Privacy Policy

Effective date: July 8, 2026

Outerline is a local-first markdown editor. Your documents are files on your own Mac. We do not see, store, or access them unless you explicitly choose to send data to us, such as by publishing a document through an Outerline account. This policy describes the limited cases where any data leaves your device.

Your Documents

Outerline reads and writes .md files directly on your Mac. On first launch you choose a storage location — either a local folder or a folder in iCloud Drive. If you choose iCloud Drive, your files are synced by Apple's iCloud service under your own Apple ID and subject to Apple's privacy policy. Other than documents you explicitly publish through an Outerline account, Outerline does not transmit your documents to our servers.

Outerline Accounts & Publishing

You can use Outerline locally without an account. An Outerline account is only required if you choose to publish a document to Outerline's sharing service.

When you create an Outerline account, we collect your name, email address, email verification status, account status, and the date you accepted the Terms and Privacy Policy. We use this information to create and manage your account, verify your email address, send sign-in links, and control access to publishing.

Publishing new documents requires the Outerline Publish subscription. Apple processes the purchase, and we never receive your payment details. To know whether your subscription is active, we store subscription records from Apple such as the product identifier, transaction and original transaction identifiers, subscription status, environment, expiration and renewal dates, auto-renew state, and any cancellation or revocation date. We use these records only to grant, maintain, and revoke access to publishing.

When you publish a document, Outerline sends the document title, optional description, Markdown content, document identifier, and publishing settings to Outerline's sharing server. The server stores the Markdown, rendered HTML, public link slug, publish status, timestamps, and revision history so the share link can work and stay updated when you save changes.

Published documents are public to anyone with the link. Outerline asks search engines not to index published pages, but that is not access control. Anyone with the link may view the page, copy the Markdown, or import a snapshot into Outerline while the document is published.

If you stop sharing a document, the public link will no longer show the document. Stopping sharing is not the same as deleting all hosted content; Outerline keeps the share record and revision history unless and until we provide a separate deletion process.

Outerline uses email delivery providers, such as SendGrid, to send account verification and sign-in links. We also keep limited security records, such as hashed account and publisher tokens, device name, platform, last-used timestamps, and rate-limit records for sign-in attempts.

Diagnostics & Performance

Outerline uses Apple's MetricKit framework to receive crash, hang, and performance diagnostics locally. MetricKit is a system service provided by macOS — Apple aggregates this data on your device and delivers it to the app once per day.

Outerline stores MetricKit payloads locally at ~/Library/Application Support/Outerline/. This data is never uploaded automatically. It may include:

  • App version and build number
  • macOS version
  • Hardware model identifier (e.g. Mac16,1)
  • Crash and hang stack traces
  • CPU, memory, and disk write metrics

You can share this data with us voluntarily via Help → Generate Diagnostic Snapshot to assist with bug reports. We will only receive diagnostic data you explicitly send to us.

App Updates

Outerline updates are delivered through Apple's TestFlight and App Store update systems. Outerline does not run a separate in-app update checker.

MCP Integration

Outerline includes a built-in MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that lets you connect your library to AI tools such as Claude Desktop or Claude Code. The MCP server runs entirely on your Mac. Outerline does not send any data to Anthropic or any other AI service.

When you connect an AI tool, that tool may read documents from your library as part of a conversation. The privacy of that data is governed by the policy of the AI service you choose to connect — for example, Anthropic's privacy policy for Claude. Documents are only accessible to an AI tool when you have it actively connected.

What We Don't Collect

Outerline does not:

  • Automatically upload analytics, tracking data, usage data, or diagnostics
  • Use advertising or tracking SDKs
  • Require an account or sign-in for local editing
  • Sell your data or use it for advertising
  • Access your documents without your explicit action

Contact

Questions about this policy? Email [email protected].

We may update this policy from time to time. Changes will be posted at this URL with a revised effective date.