Privacy Policy
Last updated 7 October 2026
This policy covers the website leafbind.app, the documentation at docs.leafbind.app, and the Leafbind desktop application. It describes what actually happens, rather than reserving rights we do not exercise.
1. Who is responsible
Software Design & Consulting GmbH, Aufkirchner Straße 25 a, 82069 Hohenschäftlarn, Germany — the controller under Art. 4(7) GDPR. Full company details are in the imprint. For anything in this policy, write to hello@leafbind.app.
No data protection officer has been appointed. Under § 38 BDSG one is required only where at least twenty people are permanently engaged in the automated processing of personal data, where a data protection impact assessment under Art. 35 GDPR is required, or where personal data is processed commercially for the purpose of transfer or for market and opinion research. None of those applies here.
2. Visiting our websites
Both sites — leafbind.app and the documentation at docs.leafbind.app — are static, hosted on Amazon S3 behind the Amazon CloudFront content delivery network, and everything in this section applies to each of them. Serving a page necessarily involves your IP address, and the server records the usual access data: IP address, timestamp, the URL requested, HTTP status, referrer and user agent. That is used to deliver the site and to diagnose faults and abuse, on the basis of our legitimate interest in operating a working, secure website (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). On leafbind.app it is also used to count visits and downloads, only ever as totals (see section 4), on the basis of our legitimate interest in knowing whether the site reaches anyone. leafbind.app's access logs are deleted after 90 days. Our compute for this site runs in the AWS eu-central-1 (Frankfurt) region; CloudFront is a global network and will serve you from an edge location near you.
3. Fonts, and what we deliberately do not load
Typefaces are served from our own domain. This site embeds no Google Fonts and no other externally hosted font, so your browser makes no request to a third-party font server and your IP address is not disclosed to one.
That is the general rule here rather than a detail about fonts: loading a page on either site makes no request to any third party at all. Both forms on leafbind.app submit to leafbind.app itself; no third-party address appears in these pages at all. The documentation has no form.
The documentation's search runs in your browser, against an index downloaded from docs.leafbind.app itself. What you type into the search box is not sent anywhere.
4. Analytics
No analytics service, and no tracking. Neither site runs analytics software, tracking pixels or any third-party measurement of any kind, and nothing is stored in your browser to recognise you on a later visit.
What we do count comes from leafbind.app's own server logs (section 2), and only as totals: how many pages were viewed, by which kinds of browser, operating system and device; how many trial requests arrived; how many installers were downloaded; and how many installed copies of the application checked for updates. We work those totals out ourselves. No IP address and no individual visit appears in them, and nothing from the logs is passed to anyone else.
5. Cookies and browser storage
Neither site sets any cookies, and neither uses any tracking storage. leafbind.app stores nothing in your browser at all.
The documentation remembers two things, in your browser only: the colour theme you pick (light or dark), in local storage, and which sidebar sections you have opened, in session storage, which your browser clears when you close the tab. Neither is sent to us or to anyone else, and neither identifies you. Both only carry out a choice you made on the page, which is why they need no consent (§ 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG). There is accordingly no consent banner on either site, because there is nothing to consent to.
6. Requesting a trial licence
The trial form asks for your email address, optionally a first name, and optionally your consent to the newsletter. The address is used to generate a signed licence file and email it to you with the download link. Basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR — steps taken at your request before entering into a contract.
Your email address is not stored. What is kept is an irreversible SHA-256 hash of it, alongside a licence identifier and two dates, for 365 days — enough to ensure one person receives one trial rather than an unlimited supply, and to return you the same licence if you ask again. Your IP address is likewise kept only as a hash, for one hour, to limit automated abuse of the endpoint (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). A hash cannot be turned back into an address, and we hold no list of who has requested a trial.
Two honest consequences follow. We cannot contact you about your trial unless you write to us first, and we cannot look your record up from your address — but you may request the same licence again from the form at any time and it will be reissued identically. And an erasure request is largely moot here: there is nothing identifiable to erase, and the hash expires by itself.
The licence file we send you does contain your name and email address, because it is issued to you personally. It is generated when you ask for it and sent to you; we keep no copy.
Email is delivered through Amazon Simple Email Service in the eu-central-1
(Frankfurt) region, from the address licence@leafbind.app.
7. Newsletter
If — and only if — you tick the newsletter box, or subscribe through the "Watch it get built" form, you are sent a confirmation email and nothing further happens until you click the link in it. Basis: your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). You may withdraw it at any time using the one-click unsubscribe link in every issue, with effect for the future. Wanting to try the software is never treated as agreement to be emailed about anything else.
Until you confirm, your address stays with us and is sent to no one. We store your address and first name on our own infrastructure in Frankfurt for the sole purpose of completing that confirmation. The record is deleted the moment you confirm; if you never confirm, the link stops working after 72 hours and the record is removed within a week. It is kept in a store with no backups, so a deleted record is not recoverable from one.
The confirmation email itself is sent through Amazon SES in Frankfurt, the same service that sends trial licences. It contains no tracking pixel and no redirected links.
Once you confirm, your address and first name are passed to Brevo, the service that sends our development update, together with the date and time you confirmed — which is the record of your consent. Brevo is operated by Sendinblue SAS in France and processes data on servers in France and Germany. A data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR is in force, incorporating the European Commission's standard contractual clauses for any residual transfer. If you never confirm, your address is never sent to Brevo at all.
8. Writing to us
Mail to an @leafbind.app address is received and stored in a mailbox hosted by
IONOS in Germany. Correspondence is kept for as long as needed to deal with the
matter and to meet statutory retention duties.
9. The Leafbind application
Leafbind runs on your computer and works offline. Your manuscripts stay on your disk, as ordinary Markdown files in folders you control; they are never uploaded to us and we cannot read them. The application contains no analytics and no telemetry.
Two things do involve the network. It checks for updates against
leafbind.app, which — like any web request — discloses your IP address and the
version you are running to the server log. And it verifies your licence file,
which happens entirely on your own machine against a public key built into the application; no
licence check is sent to us. If you send us a crash log, you do so deliberately, by attaching it
yourself.
10. Buying a licence
The store is not open yet. When it opens, payment will be handled by Lemon Squeezy acting as Merchant of Record, which means they take your payment and billing details directly and we neither receive nor store your card data. This section will be completed before anything can be bought.
11. Your rights
Under the GDPR you have the right of access (Art. 15), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction (Art. 18), portability (Art. 20), and the right to object to processing based on legitimate interest (Art. 21). Where processing rests on consent, you may withdraw it at any time with effect for the future. Write to hello@leafbind.app.
You also have the right to complain to a supervisory authority. Ours is the Bayerisches Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht (BayLDA), Promenade 18, 91522 Ansbach, Germany.
12. Changes
This page is updated when what we do changes, and the date at the top says when. There is no other version kept elsewhere: this page is the statement.