Privacy Policy

Carbone for Mac. Effective 7 November 2026, ahead of the first release.

Summary

Carbone does not collect anything. Your documents, the Markdown made from them and your library stay on your Mac. There is no account, no server, and no analytics or tracking of any kind in the app. This website, which is a different thing from the app, keeps cookieless visitor statistics, described below.

What Carbone stores, and where

The library (each document's name, group and page count, and every conversion made of it) and your settings are kept in the app's own container on your Mac:

~/Library/Containers/io.mgcrea.Carbone/Data/

The files you add stay where they are. Carbone keeps a reference to each, so it can read it again, and never copies or moves it; when a file is moved or deleted, Carbone says so. The one exception is a document you capture with a camera: its pages have no file of their own until Carbone writes them, as a PDF inside the same container. Deleting the document deletes that PDF.

Carbone runs under the macOS App Sandbox. It reads the files and folders you add, and nothing else.

What leaves your Mac

Nothing. Every page is converted on your Mac: from the PDF's own text where it has one, and otherwise by Apple's Vision framework, which runs on the device. Carbone does not carry the entitlement that lets a Mac app open a connection to a server (com.apple.security.network.client), so it could not upload a page if it tried. You can confirm it:

codesign -d --entitlements - /Applications/Carbone.app

If a future version downloads models for the hardest pages, this page will say from where, and what the request carries, in the same release.

The camera

The Scan window (File › Scan with Camera…) uses a camera you choose. macOS asks your permission first. The frames are analysed in memory to find the page and decide when to take it, and only the pages you capture are kept. No video is recorded.

The MCP server

Carbone can run an MCP server, so that an AI agent on the same Mac, such as Claude Code or Codex, can search your library and read its documents. It is off until you switch it on in Settings › MCP Server. It listens on 127.0.0.1:8809 only, so no other machine can reach it, and an agent must present a token kept in your Keychain. An agent can only read until you allow writes, can add files only from the folders you allow, and exports only into those folders. Carbone itself sends nothing anywhere through it.

What an agent does with a page it has read is up to the agent, and governed by its own terms rather than this policy. Many agents send what they read to a cloud model, so connect one to Carbone only if you are comfortable with that agent seeing your documents.

What Carbone does not do

• No account, sign-in or email address
• No analytics, telemetry, crash reporting or usage statistics in the app
• No advertising and no advertising identifiers
• No third-party SDKs that collect data
• No iCloud or cross-device sync

Feedback form

The app collects nothing; this website has one page that does: the feedback form, and only when you fill it in and press send. Carbone itself never sends feedback: it opens a web address in your browser and stops.

We receive what you typed, the subject and the details, and your email address if you chose to give one. The address is optional; leave it blank and the report is anonymous.

Opening the form from the app (Help › Send Feedback) also fills in four technical facts: your Carbone version, your macOS version, your Mac's model identifier (like Mac16,10) and your language. They arrive in the web address itself, so you can read them in your browser's address bar before anything is sent, and the form shows them as ordinary fields you can change or clear. That is the entire list: never a document, a page, a file name or your Mac's name.

Submissions are stored in a Cloudflare D1 database hosted in Western Europe and emailed to support@mgcrea.io so we can reply. We keep them for twelve months, then delete them. They are never used for marketing, never sold and never shared. The form sets no cookie, and nothing that handles your submission reads or stores your IP address. To have a submission deleted sooner, email support@mgcrea.io.

Website analytics

This website uses Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits, so we know which pages are read. It is not in the app, and it never sees anything from the app.

It sets no cookie and stores nothing on your device. There is no identifier kept between page loads and no fingerprinting of your browser or IP address. Because nothing is written to or read from your device, this does not require a consent banner under the ePrivacy Directive (in France, Article 82 of the loi Informatique et Libertés), and you will not find one here. The site remembers one thing in your own browser: whether you chose the light or dark theme, if you did.

What is sent, on each page view: the page address, the address you came from, your browser and operating system, your screen size, and page load timings. Cloudflare derives an approximate country from your IP address and does not give us the address itself. We see only aggregate totals. Our lawful basis is legitimate interest: understanding how our own site is used. Cloudflare acts as our processor under its Data Processing Addendum. Any content blocker stops the script loading.

Third parties

• Apple, for the App Store purchase of Carbone Pro, through StoreKit; Carbone never sees your payment details
• Cloudflare, which hosts this website, stores feedback submissions and provides the visitor statistics described above

Children

Carbone is not directed at children and collects no personal information from anyone, including children.

Your rights

Because Carbone collects no personal data, there is nothing for us to disclose, correct, export or delete on your behalf. Your library is on your own Mac and under your control: deleting a document in the app, or the container folder above, removes it.

Changes

Any material change to this policy will be published on this page with a new effective date, alongside the app release it applies to.

Contact

Questions about this policy: carbone.mgcrea.io/support, or support@mgcrea.io.