Skip to content
Aloha
Open app

Privacy and your data

Where Aloha keeps your notes, attachments and settings (in the browser, your Obsidian vault or Notion), and how to back them up or remove them.

Aloha has no accounts and no server copy of your notes. Where your notes live depends on where they came from. This guide spells it out; the short version is on the Privacy page.

A world started in Aloha

Your notes, places and roads are kept in your browser’s storage on this device; pictures and files you attach are kept in the browser’s database (IndexedDB). Nothing is uploaded.

That has two consequences worth knowing:

  • It stays on this device. Another browser, or another phone, starts its own world.
  • Clearing the site’s data clears the world. Before you clean out your browser, carry the notes you want off the map: hold a house, choose Take along, then from the bundle share, copy as Markdown or download a .md file. See Writing and linking.

An Obsidian vault

Aloha reads and writes the vault inside your browser, using the browser’s own permission to access that one folder. Your Markdown files stay where they are and are never uploaded. Because they are ordinary files, your usual backup — Time Machine, a sync service, git — covers them.

What Aloha writes:

  • the notes you change, re-read just before every write so only the changed parts are touched;
  • a few keys of its own in a note’s frontmatter (aloha-type, aloha-in-work, aloha-done);
  • one map file at the root of the vault, Aloha.canvas;
  • deleted notes go to the vault’s .trash folder, not into nothing.

Where you walked and which notes you visited are kept in the browser, not in your vault. More on Aloha for Obsidian.

Notion

When you sign in with Notion, Notion gives Aloha a token for the pages you chose. That token is kept in an encrypted cookie in your browser that page scripts can’t read (HttpOnly, Secure). Requests to Notion pass through Aloha’s server only to attach the token; the server stores neither the token nor your pages.

So that the world opens quickly, page text is cached in your browser and refreshed when a page changes in Notion. Disconnecting Notion in Aloha removes the cookie; the cache stays until you clear the site’s data. To revoke Aloha’s access entirely, remove its connection in Notion’s settings. More on Aloha for Notion.

Settings

Small things — whether the intro has played, the minimap, the walk timer, the language — are kept in the browser’s storage too.

What leaves your device

  • Link icons. When you attach a web link to a note, its site icon is fetched from Google’s favicon service, and YouTube links show a thumbnail from YouTube. Those services see the address you linked to.
  • Notion requests, as described above.
  • Nothing else: Aloha has no analytics and no tracking.