Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

FileMind is a desktop application for organizing research PDFs. References to "we", "us", or "FileMind" in this policy refer to the FileMind software and its developers.

2. What the desktop app sends

Your documents never leave your machine. FileMind indexes, renames, searches and answers questions locally. Your PDFs, their contents, your filenames and folder structure, your extracted metadata and your search queries are stored in a SQLite database on your own disk. We operate no server that receives any of it, and we have no way to read it.

The app does make a small number of outbound network requests. This is the complete list:

• Bibliographic lookups. To confirm a paper's title, authors and year, FileMind queries the public Crossref (api.crossref.org), arXiv (export.arxiv.org) and DOI resolver (doi.org) APIs. These requests carry only the DOI, arXiv identifier or extracted paper title — never your file paths, folder names, or anything identifying you or your machine.
• Language models. By default FileMind runs a model locally — the built-in model, Ollama, or LM Studio — and in that configuration no document text is transmitted anywhere at all. If you choose to configure a cloud provider yourself, the excerpts needed to answer each request are sent to that provider (OpenAI at api.openai.com, or Anthropic at api.anthropic.com) under its own privacy policy. This never happens unless you set it up.
• Downloading the built-in model. If you choose the one-click local setup, the guided wizard downloads the model file from Hugging Face (huggingface.co). This is an ordinary file download and carries nothing about your library.
• Update checks. The app checks GitHub Releases for a newer version and downloads one automatically when it is available. GitHub receives your IP address and standard request metadata for those checks, as it would for any file download.
• Feedback you choose to send. The in-app feedback form transmits only what you type — your message, the category you picked, and your name and email if you fill them in — together with the app version and your operating-system platform, so that a report can be matched to the build it came from. Nothing is sent unless you press submit. See section 5.
• Licence activation. If you buy FileMind and enter a licence key, the app contacts LemonSqueezy (api.lemonsqueezy.com) to activate it and periodically re-validate it. That request contains your licence key and a random identifier generated on first run, which exists only to count how many machines a licence is active on. That identifier is a randomly generated number stored in a file on your disk — not a hardware fingerprint — and it reveals nothing about your computer. The free trial and the beta make no such call.

There is no telemetry. The desktop app contains no analytics, usage tracking, behavioural logging or crash reporting of any kind — during the beta included. We cannot see how many documents you have, what you searched for, whether you accepted a rename, or whether you opened the app at all.

3. What this website collects

This website (filemind.app) uses Plausible Analytics, a privacy-focused analytics tool. Plausible collects:

• Page views (which URL was visited)
• Referrer (where you came from)
• Country-level location (derived from IP, not stored)
• Browser and OS type
• Clicks on the download button, recorded as an anonymous count alongside the operating system chosen

Plausible does not use cookies, does not track individuals across sites, and does not collect IP addresses or personal identifiers. Data is aggregated and anonymous. See plausible.io/privacy for details.

4. The waitlist

If you enter your email address in the signup form on our homepage, we use it for exactly one purpose: to tell you when FileMind is available to you — a beta invitation, or news that it has launched — and to ask how you got on if you try it. We send nothing else to that address.

The form is handled by Formspree, which stores the submission and forwards it to our inbox. Your email address is the only field it collects.

We do not sell, rent, or share waitlist addresses with anyone. They are not used for advertising, not passed to a third-party marketing platform, and not combined with any other source of data. Email privacy@filemind.app at any time to be removed and we will delete your address; every message we send also tells you how to opt out.

5. Contact and feedback forms

The contact form and feedback form on this website, and the feedback form inside the desktop app, are all handled by Formspree. When you submit one, your message — along with your name and email address, if you chose to provide them — is sent to Formspree and then emailed to us. Submissions from inside the app additionally carry the app version and your operating-system platform, so we can tell which build a report came from.

We use these only to reply to you and to fix what you tell us about. Submitting a contact or feedback form does not add you to the waitlist or to any mailing list. See Formspree's privacy policy for details.

6. Downloads and updates

The Download button on this website links directly to GitHub Releases — there is no download server of ours in between. When you download the installer, GitHub receives your IP address and standard request metadata, the same as any direct file download. The installed app checks that same GitHub release feed for updates, so those requests reach GitHub too. See GitHub's privacy statement for details.

7. Payments

Purchases are handled by LemonSqueezy. When you buy FileMind, your payment details are processed by LemonSqueezy — we do not receive or store your card number. LemonSqueezy may collect personal information as part of the checkout process; see their privacy policy.

We receive your email address from LemonSqueezy to deliver your license key and receipt. We retain this for license support purposes.

8. Your rights

Because the desktop app stores data locally on your machine, you have full control over it. You can delete the app and its data directory at any time. If you would like us to delete your email address from our records, contact us at privacy@filemind.app.

9. Changes to this policy

If we make material changes, we will update the "last updated" date above and post a note in the changelog. Continued use of FileMind after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

10. Contact

Questions about this privacy policy? Email privacy@filemind.app or use the contact form.