Privacy

In short

• Your libraries, images and the text recognized in them stay on your Mac.
• Beaver goes online by itself only to check for updates, at most once a day, and you can turn that off.
• When you buy, Taobao and the payment service you choose handle the order and payment. We keep your order number and license ID.
• This website sets no cookies and runs no analytics.

1. Who we are

Beaver is made by Mindigest. You can reach us at support@mindigest.com.

2. What stays on your Mac

• Your libraries. Beaver reads and writes them where they are on your disk and does not upload them. Text recognition uses Apple Vision on your Mac; images are not sent anywhere.
• Settings and license in ~/Library/Application Support/Beaver. Your license contains a license ID, the edition, the name it was issued to and the date. Beaver checks it offline and never sends it anywhere. There is no device ID and no hardware fingerprint.
• Caches (thumbnails, the search index and recognized text) in ~/Library/Caches/Beaver. Beaver can rebuild them; recognizing text across the whole library again needs the trial or a license.
• Log files in ~/Library/Logs/Beaver: one file for each day Beaver runs, and only the 7 most recent are kept. They can contain file and library paths, the license status and the license ID. They never leave your Mac unless you attach them to an email yourself (Help ▸ Show Log Files shows where they are).
• Recent searches and some view settings in the app’s web storage in ~/Library/WebKit/com.mindigest.beaver, with its web cache in ~/Library/Caches/com.mindigest.beaver.
• Inside each library, Beaver keeps its own data in a beaver folder and backups in backup/beaver. During an import it uses a temporary folder whose name includes your Mac’s local hostname, and cleans it up afterwards. If you sync or share a library, these travel with it.
• Eagle’s settings. When no library is open, for example the first time you use Beaver, it reads, but never changes, the list of libraries in Eagle’s settings so it can offer to open them.

3. What Beaver sends over the internet

The update check

Shortly after Beaver starts, at most once a day, it downloads a small file from our update server to see whether a new version exists. The request carries no account, license or device information. As with any web request, the server sees your IP address, the time and a technical user agent. To turn it off, open Settings ▸ General and switch off “Check for updates automatically”. An update is downloaded only when you click “Install and Restart”, and Beaver checks its signature before installing it.

Links and web images you add

When you import from a web address, paste or drag in a web image, or add links, Beaver downloads from the site you named. For a link it reads the page and at most one preview image. These requests identify themselves as Beaver with its version number (except imports that another app asks for; see section 4), and the sites see your IP address. Beaver uses no third-party service to fetch previews or icons. The source address is saved with the item in your library, as Eagle does.

Links you open

“Buy License” and “Beaver Help & FAQ” open this website in your browser. “Contact Support…” opens a draft email in your mail app with your Beaver and macOS versions, the app language and the number of items; nothing is sent until you send it.

Nothing else

Beaver has no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting and no ads.

4. Connections that stay on your Mac

• Eagle check. So that it does not write to a library Eagle has open, Beaver checks whether Eagle is running and, if it is, asks Eagle on your Mac which library it has open.
• Local API. During the trial and with a license, Beaver runs an Eagle-compatible API that only listens on your Mac (127.0.0.1). It has no password: other apps on your Mac and browser extensions can read your library through it and ask Beaver to import from web addresses. When another app asks Beaver to import from a web address, Beaver sends the request with the headers that app supplies (a browser extension may pass, for example, the page address or the site’s cookies), so such a request may not identify itself as Beaver. Through the API, other apps can also see the paths of the libraries you opened recently and where Beaver is installed. To turn it off, open Settings ▸ Developer and switch off “Enable the Eagle-compatible local API”.

5. When you buy a license

You buy through our Taobao store. Taobao and the payment service you choose at checkout process your order and payment under their own privacy policies; we never see your payment details. We keep the order number and the license ID delivered for it, so that we can send a lost license again, handle refunds and revoke refunded licenses. A revoked license ID, not your name, is listed in the next release of Beaver.

6. When you write to us

We use your email address and what you send only to answer you and to sort out your license.

7. This website

This website is a set of static pages. It sets no cookies, runs no analytics or tracking, has no forms, and loads no scripts, fonts or images from other sites. It is hosted by Vercel, which processes every request (IP address, browser user agent, page address, referrer and time) to deliver and protect the site, and keeps server logs under its own privacy policy.

8. Your choices and rights

You can ask what we hold about you (usually an order number, a license ID and our emails), ask for a copy of it, ask us to correct or delete it, or ask how we use it, by writing to support@mindigest.com. If we delete your order record, we can no longer send you a lost license. Records Taobao keeps about your order must be requested from Taobao. A license ID that was revoked stays in the Beaver releases already published. You can delete Beaver’s data on your Mac at any time by removing the folders listed in section 2.

9. Changes and language

We will post changes here and update the date at the top. This statement is published in English and in Simplified Chinese; if the two differ, the Chinese version prevails.

— Mindigest