Last updated: October 2026
Nothing. Folio Writer has no analytics SDK, no telemetry, no crash-reporting service, no advertising, and no user accounts. We do not see your documents, your file names, your usage, or your identity, because none of it is ever sent to us.
Every Folio Writer project is a folder of plain files — Markdown, Typst, and BibTeX — stored wherever you put it: your local disk, iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or any other Files location. Folio Writer reads and writes those files directly. It does not upload them anywhere, and there is no Folio Writer server involved in editing, saving, or syncing. (Compiling on iPhone and iPad is the one exception — see below.)
If you keep a project in a cloud folder, that cloud provider (Apple, Dropbox, and so on) syncs the files under their own privacy policy — exactly as they would for any other document. Folio Writer is only a reader and writer of those files; it adds no layer of its own.
iPhone and iPad can’t run the typesetting tools (pandoc and Typst are desktop programs), so tapping Compile on those devices sends a readable copy of the manuscript you are compiling — its text and the figures it references — to the Folio Writer compile server over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection. It is typeset in memory and deleted the moment the compile finishes; it is never stored, logged, or used for anything else.
You can avoid any upload entirely:
Your preferences — editor font, appearance, writing-session mode, the list of recent projects —
are stored on-device using the system’s standard settings storage (UserDefaults).
They stay on your device and are never transmitted.
Folio Writer makes almost no network requests. The two exceptions are strictly local in purpose:
Apart from compiling on iPhone and iPad — where the copy sent is used only to typeset your file and then deleted — no request Folio Writer makes contains, or is about, the contents of your writing.
Folio Writer Cloud (cloud.foliowriter.app) is a separate, optional web service, and unlike the apps it does store your work: projects you create or upload there are kept on its server so you and your collaborators can reach them by link. Accounts are optional and are identified only by an email address, used for sign-in links.
Plainly: a Cloud project that is not encrypted is stored in a form the server can read — it has to be, to compile, preview and publish it — so the people who run the server have the technical ability to read it. We do not open or read private projects unless the law requires it: the admin tools offer no way to open one, and submissions to the Community gallery or the Universe shelf are reviewed from a copy you submit, never from your working project.
Encrypted projects — the default for new projects — are stored only as ciphertext. Set a project passcode (strongly recommended) and the key is kept only locked with that passcode and with your account’s recovery code, neither of which we ever receive, so nobody without them or your link, including us, can read the project. Without a passcode, your account keeps a copy of the key sealed with the server’s own key, so you can always reopen the project when signed in; the people who run the server could then technically decrypt it, though the server never opens it. Strict end-to-end keeps no copy at all. The full details are in the Folio Writer Cloud privacy statement.
Apple asks apps to declare certain system APIs and why they use them. Folio Writer’s uses are entirely local:
| User defaults | To store your editor and app preferences on this device. |
|---|---|
| File timestamps | To tell whether a file changed on another device (so syncing is safe), and to show you the dates of snapshots, versions, and recovered copies. |
Folio Writer is a productivity tool that collects no data from anyone, including children.
This website (not the apps) counts visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics — a cookie-less, anonymous measurement: no cookies, no identifiers, no cross-site tracking, aggregate numbers only.
If you join the waitlist for the Windows and Linux apps on this website, we keep the email address you enter, the platform you picked, the page language, and the date — nothing else. It is used for one thing: a single email when those apps ship. It is never shared, sold, or added to a newsletter, and the list is deleted once that email has gone out. To be removed sooner, use the contact form.
If this policy ever changes, the updated version will be posted here with a new date. Since we collect nothing, changes will only ever clarify — never expand — what the app does.
Questions about privacy? Use the contact form — the right category is preselected.
Folio Writer