Privacy

What stays on your device

Everything you write in Plotypus (stories, plot points, notes, timelines and Butterfly Effect chains) and your settings (theme, font, text size) are saved in your browser on your own device. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you turn on sync or send a suggestion.

Plotypus has no accounts, no ads, no analytics and no tracking. It doesn't read the pages you visit or the documents you write in.

If you turn on sync

Sync is off until you switch it on. When it's on, there are two ways it can work:

• With a sync code. Your stories are sent to the Plotypus sync server so your other devices with the same code can get them. They're stored with Upstash, filed under a scrambled version of your code. The code itself is never stored. Your theme and other settings stay on each device.
• Through your browser account (Chrome, Edge, Firefox and others, on computers). Your stories are copied into your browser's own synced storage, which your browser's maker carries to your other computers signed in to the same account. Plotypus's server isn't involved.

Anyone who has your sync code can see and change your stories, so keep it private.

If you send a suggestion

The light bulb button sends what you type (a title and a message) to the developer by email, through Resend. It also includes the Plotypus version and your browser's name, to help track down bugs. It never includes your stories.

Your email address is optional. If you add it, it's sent with your suggestion only so the developer can reply to you. It isn't added to any mailing list, shared, or used for anything else. Leave it empty and your suggestion arrives with no way to tell who sent it.

After you've used Plotypus for a while, the light bulb may ask how it's going. If you send a star rating (and a comment, if you add one), it reaches the developer by email and is also saved on the Plotypus server, without your name or anything else that identifies you, so the ratings can be added up. To know when to ask, Plotypus counts how long it's been open on this device. That count stays on your device and is never sent.

Your comment is only ever shown publicly if you tick "You can quote me", and even then only if the developer chooses to show it, on the What writers say page. A name appears with it only if you type one. The average rating may be shown there too, as a number with no names. To stop spam, the server keeps a scrambled (hashed) version of your connection address for one day, to allow at most 3 ratings a day; it's then deleted.

The Feature ideas list (under the suggestion form) is downloaded from the Plotypus website when you open it. That's a plain download of a public list: nothing about you is sent.

Who sees your data

Your data is never sold, shared for advertising, or used for anything other than running Plotypus. The site and sync server run on Vercel, which, like any web host, processes requests in order to deliver them. Apart from the one-day scrambled copy used to stop rating spam, Plotypus doesn't store your IP address.

Deleting your data

• On your device: delete a story from the three-dot menu, or remove the extension (or clear this site's data, for the web app). Removing it deletes everything it kept on that device.
• On the sync server: deleting a story while sync is on removes it from the server too. Stories under a code that isn't used for a year are deleted automatically.

Questions

Use the light bulb button in Plotypus to send a question to the developer. If this policy changes, the date at the top will change too.