Feather Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 8, 2026

Summary

Feather is local-first on every platform. Your documents, the content you clip, and anything AI tools read or write through the Local API stay on your device. Ventana Tools LLC (“Ventana”, “we”, “us”) does not receive, transmit, or store your document content.

This policy covers privacy specific to Feather for Windows, Feather for Android, Feather for iOS, the Feather Web Clipper browser extension, the Local API (MCP) named pipe, and the browser extension localhost server. For billing, account, website analytics, and general company practices, see the Ventana Tools privacy policy.

What this policy covers

• Feather, the native Windows Markdown editor
• Feather for Android, the Markdown editor for Android phones, tablets, and foldables
• Feather for iOS, the Markdown editor for iPhone and iPad
• Feather Web Clipper (the browser extension for Chrome, Edge, and Firefox)
• The Local API, Feather's Model Context Protocol (MCP) server over named pipe
• The Browser extension server, Feather's localhost HTTP server on 127.0.0.1:19222

License keys, payments, and website analytics are covered by our general Ventana Tools privacy policy. Desktop purchases are handled by Lemon Squeezy (our payment processor and merchant of record); in-app purchases are handled by Google Play on Android and by Apple on iOS; website analytics come from Fathom Analytics (privacy-focused, no cookies, no personal data). Lemon Squeezy's privacy practices are documented at lemonsqueezy.com/privacy.

Feather (the desktop app)

Feather is a native Windows Markdown editor. Your documents are stored as plain .md files in the locations you choose on your own file system. Feather does not upload, back up, or sync your files to any Ventana server. Ventana never sees the content of your documents.

Feather makes network requests for these specific purposes:

• Update checks: Feather periodically checks updates.ventana.tools for a new version manifest. No document content or personal information is sent, only a generic HTTP request for a public JSON file.
• License activation: When you enter a license key, Feather sends the key to Lemon Squeezy's activation API to verify it. See the Ventana Tools privacy policy for details.
• Anonymous install ping: On launch, Feather sends one anonymous ping to updates.ventana.tools containing a random install identifier, the app version, release channel, CPU architecture, a coarse OS label (“Windows 10” or “Windows 11”), the current license state, and — only when licensed — a one-way hash of your license key, never the key itself. It carries no personal information, no IP address, and nothing about your documents. The aggregate totals are published openly at insights.ventana.tools; the full field list is in Anonymous Install Analytics.

Feather sends no crash reports and no usage or behavioral diagnostics. It does not track how you use the app — no feature usage, clicks, keystrokes, or screens viewed — and it never transmits your document content to Ventana or any third party.

Feather for Android

Feather for Android works the same way as the desktop app: your documents are plain Markdown files, they live where you put them, and Ventana never receives them. Documents go in the folder you choose through Android's document picker, or in Feather's own private storage until you choose one. Drafts, scratchpads, and the recovery journal that protects unsaved text stay in Feather's private storage on the device. Nothing is uploaded to Ventana, and there is no Feather account to sign in to.

When Feather for Android uses the network

• Buying Feather. The in-app purchase runs through Google Play Billing. Google processes the payment and tells Feather whether the Google account on the device owns the purchase. Ventana never sees your payment details. Google's handling is covered by Google's privacy policy.
• Verifying a Feather for Windows purchase. If you already bought Feather for Windows, you can unlock the Android app by entering the email address you bought it with. Feather sends that address, the platform name, and a per-install identifier to our license service at ventana.tools, which emails a six-digit code to the address if it matches a purchase. Entering the code returns a signed unlock stored on your device. Every step after the first carries no email address.
• Confirming the request comes from a real copy of Feather. With a code request, Feather asks Google's Play Integrity API for a token and sends it along. It decides one thing: which rate limit the request falls under, so automated traffic cannot use up the capacity real customers need. It never blocks anyone and tells us nothing about you.
• Images in the preview. If a document references an image by URL, the preview loads it from that address, which tells the server hosting it your IP address. You can turn remote images off in Settings, and e-reader mode turns them off for you.

That is the whole list. Feather for Android sends no analytics, no crash reports, and no usage telemetry, and it does not send the anonymous install ping the desktop app sends. It contains no advertising identifier and no tracking SDK, and its preview loads nothing from outside the app except images your own documents reference.

What the verification service stores

The service is built so that it cannot tell you apart from anyone else:

• A code request stores a short-lived record holding a one-way hash of your email address, never the address itself. The record expires after ten minutes.
• The answer is identical whether or not the address bought anything, and takes the same time either way. Nobody, including us, can use it to test whether an address belongs to a customer.
• A completed unlock is stored as an opaque reference alongside the identifier of the purchase behind it, so that a refund can remove it. Your email address is not stored with the unlock.
• The per-install identifier is 32 random bytes generated on your device and sent only as a hash. It is not derived from your hardware, your Google account, or anything about you, and clearing app data replaces it.
• Codes are single-use, expire after ten minutes, and allow five attempts.

Google Play services

Feather includes two Google libraries, Google Play Billing and Play Integrity. Google's libraries send diagnostic information about themselves to Google independently of Feather, which is covered by Google's privacy policy rather than this one. They are the only third-party SDKs in the app.

Device backup

When Android's backup or device transfer is switched on, your Feather documents, your settings, and the date your trial started are included, so a reinstall or a new phone picks up where you left off. Left out on purpose: the per-install identifier and the stored unlock, which belong to one installation and are replaced by restoring your purchase or verifying again, and — from cloud backup only — the recovery journal, because it holds the text of every open document and can be large enough to spoil the whole backup. A direct device-to-device transfer does carry the journal, so unsaved text moves with it. Backups are held by Google under your Google account, not by Ventana, and Android only backs Feather up to the cloud when client-side encryption is available.

Permissions

Feather asks for no location, contacts, camera, microphone, or broad storage-management permission. It reaches your files through Android's document picker, so it can only see the folders and files you pick.

The clipboard

The unlock screen's Paste code button reads the clipboard when you tap it and at no other time. Feather never watches the clipboard in the background.

Feather for iOS

Feather for iPhone and iPad is local-first in the same way, with one difference worth understanding: iCloud. Ventana runs no sync service and never receives your documents, but Apple's does, on your behalf.

Your documents and iCloud

Documents and scratchpads live in Feather's own iCloud container, so they follow you between your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. That container belongs to your Apple Account: the files sit in your iCloud storage under Apple's privacy policy, and Ventana cannot see them, list them, or recover them for you. Feather's settings stay on each device; they are not synced through iCloud.

You can switch it off. Turning iCloud off in Feather's settings keeps everything on the device you are using, and iOS's own Settings can turn iCloud Drive off for Feather entirely.

When Feather for iOS uses the network

• Buying Feather, and starting the trial. Both run through the App Store. The unlock is a one-time purchase, and the trial is a free item Apple asks pay-once apps to offer, which is how your 14 days are counted against your Apple Account rather than against your device's clock. Apple processes everything and tells Feather only whether your account holds each item. Ventana never sees your payment details. Apple's handling is covered by Apple's privacy policy.
• Verifying a Feather for Windows purchase. Exactly as on Android: the email address you type, the platform name, and a per-install identifier sent as a one-way hash, in exchange for a six-digit code and then a signed unlock stored on your device. Every step after the first carries no email address.
• Images in the preview. If a document references an image by URL, the preview loads it from that address, which tells the server hosting it your IP address.

Unlike the Android app, Feather for iOS sends no attestation token with a code request: there is no iOS counterpart to the Play Integrity check today, so nothing is reported about your device to anyone during verification.

That is the whole list. Feather for iOS contains no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising identifier, and no third-party SDK of any kind, and it does not send the anonymous install ping the desktop app sends. Its Paste code button reads the clipboard only when you tap it.

Device backup

If you use iCloud Backup or back your device up to a computer, Feather's local files are included in that backup, which is held by Apple or by you rather than by Ventana. Documents already in iCloud are part of your iCloud storage instead.

Local API (MCP) named pipe

Feather includes a local Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that AI tools on your computer can connect to through a Windows named pipe (feather-mcp-pipe). This lets tools like Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code Copilot, Windsurf, and others read and edit your open files and workspace documents.

• The MCP server is opt-in. It is off by default and only starts when you enable it in Settings > Local integrations > Local API.
• The named pipe is only accessible to processes running as your Windows user account on your local machine. It is not exposed to any network interface.
• Ventana never receives any data from the MCP server. The content AI tools read and write goes directly between Feather and the AI tool on your machine.
• Important: Any AI tool you connect may have its own privacy policy covering the content it reads from Feather. For example, if you use Claude Desktop, the content Claude reads is subject to Anthropic's privacy policy. We recommend reviewing the privacy policy of any AI tool before connecting it to Feather.
• Ventana does not operate any AI service. Feather only provides the local plumbing that lets AI clients of your choice talk to your documents.

Browser extension server (localhost HTTP)

Feather includes a small HTTP server bound to 127.0.0.1:19222 that the Feather Web Clipper browser extension uses to send clipped content to Feather.

• The server is opt-in. It is off by default and only starts when you enable it in Settings > Local integrations > Browser extension.
• The server binds to 127.0.0.1 only. It is not reachable from your network, from other computers, or from the internet.
• The server validates the Origin header on every request. Only requests from chrome-extension:// and moz-extension:// origins are accepted. Browsers enforce this header, so arbitrary web pages cannot connect.
• A Host header check is also performed to mitigate DNS rebinding attacks.
• Content sent over this server stays on your machine. Ventana does not receive any data transmitted through it.

Feather Web Clipper (browser extension)

The Feather Web Clipper is a companion browser extension for Chrome, Edge (Chromium-based browsers generally, including Brave, Arc, Vivaldi, and Opera), and Firefox. It has three user-initiated actions:

• Send page to Feather (Ctrl+Shift+F): Extracts the article content of the current page and sends it as Markdown to Feather.
• Save link to Feather inbox (Ctrl+Shift+L): Appends the page title, URL, and timestamp to a running Markdown file in Feather.
• Send selection to Feather scratchpad (Ctrl+Shift+Y): Sends highlighted text to a floating scratchpad in Feather.

What the extension does NOT collect

• Personally identifiable information (name, email, address, phone number)
• Authentication credentials or passwords
• Financial or payment information
• Health information
• Personal communications
• Location data
• Browsing history
• Web activity (clicks, scrolls, keystrokes, form input)
• Device identifiers or fingerprinting data

What the extension processes

When you explicitly trigger a capture action, the extension reads the content of the current page (or your selected text), converts it to Markdown in memory, and sends it over HTTP to the Feather desktop application on http://127.0.0.1:19222/rpc. The data never leaves your computer. Ventana does not receive it.

Extension preferences

The extension uses the browser's built-in storage.sync API to save your own preferences (inbox file path, whether to include YAML frontmatter, template rules, etc.). These are stored and synced by your browser; Ventana does not have access. No browsing history, page content, or personal data is stored in extension preferences.

Network activity

The extension makes network requests only in these cases:

• Localhost: Every capture action sends an HTTP request to http://127.0.0.1:19222/rpc (Feather running on your machine).
• GitHub raw content: When you capture a page on github.com that points to a file, the extension fetches the raw Markdown source from raw.githubusercontent.com to produce a higher-quality capture. No account data, cookies, or identifying information is sent.

The extension does not make analytics, telemetry, update-check, or any other background network requests.

Permissions

The extension does not request broad host permissions like <all_urls>.

Content sanitization

Before clipped HTML is converted to Markdown, it passes through DOMPurify to remove scripts, event handlers, and unsafe markup. This protects you from malicious web pages that might try to inject harmful content into your Feather workspace.

Third parties

For Feather, the Feather Web Clipper, the Local API, and the browser extension server, Ventana does not share or sell any data to third parties. The relevant external parties are:

• Your local Feather desktop application: Not a third party, but worth naming. All communication stays on your machine.
• raw.githubusercontent.com: Only when clipping GitHub file pages, and only public content. No identifying information is sent.
• AI tools you connect via MCP: When you connect Claude Desktop, Cursor, or similar tools to the Local API, those tools may read content from Feather and handle it according to their own privacy policies. Ventana does not control or receive data from those tools.
• Google: On Android only, for the in-app purchase (Google Play Billing), the integrity check described above (Play Integrity), and device backup if you have it switched on. Google is the seller for in-app purchases and holds your backup under your own Google account.
• Apple: On iOS only, for the purchase and the trial item (the App Store), and for iCloud, which stores your documents and settings under your own Apple Account. Apple is the seller for in-app purchases. Ventana has no access to your iCloud container.
• Cloudflare: Hosts ventana.tools and the license verification service, and delivers the verification email. It processes requests on our behalf and stores nothing beyond what the service stores.
• Lemon Squeezy: Only when verifying a Feather for Windows purchase, to check that the address you entered has one, and afterwards to notice a refund. The service asks about the purchase, never about you.

For billing and account-level data sharing (Lemon Squeezy, Fathom Analytics on the website), see the Ventana Tools privacy policy.

Open source

The full source code of the Feather Web Clipper is publicly available at bitbucket.org/ventanatools/feather-extension. You can audit exactly what the extension does and how it handles data.

Children's privacy

Feather and the Feather Web Clipper do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, including children under 13. The anonymous install ping contains no personal information and cannot identify a person of any age, and the mobile apps collect no personal information at all unless someone chooses to verify a Feather for Windows purchase by entering its email address. Because we do not collect user content, there is no child-specific handling required.

Changes to this policy

If we change how Feather or the Feather Web Clipper handles data, we will update this page and note the new effective date at the top. Material changes will also be described in Feather's release notes or the extension's store listing update notes.

Contact

Questions about this privacy policy or how Feather handles data can be sent to us via our support page.

Related policies

• Ventana Tools general privacy policy covers the website, licensing, billing, and company-wide practices.
• Feather End-User License Agreement
• Feather Terms of Use