Privacy

Pensile keeps your captures, recordings, notes and pinned-file references on your Mac, and your screenshots, pictures, files and notes on your iPhone or iPad. If you turn on iCloud sync, your screenshots and notes, the screen recordings you choose to sync, and the pictures you add on iPhone or iPad, also go to your own private iCloud storage. It has no analytics or tracking, and sends nothing to the developer.

What Pensile keeps, and where

• Screenshots and screen recordings are PNG and movie files in Pensile's own folder, or in the folder you choose. Remove Pin leaves the file in place. Move File to Trash explicitly moves an app-owned capture, recording or note to the Trash. If you choose a folder synced by another service, that service controls its syncing.
• Sticky notes are plain text files in the same folder.
• Files you put on the line stay in their original location. Pensile keeps a security-scoped bookmark so it can find them after a restart. Adding a reference does not copy, move or upload the original file.
• Settings, the order of the clips and their sizes are kept in the app's own settings on your Mac.
• iCloud sync, off until you turn it on in Settings, puts the screenshots and notes Pensile keeps itself, and its screen recordings if you choose, with their order, sizes and locks, in your private iCloud database, so that your other Macs, iPhones and iPads signed in to the same Apple Account have them too. Apple stores this data under its iCloud terms; the developer cannot read it. Files put on the line from elsewhere stay on this Mac. Turning sync off stops it; the data stays in iCloud until you delete it in System Settings › Apple Account › iCloud on a Mac, or Settings › Apple Account › iCloud on iPhone and iPad.
• On iPhone and iPad, Pensile keeps your screenshots, pictures, files and notes in its own storage on the device. Things you share to Pensile from other apps, or add from Shortcuts, go straight into it. The writing in your pictures is read on the device, for search, and stays there. The Home Screen widget shows your newest items from the same storage. With iCloud sync on, screenshots, pictures and notes go to the same private iCloud database as on your Mac, and screen recordings from your Mac come too if you turn them on; other files stay on the device.

What Pensile does not do

• Apple’s StoreKit handles trial and purchase transactions. Pensile uses product identifiers, transaction dates and entitlement status on your device to determine access. Your captures, pictures, notes and files are never sent to the developer; with iCloud sync on, what it syncs goes only to your own iCloud.
• It has no Pensile account, analytics, advertising or tracking.
• When you choose to copy, export or drag content into another app, that app receives the content you send. Its own privacy policy applies. Pensile does not send your content automatically.

Screen Recording

macOS asks for Screen Recording permission before Pensile can take a screenshot or record the screen. Pensile uses it for the captures and recordings you request. A recording takes in your microphone only if you turn it on in Settings › Recording, after macOS asks you, and only while it runs. Exclude Pensile from screenshots removes its windows from its own captures; other recording apps may still show them. Use Hide Pins before sharing private content.

Questions

thekamdude@gmail.com: every message is read.

Last updated 6 November 2026.