Privacy

Last updated: 2026-04-20

Rill is an open-source personal knowledge system. Your notes live on your own disk as plain Markdown and never leave it unless you push them to your own Git remote. This page covers what happens on rill.md (the website you are reading) and, separately, inside the desktop app.

What we collect on rill.md

We use PostHog in a cookieless, memory-only mode to measure whether launch messaging is reaching the right people. For each visit we record:

  • Page path, referrer, and UTM parameters on the URL
  • Browser viewport size, language, and user-agent category (mobile / desktop)
  • Country-level geolocation (inferred by PostHog; IP is discarded after inference — we never store it)
  • Clicks on CTAs, download buttons, and outbound links (a small, fixed set of events — see below)
  • Scroll depth milestones (50% / 75% / 100%)
  • Anonymized session replays. Text input and text content are masked; we see layout and cursor paths, not what you type

What we do NOT collect

  • Your name, email, or any account identifier — we have no accounts
  • Cookies or localStorage — nothing is persisted across tabs
  • Device fingerprints
  • Any data from your Rill vault

Why we collect it

To answer questions like: which launch channel drove traffic, which sections of the page people read, which install route (desktop app vs. Claude Code prompt) they prefer. We respect Do-Not-Track and GPC — if your browser sends either signal, no events are captured.

Retention

Event and session data is retained for 365 days, then deleted. We do not export it to third-party analytics platforms.

Sub-processors

PostHog Inc. (United States) hosts the analytics backend. AWS CloudFront and Amazon S3 (United States) host the website itself. These are the only third parties that receive data from rill.md.

Your rights (GDPR / UK GDPR / CCPA)

Because we do not link visits to identities, we cannot point to your data specifically. If you want a confirmation of non-storage or have a question, open an issue on GitHub.

Desktop app

The Rill desktop app currently sends no telemetry. When telemetry is added, it will be off by default, opt-in, and documented field-by-field on the Telemetry page before shipping.