A password manager for your thoughts

Everything in Catchlight is locked with 12 words that only you ever see. It’s the most important thing in the app, and the one bit we need you to understand before you trust it with anything real.

Privacy · 2 min read

Your Privacy Phrase is 12 ordinary words. Together they make the key that encrypts every Take you write individually. Not a password you set and a server checks, an actual key, generated on your device, that never leaves it. Hold those 12 words and you can read your notes anywhere. Without them, nobody can, and that includes us.

That’s the trade, stated plainly. We don’t hold your key, we can’t read your notes, which is exactly the point. It also means we can’t reset it for you, or email your notes back if you lose it, because there’s no back door for us to reach through. The privacy and the responsibility are the same thing seen from two sides. You can’t have the first without the second, and we’d be lying if we dressed that up.

Why not just call it a seed phrase?

The term, “Seed phrase”, comes with crypto baggage and it puts the emphasis in the wrong place. A seed phrase feels like a recovery after-thought, a string of words you’re told to jot down once and forget. Your Privacy Phrase isn’t an after-thought at all, it’s the heart of how we, and the whole app, keep a promise. Same shape, 12 words, very different job, and we wanted a name that respected that.

Looking after it

Think of it the way you think about the only key to your home, because that’s what it is. Write it down somewhere safe, keep it away from prying eyes, and don’t leave the only copy in a screenshot, in the very cloud you’re trying to stay private from! That’s genuinely most of the care it needs. Twelve words on paper, kept secure, and you’re sorted.

The safety net you keep either way

There’s one promise we’ll make regardless. If you ever decide to stop paying, you’re not locked out of your own thoughts. Your Takes stay readable, and they export as plain Markdown any time you like, so your writing is always yours to walk away with. The Privacy Phrase protects you from everyone else. It was never going to be the thing that traps you.