Cozy is a private journaling app. I designed it so your writing stays yours — on your computer, in plain files you control. This policy explains what that means in practice.
The short version
- Cozy does not have user accounts.
- Cozy does not have a server that stores your journal.
- Your entries live as files in a folder you choose, on your own device.
- I don't track how you use the app. Cozy does send anonymous crash reports (with your journal content stripped out) so I can fix bugs — nothing else.
- A few features talk to other companies (your purchase, crash reports, map tiles, update checks). Those are all listed below.
Who we are
Cozy is made by Cantimplora Studio LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company.
- Address: 30 N Gould St, Suite R, Sheridan, Wyoming 82801, USA
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: https://cozyjournal.app
What Cozy stores, and where
When you write in Cozy, your entries are saved as files on your device, inside a folder you pick. Cozy reads and writes those files locally. I never see them, and they are never uploaded to any server I run.
If you place that folder inside iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, or a similar service, those services will sync your files according to their terms and privacy policies. That is your choice and your relationship with them — Cozy is not involved in that sync.
App preferences (window size, theme, recent folders, sound settings, etc.) are stored locally on your device.
What Cozy sends over the network
Cozy is mostly offline. Here is every time it talks to the internet, and why:
- Checking your purchase. Cozy is a paid app. When you enter your license key — and roughly once a week after that — Cozy contacts Polar (the company that handles purchases and license keys) to confirm your license is valid. This sends your license key and a label for your device. Polar also runs the checkout when you buy Cozy. Polar's privacy policy applies.
- Crash reports. If Cozy hits an unexpected error, it sends a crash report to Sentry (an error-tracking service hosted in Europe) so I can find and fix the bug. These reports include technical details about what went wrong, but I strip out file paths, your username, and the name of your journal — and they never contain the text of your entries.
- Update checks. Cozy checks for new versions so it can keep itself up to date. This request goes to GitHub's release servers and reveals your IP address and app version to GitHub, as is standard for any HTTPS request. GitHub's privacy policy applies.
- Map tiles. If you view a map in an entry, the app loads map
images from CartoDB (
basemaps.cartocdn.com). Your IP address and the area you're viewing are visible to that provider as part of any normal web request. CartoDB's privacy policy applies to those requests. - Place names. If you add a location to an entry, Cozy asks
OpenStreetMap (
nominatim.openstreetmap.org) to turn coordinates into a place name, or to find a place you search for. This only happens when you add or search for a location. - Embedded videos. If an entry contains a YouTube or Vimeo link and you play it, your device connects to YouTube (in privacy mode) or Vimeo to load the video, just like visiting those sites would.
On Windows and Linux, Cozy may also download spell-check dictionaries from
cozyjournal.app (my own server) so spell-checking never has to
contact Google.
Apart from crash reports, that's it: no usage tracking, no behavioural analytics, no marketing pixels, and nothing that records what you write.
This website (cozyjournal.app)
Separate from the app itself, this marketing site uses a small number of third-party tools. None of them collect personally identifying information by themselves — but they do see your IP address and browser, as any website visit does.
- PostHog (EU-hosted): product analytics to understand how people use the site and where newsletter signups come from. If you submit the newsletter form, your email is associated with your analytics profile so we can see which page and source led to the signup. No cross-site tracking.
- Cloudflare: the site is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Cloudflare processes requests and may keep short-lived security logs to protect the site against abuse.
The newsletter / email signup
If you submit your email through the form on this site, it is sent to
Substack (cozyjournal.substack.com), which
handles the newsletter. You can unsubscribe at any
time from any email Substack sends you. Substack's own privacy policy
governs how they store and process your address.
What we don't do
- I don't sell data. I have no data to sell.
- I don't profile you, build ad audiences, or share information with advertisers.
- I don't read your entries. I can't — they never reach me.
Children
Cozy isn't built for children under 13, and I don't knowingly collect information from them.
Your rights
Because your data lives on your device, you have full control: you can move it, copy it, back it up, or delete it at any time using your operating system's file tools. Uninstalling Cozy leaves your journal files where they are; delete them yourself if you don't want them anymore.
Changes to this policy
If I change this policy, I'll update the "Last updated" date above and post the new version at https://cozyjournal.app. Material changes will be highlighted on the site.
Contact
Questions about privacy? Email [email protected].