Your library stays on your devices
Stellata keeps the links you save on your device, with their titles, descriptions, preview pictures, notes, likes, and tags, along with your projects and settings. The app and its Share extension store this in a space only they can reach. Videos, PDFs, and books you keep are stored the same way, and books open in Stellata’s own reader, which loads nothing from the internet. Tagging, themes, picture analysis, and finding related links all happen on your device. None of this is ever sent to us.
iCloud and shared projects
If iCloud Sync is on (it is by default) and you’re signed in to iCloud, your library syncs through Apple’s CloudKit to your private iCloud database, which we can’t access. You can turn it off in Settings → iCloud Sync. If you share a project, it is shared through CloudKit: the people you invite see its links and the name shown next to the links each person adds, and Apple’s sharing screen shows who has joined. Inviting friends works the same way: your invite link is a CloudKit share of your own, a friend who opens it in Stellata joins it, and Stellata only counts how many have joined, and checks whether you have joined a friend’s invite, to add links to your free plan. If you share your galaxy in Settings → Friends’ Galaxies, Stellata keeps a copy of it in your private iCloud database and shares it through CloudKit, read-only, by links that each open for one friend. Sharing goes both ways: when you open a friend’s link, Stellata shares your galaxy back with them the same way. The copy holds the name you give your galaxy, if you give it one, and up to your newest 2,000 web saves: for each, its link, title, description, site, author, tags, the date you saved it, the addresses of its pictures and video, a small picture, and the figures Stellata uses to find alike saves. It never holds your notes, your projects’ names, photos or files of your own, saves past the free plan, saves marked NSFW, or saves in projects hidden from your library or shared with you by someone else. A friend who opens your link sees these saves and can keep any of them in their own library, and their view follows yours as it changes. In the same place you can remove a friend, which takes your galaxy off their devices, or stop sharing with everyone. A friend’s galaxy you visit stays on your device until you leave it. Apple provides iCloud under its own terms and privacy policy.
Previews, videos, and imports
To show a preview, Stellata contacts the site a link points to (for example YouTube, Instagram, or X) and the services that site uses to deliver pictures and video. Playing a video or post inside the app loads that site’s own player. As with any website visit, these sites receive your IP address and the address requested, and their players may set cookies. Their own privacy policies apply.
To place a save on the Earth, Stellata works out where it is on your device, from its words, its link, its page, or where its photo or video was taken. When those name a particular spot, such as an address, a café, or a famous place, Stellata asks Apple Maps where it is, sending only those few words, never the link or anything else from your library; looking up a place yourself works the same way. Apple’s privacy policy applies.
When a video plays in Stellata, Hear It names its song by sending Apple’s Shazam service a signature of the sound, from which the sound itself can’t be recreated; the words said in the video are written down on your device. For a TikTok, Stellata reads the song’s name from the post’s page and asks Apple’s iTunes Search for it, sending only the song’s title and artist. You can turn Hear It off in Settings → Videos. Adding a recipe’s ingredients to Reminders, an event to your calendar, or a project’s songs to an Apple Music playlist happens only when you ask, in your own Reminders, calendar, or Apple Music library. Apple’s privacy policy applies.
Think Out Loud listens through the microphone only after you tap the mic in Search, and stops when you tap it again or leave Search. What you say is turned into words on your device by Apple’s speech recognition, to find your saves; neither the sound nor the words leave your device, and the sound isn’t kept. The first time, your device may download Apple’s speech model for your language from Apple.
Files and folders you import, such as Instagram’s or Reddit’s download of your saved posts, a list of links, or an Obsidian vault, are read on your device; you request Instagram’s and Reddit’s files on their own sites. To bring in a DeviantArt member’s favorites, Stellata reads them from DeviantArt’s public feed, sending only the name you typed. After an import, Stellata fetches previews for the new links as described above. Copy to Obsidian writes your saves, with their pictures and notes, only into the vault you pick.
Copy to Notion stays off until you connect Notion in Settings → Copy to Notion. Connecting opens Notion’s own sign-in page by way of a small relay of ours, run on Cloudflare, which holds Stellata’s Notion connection key: it passes the sign-in code, and the access Notion grants for it, between Notion and the app as they’re made, and keeps and logs nothing. Like any host, Cloudflare receives the IP address of each request. The access is kept in your device’s keychain. From then on, Stellata sends your saves from your device straight to Notion, each with its title, link, site, tags, project, note, date saved, and picture, into a database of its own in the workspace you chose, and it changes or moves to the trash only the pages it made there. Notion’s privacy policy applies to what you copy there. You can disconnect at any time in Settings → Copy to Notion; what’s already in Notion stays until you delete it there.
The Table and cards
The Table stays off until you turn it on in Settings → Table, which asks for local network access. While it’s on and Stellata is open, your phone lets nearby phones know that Stellata is open, without your name or anything from your library. When you open the Table, nearby phones can see the name you show there, a random identifier, and how many links you have. When you bring your library or some projects, the titles, links, tags, similarity data, and small thumbnails of what you brought go to the others at the table over a direct, encrypted connection; a full-size picture is sent only when someone takes that link. Anyone at the table can keep a link or a card of what you brought, and you can’t take those copies back after you leave. If you use Share My Card, the file you send holds the same information for the links on it.
The feedback form
Settings → Feedback is the way to reach us, and nothing goes until you tap Send. What goes is the words you typed, which of the three kinds of message you picked, the app’s version, and the language it’s in. Nothing else: no name, no account, no email address, and nothing about your links or your library.
It doesn’t go through Mail, which would send it from your own address and doesn’t work on a phone with no mail account. The app sends it to a small server of ours, run on Cloudflare, which keeps it and emails it to us. So that our answer can find its way back, your first message starts a conversation: a random code and a key, made on your device and kept in your iCloud so your other devices share it; only they can read the conversation. The app also gives the server the push token Apple assigns your device, so our answer can arrive as a notification through Apple’s push service. Our answer is kept with your messages and shows in Settings → Feedback. Like any host, Cloudflare receives the IP address of each request.
Delete Conversation, on that page, deletes your messages, our answers, and the push tokens from the server, and a conversation nobody has written in for a year is deleted by itself. Versions of Stellata before 1.10 hand the message to Formspree, a form service that turns it into an email to us and keeps a copy in our Formspree account, together with an email address if you typed one.
Purchases
Apple handles all payments for Stellata Unlimited. The app checks with Apple what you’ve bought and remembers your plan on your device. We never see your payment details. You can manage or cancel a subscription in your Apple Account settings; deleting the app doesn’t cancel it.
Tracking, diagnostics, and this website
Stellata has no ads, analytics, or tracking, and we don’t sell or share your information. Like most apps, it writes technical messages to your device’s system log, which can include the addresses and titles of links you save; they stay on your device unless you choose to share diagnostics, for example with Apple. If you allow sharing with app developers in iOS Settings, Apple may share crash reports and usage statistics with us in a form that doesn’t identify you.
This website uses no cookies, analytics, or trackers, and stores nothing in your browser; the language you pick is part of the page address. It is hosted on GitHub Pages, and GitHub receives visitors’ IP addresses and browser details to deliver the site and keep it secure.
Keeping and deleting your data
Your library stays on your device until you delete it or delete the app. Delete links one at a time, or use Settings → Delete All Links to remove every link and project; with iCloud Sync on, deletions reach your other devices once they’re online. Turning sync off or deleting the app doesn’t remove what’s already in iCloud; to erase it, use Delete All Links while sync is on, or manage Stellata’s storage in your iCloud settings. Your library also stays in your device backups until those are replaced.
Some copies live elsewhere: backup files and link lists you export, cards you keep (remove them from Kept Cards), shared projects, the galaxy you share and anything friends keep from it, pages copied to Notion, your conversation in Settings → Feedback (Delete Conversation there removes it), and anything other people keep from the Table. Delete exported files wherever you saved them; other people control their own copies. You can turn off the Table, iCloud Sync, and tagging (Settings → Intelligence) at any time, and remove local network access in the iOS Settings app.
Your rights and contacting us
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, or take a copy of your personal data, or to object to certain uses of it. Because your library lives on your devices and in your own iCloud, we don’t hold a copy of it; the app’s editing, deleting, and backup tools let you do these things yourself. To ask us anything, including about a message you sent, write to us from Settings → Feedback, where our answer comes back. We use what you send only to answer it, and keep it until you delete the conversation or it has gone a year without a message, unless the law requires longer.
Changes to this policy
If the way Stellata handles information changes, we’ll update this page and the date at the top. Important changes will also be mentioned in the app when it makes sense.