follows you across your devices. Which notifications you see is a setting in Settings › Notifications; an invitation is always shown.

Notes filed in an organization are shared with its members. A note you file in an organization's workspace, or make there, is the team's: every member can read it, edit it, comment on it and delete it, and members who have it open at the same time see each other's typing, cursor and colour. Notes you don't file there stay yours alone. Team notes are encrypted on a member's device with a key made there and held only by the organization's members, wrapped separately for each of them, so our service stores them and cannot read them: not their titles, words, comments, pictures or version history, and not who wrote a comment.

What our service can see about a team note: which organization it belongs to, its id, its size, when it changed, and which account wrote each change. It also keeps each member's public encryption key and chosen colour. While team notes are being edited live, the service that passes the edits along can see which signed-in account has which team note open, and when; it can also see that a member's device is in the app and when it has just saved a change to the organization. The edits themselves, the note's title and where a cursor is are encrypted, and nothing passed along is stored. Every change to a team note is listed by handle in the note's version history, which is inside the encryption and shown to its members; the organization's activity log shows it to them alongside the membership events described above.

You can decline an invitation, leave an organization at any time, and mute its notifications; an owner or admin can remove a member. Someone who leaves or is removed loses access to the service at once. The next time a remaining member's device syncs, the team's notes are re-encrypted under a new key they don't have. They keep whatever their devices had already downloaded. The organization's key is also kept, wrapped, for someone who has been invited and has not yet accepted, so it is ready when they do; they cannot read it or anything else until they join. Deleting an organization removes its notes, files and keys from our service. Because we cannot read team notes, we do not review them. You can report a member, or something written in an organization, from its settings under Report: that opens an email to the address under Contact, and since we cannot read the note ourselves, the email has to carry the words it is about. An owner or an admin can remove a member, and anyone can leave. Share only with people you trust.

Shared links

When you share a note or a notebook, the app encrypts a copy and uploads it. The key to open it is in the link itself, after the "#", which browsers don't send to servers, so we can't read what you shared. Anyone you give the link to can read it. You can stop a link at any time in Settings › Account, and it stops opening at once. Links are deleted with your account.

Live typing (optional)

If you turn on live typing, what you type in a note open on two of your devices is passed between them through our service as it's typed. It's encrypted the same way as your notes, and our service doesn't store it.

Connecting an AI assistant (optional)

You can connect an AI assistant, such as Claude, to your notes. If you connect it through our hosted connection, you sign in on a page that gives our server your notes' key for the length of that connection, so it can read and write your notes when the assistant asks. The key is held in memory while it is used. So that a restart of our server doesn't disconnect you, it is also kept on disk, but only sealed: it opens only with a token the assistant holds, and we don't keep those tokens. It is forgotten when you disconnect, when you sign out everywhere, or after 7 days without use. What the assistant reads goes to its maker (for example Anthropic), under their privacy policy. Notes the assistant writes are marked with its name.

Plugins (optional)

What you send to those services is covered by their own privacy policies.

Links, updates and downloads

The web version

In a web browser, Ghost.md uses the browser's own speech recognition to turn speech into text. In Chrome, that sends your voice to Google to be transcribed, under Google's terms. The Android, iPhone and Mac apps transcribe on your device instead.

What we don't do

We don't use analytics, crash reporting, advertising or tracking of any kind, and there's no advertising id. We don't sell your data, share it with anyone (the location, map and place-name requests above are the one exception, and you can switch them off), or use it to train AI models.

Deleting your data

To delete your account, open Ghost.md, go to Settings › Account › Delete account, and enter your password. This deletes, at once and for good, your account and everything it keeps on our servers: your synced notes, recordings, pictures and settings, your shared links, your devices and your recovery codes, your notifications, and your place in every organization (the organizations you had joined are told you left). While you own an organization that anyone else is in, the app asks you to hand it over or delete it first; an organization with nobody else in it is deleted with your account. Your other devices are signed out. The notes on your device stay, because they're your files. More on deleting your account.

Without an account, nothing of yours is on our servers. Uninstalling the app removes its files from your device.

Children

Ghost.md isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect data from them.

Changes

If this policy changes, we'll update this page and the date at the top.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or a request about your data: write to infamousvaguerat@gmail.com.