Notewell Privacy Policy

Notewell · Last updated: July 6, 2026

Short version: Notewell does not collect, store, transmit, or sell any personal data. Your highlights and notes stay on your own device.

What we collect

Nothing. Notewell does not collect or transmit any personal information, browsing history, or usage analytics. The developer has no servers and receives no data from your use of the extension. Notewell makes no network requests of its own and sends nothing to the developer or any third party.

What Notewell does on web pages

To highlight text and pin notes, Notewell runs on the pages you visit so it can mark up the text you select and redraw your saved highlights when you return. It only reads and marks the page content you choose to highlight. It does not read your passwords, form fields, or browsing history, and it does not send the pages you visit anywhere. It does not run on PDF files or on the Chrome Web Store pages.

What is stored, and where

Your highlights, sticky notes, notes, tags, and settings are stored only on your own computer using Chrome's local storage (chrome.storage.local). None of it ever leaves your device. Notewell has no account and no sign-in, and nothing is synced to the cloud. You can export a JSON or Markdown backup at any time, and delete everything from the board's Data settings.

Favicons

The board shows a small site icon (favicon) next to your highlights so you can tell pages apart. To display it, your browser loads that icon from the site the highlight came from, the same way it would when you visit the page. This is the only external request involved, it happens in your own browser, and no information about you is sent to the developer.

Permissions and why they are needed

Access to websites (all sites): you can highlight and take notes on any website, so Notewell's content script has to be able to run on any page to mark up the text you select and draw your saved highlights. It reads and marks only the page content you choose to highlight.
Storage / unlimited storage: to save your highlights, notes, tags, and settings on your own device, without a size cap for heavy users.
Scripting: to make highlighting work on tabs that were already open before you installed or updated Notewell, without you having to reload them.
Context menus: to add the right-click options (Highlight, add a note, add a sticky note, open the board).
Tabs: to show the per-tab count badge, read the current page's URL so the board can pre-filter to it, and open the board in a new tab. It does not read your browsing history.

None of these permissions is used to read, collect, or send your data anywhere.

Third parties

Notewell does not share data with any third party, because it does not collect any. The optional "Donate" link opens an external page (Ko-fi) only if you click it; any payment there is handled by that service under its own privacy policy.

Children

Notewell is a general-purpose utility and does not knowingly collect information from anyone, including children.

Changes

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted on this page with a new "last updated" date.

Contact

Questions? Contact the developer at contact@mcguigansoftware.com.