Privacy and limits

Your data stays on your Mac

• Notr has no account, no sync and no telemetry. It goes online for one thing only: to check for updates, and only when you ask (see below).
• Your notebooks are in one SQLite database, ~/Library/Application Support/Notr/notr.db (with its -wal and -shm companion files while Notr runs). Nothing else is written, except the files you export, and, only if you use updates, the choice to check daily (in Notr's preferences) and an update while it installs (in ~/Library/Caches/Notr, removed afterwards).
• Text in pictures and handwriting is read by macOS's built-in text recognition (Vision), on your Mac; nothing is sent anywhere. What it reads is kept in the same database, beside your notebooks, and not in .notespace backups.
• The database isn't encrypted. Anyone who can read your user folder can read your notes; FileVault protects them when the Mac is off.
• Back up either the database (with Notr closed) or .notespace exports. Time Machine includes the database.

Updates

Notr doesn't check for updates by itself. Notr › Check for Updates… (also in the command palette, and on the File view's Updates card) fetches one small file, https://elyracode.com/notr/latest.json, which names the newest version. The request carries nothing about you or your notebooks. On the Updates card you can turn on Check automatically once a day; that choice is kept in the Mac's preferences for Notr, not in your notebooks.

When a newer version exists, a strip under the ribbon offers it. Nothing is downloaded until you choose Install Update. Notr then downloads the zip, checks it against the hash the feed gave, unpacks it in ~/Library/Caches/Notr, and installs it only if it is signed with Notr's Developer ID (Knut Horne, 52AT44QFCM), unchanged since signing, the version the feed named, and newer than the one running. It replaces the app where it is, and Relaunch Notr saves your work and starts the new version. If Notr can't replace itself (it runs from the disk image, or the folder needs an administrator), the strip links to the download page instead.

What Notr doesn't do

• Open or save Microsoft OneNote files (.one, .onepkg), or sync with OneDrive.
• Collaborate. Two Notr windows on the same database are merged when one saves after the other, a page at a time, and a page both changed is kept twice; see Troubleshooting. It is a safety net, not live sharing: neither sees the other's edits until it saves.
• Record audio.
• Format table cells, or merge them.

Limits

Notr enforces NoteSpace's limits, so everything it writes can be opened there.

An edit that would break a limit is refused with a message, and the page stays as it was.