The story behind Catchlight

Catchlight wasn’t designed in a boardroom. It came from one person’s frustration, a studio with two stubborn ideas, and a name borrowed from old cinema.

The gap nobody filled.

The privacy promise millions of people had relied on quietly broke.

When Apple removed Advanced Data Protection (ADP), for UK users in early 2025, we could already see that it was no longer prudent to trust any big tech with our data. Looking for alternatives, what we found was either too complex, too limited, or too unpleasant to use every day.

The problem was never really about just privacy. It was about finding something that felt as easy as what you’d left behind.

Why leave privacy to corporations when you can be in control? Catchlight is your answer.

How it began.

You can have both form and function, you just have to be willing to try.

We decided, you can have both form and function, you just have to be willing to try.

Considus is a small independent studio with simple ideas, apps should be functional, private, and beautifully crafted, and you should always be in control of your data.

Catchlight started as a personal frustration, one person who’d lost trust in their cloud provider and its notes and reminders apps, unable to find anything worth switching to, as functionality in a beautiful form is difficult to find or deliver.

Where the name came from.

A technique invented out of love.

The name originally comes from film. A catchlight is a small, specular reflection of light in the subject’s eyes, it’s the thing that makes a portrait feel alive, as the light literally catches the eye. The lighting technique itself was invented by cinematographer Lucien Ballard for his soon-to-be wife, actress Merle Oberon, a way of drawing light to what mattered most in the frame.

The light that produces a catchlight is known as an Obie. After her.

In the Catchlight app, your most important Take is called an Obie too. The one thing in your frame that matters most to you in that moment. Pinned. Elevated. Catching the light.

The name wasn’t invented. It was found, the same way the technique was. And it felt like the right foundation to build upon.

From the maker

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.

I’m building it slowly, in the open (yes, the code can be viewed by anyone), and I’d rather it be simple, easy and yours than powerful, complicated and ours. If that’s the trade you’ve been looking for too, join the list, and I’ll tell you the day it’s ready.

I feel I should mention price. No, Catchlight isn’t free, and I’d rather be open about why. I have a small team, and the only thing funding this app is the people who use it. Our promise to never sell your data to advertisers, take on investors looking for a huge return, or sell you out, means we are left with only one honest source of revenue.

I hate monthly subscriptions, so although not a perfect solution, I’m offering Catchlight for a fair annual price. My promise to those who use it, this pricing model stays. The app will be updated, but only with features that never break my rules. Your subscription is what keeps us independent and keeps the app free of ads and tracking, so the freedom to keep improving rests entirely on the people who use it. Around £14.99 a year, a real free trial first, test and use all the features, and if you ever decide to stop paying, you keep everything you wrote in-app or simply export it.

That’s it. That’s the deal. We make something wonderful, you get the value you deserve, and we keep trying to inspire.

Mark
Founder · Considus