Privacy

Last updated 2026-10-20

NorthStar is run by one person on his own hardware. This page says what it stores, where that lives, and who else can touch it.

Who is responsible

Maj Mohar runs this service. For anything about your data, including a copy of it or its deletion, write to [email protected].

What NorthStar stores

• Your account: an email address and a display name, used to sign you in and to write to you about your account.
• Your calendar: a mirror of the calendar you connect, so the app works offline.
• Your notes: typed text and handwriting, with the day or lesson they belong to.
• Your settings: the way you have set the app up.

Your notes stay yours

Notes are never written back to a calendar. Outlook and Google receive no part of anything you write here. An Outlook link is read only. A Google calendar you connect can be changed from inside NorthStar, by an event you add or edit yourself and by nothing else. Notes are stored separately, they travel encrypted, and they are not read, mined or shared. Nobody other than you sees a note, and no feature exists that would show one to anyone else.

Where it is stored

On your devices, and on a server run by Maj Mohar. It is not stored with a cloud provider. A backup of the database is taken every day, encrypted, and kept on that same server; a copy on a second machine is planned and is not in place yet. The server is in Slovenia.

Who else is involved

Cloudflare carries traffic between you and the server. Zoho delivers the few emails the service sends. If you connect Google Calendar, Google sees that connection and the events it holds. If you use an Outlook calendar link, Microsoft serves that calendar. None of them receive your notes.

Error reports

When a build has error reporting switched on, a crash sends a report to a server run by Maj Mohar. Note text, event titles, calendar links and anything token shaped are removed on your device before the report is sent. Screenshots are never attached.

How long it is kept

Until you delete it. When you delete your account, your notes and account data are erased from the live service within 30 days. Backups are a separate matter and this page will not pretend otherwise: a backup is a sealed copy of everything, it is never edited to remove one person, and your data can stay inside one for about two weeks before that whole backup is destroyed. The server keeps the last fourteen daily copies and deletes the oldest, and it deletes them sooner than that if they would fill the disk.

Nothing is ever restored from a backup in order to bring a deleted account back.

Handwriting tidying (neat writing)

If you switch on neat writing for a pen, NorthStar reads your handwriting on your own device to turn it into tidy text. The reading is done by Google's ML Kit handwriting recognition running inside the app; the first time, the app downloads Google's recognition model for your language (about 20 MB) from Google. Your ink is not sent to Google or to anyone else to be read.

• Your original strokes are kept beside the tidy text, so you can always go back to what you wrote. They are stored with the page and synced to your account on our server, like the rest of your notes.
• To get better at your handwriting, the app keeps a short record each time you accept or correct a word: what it read, the alternatives it offered, the word you chose, and when. This record is stored with your notes in your account and synced between your devices. "Forget learned words" in Settings → Pen & ink clears it on every device. Nothing here is used for anything except reading your own handwriting.
• Which pens have neat writing switched on is remembered only on that device and is not synced.
• When you delete your account, your original strokes and the learning record are deleted with your notes. They can remain in the server's daily backups for up to fourteen days, as described above. Signing out leaves them on the device; "Erase everything on this device" removes them from the device. The downloaded recognition model stays on the device until you uninstall the app.
• Links you share to a notebook do not include your original strokes or this learning record. Error reports and diagnostic logs never contain the words you wrote.

Tasky, the task companion

Tasky is a small phone and web app for your tasks and lists. It signs in with your NorthStar account and keeps the same tasks, task lists and folders, and the few settings it needs, in that same account on the same server. Your notes, handwriting and calendar are never sent to it.

• A copy of your tasks and lists is kept on the phone (or in the browser), so Tasky works offline. Signing out leaves that copy on the device; uninstalling the app removes it.
• On Android, reminders are local notifications set by the phone itself. The reminder time is stored with the task in your account, but no reminder goes through Google, Apple or any push service.
• Tasky has no analytics, no advertising and no tracking, and it sends requests to nobody but this service. Its fonts come with the app and are not loaded from Google. Updates to the Android app are downloaded from this same server.
• When you delete your account, your tasks and lists are deleted with the rest of your data, as described above.

What you can ask for

A copy of your data, a correction, or its deletion. The app also lets you export your notes and delete your account yourself. Write to [email protected] and you will get an answer.

Changes

If this page changes in a way that matters, the date at the top changes.