Privacy

Your decks stay yours.

Feather is local-first. Here is exactly what stays on your Mac, and the one thing that can leave it, only when you ask it to.

Last updated: June 22, 2026

Feather is a local-first macOS app made by Athledev Labs. Your decks, your review history, and your scheduling all live on your Mac. There is no Feather account, no Feather server, and no analytics or telemetry in the app.

What stays on your Mac

  • Your decks, cards, notes, media, and review history.
  • Your scheduling state (the FSRS data the app computes as you study).
  • On-device AI. Apple's built-in models and any local open models you load run entirely on your Mac. The content they work on never leaves the device.
  • Imported Anki decks. The .apkg import is read-only, so your original Anki collection is never modified.

What we never collect

  • Deck or card content, titles, or study metadata.
  • Usage analytics or behavioral tracking.
  • Crash reports sent to us (we do not run crash-reporting infrastructure).

Cloud AI (optional, off by default)

Feather can use a cloud model, but only if you turn it on and connect your own API key for an OpenAI-compatible provider of your choice. This is off until you set it up.

When cloud AI is on and you use it, the specific content you act on at that moment is sent over HTTPS directly from your Mac to the provider you chose, under your own key. That is the text you select to ask about, a file or image you drop to generate cards from, or the cards involved in a collection-wide request. Nothing else is sent, and it is sent to your provider, not to Feather. We never see it, route it, or store it.

Because you are using your own account with a third party, that provider's terms and privacy policy govern how they handle what you send, including whether they retain it or use it to improve their own models. Feather cannot make promises on their behalf, so choose a provider whose policy you are comfortable with, or stay fully on-device. Your API key is stored locally in your Mac's Keychain and is never sent anywhere except to that provider when you make a request.

App updates

Feather is distributed as a signed, notarized download. When you check for or install an update, the app fetches a small public manifest and the signed build you choose to install. This carries no personal information.

This website

This is a static marketing site. It uses no analytics, loads its font from its own server, and makes no third-party requests. The host (for example Cloudflare Pages) may log standard request metadata as part of normal delivery.

Your data rights

Your decks never reach our servers, so there is nothing on our end to export, correct, or delete. You hold the only copy, on your Mac, and you can back it up or remove it yourself at any time. This holds wherever you live, including the EU and UK under the GDPR and California under the CCPA. If you ever contact us for support, email us to access or delete anything tied to that conversation.

Children

Feather is not directed to children under 13 (or under 16 in the EU), and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, children included.

Contact

Questions about privacy: hello@athledev.com