Privacy

Last updated 17 August 2026

CutNotes collects nothing. There is no account, no sign-in, no analytics, no advertising, no tracking, and no third-party SDK of any kind.

This is not a promise about how data is handled once collected — it is a statement about what the app is able to do. CutNotes contains no networking code. It has no HTTP client and no server to talk to, so there is no mechanism by which your notes could reach the developer or anyone else. The only way anything leaves your phone is when you deliberately share a file yourself, using iOS's own share sheet.

What is stored, and where

Everything CutNotes creates lives in the app's own folder on your device, and is included in your device backup if you back up your iPhone.

Sessions and notes

Plain JSON files. They hold the timecodes you logged, your comments, the button labels and colours, and the name you set in Settings. Visible in the Files app under CutNotes, so you can read or recover them by hand.

Voice recordings

Audio files, kept beside the session. They stay on the phone permanently and are never included when you share notes — only the transcribed text travels.

Your name

Stored on the device and stamped onto notes so several people's logs can be told apart once merged. It goes wherever you send a notes file, and nowhere else. You can change or clear it in Settings.

Settings and button sets

Preferences and your boards, as JSON on the device.

Permissions the app asks for

Microphone — only if you add a dictate button

Used to record a spoken note while you watch. Recording happens only while you are holding the button down.

Speech recognition — only if you dictate

Used to turn a spoken note into text. CutNotes requests on-device recognition only and never falls back to a server, so a recording of an unreleased cut does not leave the phone. Apple's own permission prompt is generic and mentions data being sent to Apple; that is the standard wording for the permission and not what this app does.

Camera — only if you use Read timecode with camera

Used to read the timecode displayed on your edit. Frames are analysed on the device and discarded immediately. Nothing is recorded, saved, or transmitted, and the app has no photo library access at all.

Each is requested only at the moment it is first needed, and refusing one disables that feature and nothing else.

When you share notes

Sharing is always something you start. When you do, the file is handed to iOS and goes wherever you send it — AirDrop, Mail, Messages, Files, or another app of your choosing. What happens to it after that is governed by whatever service you chose, not by CutNotes.

A shared notes file contains your notes, their timecodes, and the names attached to them. It does not contain voice recordings.

TestFlight and the App Store

While CutNotes is distributed through TestFlight, Apple collects information about installs, sessions and crashes, and makes some of it visible to the developer as aggregate figures and crash reports. That is Apple's collection, under Apple's privacy policy, and it happens for every TestFlight app. It does not include your notes, recordings, or anything else you create in the app.

Children

CutNotes is a professional tool for people working with video edits. It is not directed at children and collects nothing from anyone.

Changes

If this policy ever changes it will be dated at the top of this page. Should the app ever gain a feature that genuinely needs the network, that will be stated here plainly and before it ships — not buried in a revision.

Contact

Questions about any of this: support@cutnotes.co.uk.