Catchlight, private notes app for iPhone
No accounts, encrypted. Private by design, not by policy.
In early 2025, Apple pulled Advanced Data Protection for UK users. That was the moment it stopped feeling sensible to trust big tech with anything personal. If a government wants access they'll find a way, and here they just banned the one setting that kept your data end-to-end encrypted. Open season.
So I went looking for a private notes app I'd actually enjoy using. Everything I found was too complex, too limited, or too unpleasant to open every day. The problem was never only privacy. It was finding something as easy as what I was leaving behind.
I built Catchlight for that.
It's a notes, tasks and reminders app for iPhone with one twist: there's one kind of item, a Take. Start writing and it's a note. Tick a box and it's a task. Add a date and it's a reminder. All three if it needs to be. You shape it, the app never makes you decide up front. And you can catch a thought before you even unlock, from the Lock Screen, a widget, the Action button, Control Centre or Siri. It's saved and encrypted, waiting for you when you come back.
Here's how the privacy actually works, and because it's open source you can check all of it:
Your key is created on your device and never leaves it. I don't generate it, hold it, or see it. Not because I promise not to, because it's built so I can't. Zero-knowledge, by design, not by policy.
Every Take is encrypted with its own AES-256-GCM key (per Take, not one key for everything), so cracking a single Take doesn't hand over the rest.
Your data is encrypted on your phone and only ever leaves as an encrypted file, to a cloud folder you choose, if you choose.
No account. No email. The app never asks who you are. No analytics, no crash telemetry, no third-party trackers, no ads. I hold nothing about you, so I couldn't sell your data even if I wanted to.
No lock-in, either. Export your Takes as markdown anytime, all of them or just one. It's your data to walk away with, readable or encrypted, and you can still read and export it even if you decide to stop paying. Your data, your call.
That's the whole thing, privacy you actually control, in something calm enough to use all day and fast enough to capture a thought, even when you've got too much going on to waste time opening the app.
It's pre-launch, iPhone only for now. If it sounds like your kind of thing, the waitlist is at catchlight.app, and early signups get a 30-day free trial.
One question for the room, since everyone here has left an app they outgrew, so privacy aside, what's actually kept you on Apple Notes (or whatever you use now)? I want to make sure I'm solving the real reason people don't switch.
I’m building Catchlight because I got tired of the apps I used every day. They looked fine and were okay to use, but they always felt like something was missing, the things I actually wanted.
I tried many solutions, but too many seemed to be made by developers, that’s not a slight at all, but the apps were function over form, or just too feature-rich to actually be used well. If you’ve tried a few, I suspect you’ll have had a similar experience.
The final straw was when the privacy protection a lot of us relied on quietly disappeared, thanks to regulation. I’d been looking for somewhere else to keep my notes and reminders, but, as I said, nothing quite worked for me.
Everything private enough was a chore to use. Everything pleasant to use wanted an account, a monthly subscription, and a copy of my data. That never felt like a fair trade. I’ve always tended towards privacy, not because I’ve something to hide, of course, but because I’ve grown to hate that my life and my data have become assets for ‘big tech’ (well, and ‘little tech’) to buy and sell like I’m a commodity.
So when I finally decided to resolve the issue for myself, the brief was simple, even if the build wasn’t, create something genuinely private, genuinely elegant and genuinely nice to use, in fact, it has to be almost invisible too.
If it takes more than a second or two to save a thought, I’ll stop using it, so capture had to be instant. My data had to remain mine, and only mine. I usually test for whether an app is worth trusting with this simple question, will it still work if the company behind it vanished tomorrow? The answer for most apps is, no. Catchlight will, I made sure of it.
Your Takes, my name for captured thoughts (notes, tasks and reminders feel too ordinary), are kept on your device, encrypted with a key only you hold, on your phone, wherever you take it. No servers to connect to, no account to create, just your thoughts, on your device, safeguarded by your key.
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What stood out to me is that you're treating privacy as a product property rather than a policy.
The harder challenge isn't convincing people their data is safe. It's making them feel they never had to trust you with it in the first place. That's a very different promise.
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Exactly, that's why I've built the app how I have, no servers, no accounts, no email, nothing. Just you with your encrypted notes, tasks and reminders. Always only on a device or a cloud folder you own. No complicated sync, pure simplicity and security.
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Interesting.
Reading your reply made me think less about privacy itself and more about what the product quietly commits itself to once it removes the need for users to trust the company behind it.
I don't think I can explain that line of reasoning properly in a thread without oversimplifying it.
If you're interested, what's the best email to reach you on?
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3 Comments
The "one kind of item" idea stuck with me more than the encryption details. Notes turning into tasks or reminders without making you choose first feels like the part people will remember after using it for a week.
I can picture someone hearing about Catchlight from a friend then quietly looking it up because they're tired of wondering who can read their notes. At that point they're probably hoping to see that the privacy claims come from how it's built and not just a promise on a landing page.
I'm curious if you've noticed early conversations focusing on the flexible note model first or the privacy side first because that first mental hook tends to shape everything that follows.
There's been a mixed bag really, some privacy, others the "single item" concept, but also the simplicity/speed of capture seems to resonate.
That mixed feedback is actually great positioning fuel. Since you are in the pre-launch phase, instead of just waiting for slow organic growth, this is the perfect time to launch a strategic PR and media placement campaign.
Getting Catchlight featured in top-tier tech publications and market media wouldn't just bring initial users it builds instant authority. High-quality media placements naturally generate powerful backlinks that fast-track your Google ranking, create strong brand credibility, and position the product perfectly for future investor interest or AI/LLM recommendations down the line. When top-tier tech sites talk about your "single-item" workflow and zero-knowledge architecture, it sets the industry standard.
I've helped products structure media outreach and PR campaigns to build this kind of early market authority. If you want some insights or have questions on how to get Catchlight in front of the right journalists and tech media, feel free to drop me a line at mumar @ growwithmumar . online. Let's chat!