WorkMD

WorkMD — Privacy

Last updated 2026-08-26

WorkMD is a local-first Markdown editor. Your files, your folders, and your settings live on your Mac. The app itself has no account, no analytics, and no tracking of any kind. (This marketing website uses privacy-respecting analytics — see This website below.)

What stays on your Mac

Everything: the .md files you open and edit are read and written directly on disk, exactly where they already are — WorkMD never copies them anywhere. Your preferences and any custom themes you add are stored locally in the app's own settings and Themes folder. None of it is sent anywhere.

What leaves your Mac

Almost nothing. WorkMD makes only two kinds of outbound request, both to designbymiz.com, and neither sends any personal data:

• Theme catalog update check — the app occasionally fetches a small public JSON catalog of themes so new bundled themes can appear without a full app update. This is an anonymous download of a file; nothing about you or your documents is sent.
• App update check (direct-download version only) — the direct build uses Sparkle to check a public appcast for a newer version. It requests a public file and downloads the update if you choose to install it; no personal data is sent.

Both checks are simple requests for public files. They carry no account, no identifier you provided, and nothing from inside your documents. The theme catalog and the app updater are completely separate systems — neither knows about the other.

Purchasing

When you buy WorkMD directly from this site, the checkout is handled by Paddle.com Market Ltd (“Paddle”), our Merchant of Record. Paddle collects the information needed to complete the sale — your email address, payment details, and billing country — to process payment, calculate any applicable tax, prevent fraud, and send your receipt. Your card details go to Paddle, not to us; Design by Miz never sees or stores your payment information. Paddle's handling of your data is governed by the Paddle Buyer Privacy Notice.

To deliver your license, Design by Miz receives from Paddle only your email address and the transaction id. We use these to generate your license key and email it to you. The license key itself contains your email address (as your proof of ownership) and the transaction id; it is stored on your Mac and is not transmitted back to us — the app verifies it entirely offline. We keep the email and transaction id as our record of your purchase for support, refunds, and accounting.

A Mac App Store version is also planned; Apple will handle its transactions and updates, and its App Store privacy label will be Data Not Collected.

See also our Refund Policy and Terms of Service.

How we use it

PIPEDA works on knowledge and consent: we collect and use personal information with your consent, for purposes a reasonable person would consider appropriate — fulfilling your order and delivering your license key (purchase data), answering you when you write to us (contact details), and understanding aggregate site usage (analytics). Where other privacy laws such as the EU and UK GDPR ask us to name a legal basis: purchase data is processed because it’s necessary to complete your order (contract); website analytics runs on consent; we answer email on our legitimate interest in responding; and we keep order records because tax law requires it (legal obligation). We do not sell personal information.

How long we keep it

Only as long as needed. Order records (email and transaction id) are kept for as long as Canadian tax and accounting law requires; support emails are kept while the conversation might still matter, then deleted; website analytics ages out on Google Analytics’ retention schedule. When data is no longer needed, it is deleted or anonymised.

Security

The data footprint is small by design: the app is local-first with no accounts, and card details go straight to Paddle — they never touch our systems. What we do hold (order emails and transaction ids) is protected with technical and organisational measures: everything travels over HTTPS, and access to our email and provider dashboards is limited to the business owner. Some of the providers we rely on — including Paddle and Google — process data on servers outside Canada, such as in the United States, where it is subject to the laws of that country.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, or delete your personal information, or to object to certain processing. Under PIPEDA you can ask us for access to the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, and withdraw your consent — subject to legal or contractual restrictions and reasonable notice. To exercise any of these, email hello@designbymiz.com. If you’re not satisfied with how we’ve handled your request, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

This website

This marketing site (workmd.app) uses Google Analytics to understand aggregate, anonymous traffic — page views, referrers, and the like — so we know what's useful. Google Analytics 4 does not store IP addresses, and we send it no personal information. This is the website only: the WorkMD app has no analytics whatsoever. See the Google privacy policy.

This site is hosted and served by GitHub Pages; like any web host, GitHub receives standard request data (such as IP addresses) needed to serve pages. So the providers that touch data for this site are Paddle (our Merchant of Record), Google Analytics, and GitHub Pages.