Effective 6 August 2026
Atelier is a place to keep your own things. We store what you put in it so it can sync between your devices, and that is essentially the whole story.
Atelier is made by a team of two, based in Washington State, USA. In this policy "we", "us" and "Atelier" mean that team. You can reach us any time at support@atelierjournal.com.
We intend to form a limited liability company before Atelier leaves beta. When that happens, that company will take over as the operator of the service and this policy will be updated to name it. Your data and your rights over it will not change.
When you sign in with Google we receive your email address, your display name, your profile photo and a Google account identifier. We store these so we can recognise you when you return and so people you share with can see who you are. We never receive your Google password.
Everything you put into Atelier: calendar events, journal entries, to-do items, projects, notes, pinboards, saved books and films, habits, goals, garden progress, and any photos you upload. This is the substance of the service and it is stored so it can be there when you come back.
Palette, fonts, layout choices, which widgets you have on, and similar preferences, so Atelier looks the same on every device you use.
Atelier records which days you were active, how many actions you took on each of those days, which studios you have opened, and which palettes you have used. This is what draws your streak counter, the garden heatmap and your achievements page. It is stored in your own account, we do not analyse or aggregate it, nobody reviews it, and it is included in your export and erased when you delete your account.
A running total of how much storage your uploads occupy, so we can apply the storage limits described in our Terms. If you buy a membership, a record of that subscription's status.
Atelier runs on Google's Firebase platform. Your account, your content and your uploads are held in Google data centres in the United States. If you use Atelier from outside the United States, your information is transferred there and stored there.
Two companies, and no others:
Some parts of Atelier fetch information from other companies. When that happens your browser contacts them directly, which means they can see your IP address. None of them receive your name, your email or anything you have written, unless stated otherwise below.
Atelier uses Google's Firebase App Check with reCAPTCHA Enterprise to confirm that requests to our servers come from the real Atelier app rather than from a script impersonating it. To do this, Google runs a check in your browser that looks at signals such as your IP address, your browser and device characteristics, and how the page is being interacted with. It produces a score, not a profile. We never see the underlying signals — only whether a request passed.
This is a security measure. It runs automatically whenever you use Atelier and is not something you can turn off. Google's handling of this data is governed by the Google Privacy Policy.
Some of what you can keep in Atelier falls into categories that deserve extra care:
We treat all of it the same way we treat everything else you write: it is not analysed, not profiled, not used to build any picture of you, and not shared with anyone. It is stored so that it syncs to your devices, and it is deleted when you delete it. If you would prefer something not exist on our servers at all, the reliable answer is not to put it in — and if it is already there, deleting the entry deletes it.
Photos you upload are stored at a web address that cannot be guessed. That address is not published anywhere, is not listed, and is not searchable.
However: any signed-in Atelier user who obtains the link — for example because you shared a board that contains the photo — can open that image directly, and will be able to keep opening it for as long as the file exists, even if you later stop sharing the board with them. Deleting the photo in Atelier removes the underlying file and breaks the link for good.
We are telling you this plainly rather than describing photos as strictly private, because "private" would overstate what the system actually guarantees.
Atelier is private by default. Nothing you write is visible to anyone else unless you share it.
When you do share something — a journal, a board, a calendar — the people you share it with can see that content and the display name and profile photo on your account. If you send or accept a friend request, a limited public profile consisting of your display name, profile photo and any boards you have chosen to make public becomes visible to other signed-in users. The rest of your account is never readable by anyone but you.
When you send feedback through the in-app button, we receive your message together with your account identifier, the email address and display name on your account, whether you joined through a beta invite, your browser's user-agent string, and the time you sent it. We use this to reply to you and to fix what you reported.
Atelier also contains a hidden on-device log panel used for troubleshooting problems that cannot be reproduced elsewhere. Its contents stay in your own browser's storage. They are sent to us only if you deliberately copy or share them, or if you are an administrator of the app.
We keep your content for as long as your account exists. Delete an item and it is removed. Delete your account from Settings and your account record, your entries and your uploaded files are removed from the live service.
Two qualifications, both stated so that "deleted" means something precise:
These controls are built into the app rather than being a request you have to make of us:
If you are in the UK or the European Economic Area, our lawful basis for handling your information is performance of our contract with you — we hold your data because that is the service you asked for. You have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict and object to our handling of your data, to receive it in a portable form, and to complain to your local data protection authority.
If you are in California: we have not sold or shared personal information in the preceding twelve months, and we do not. There is nothing to opt out of, because it does not happen.
For anything the in-app controls don't cover, write to support@atelierjournal.com and we will respond within 30 days.
Atelier is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.
Your data is encrypted in transit and at rest by our hosting provider. Access is controlled by server-side rules that restrict every record to the account that owns it and to anyone that account has explicitly shared with. We do not store passwords — sign-in is handled by Google.
No service can promise perfect security, and we won't. If a breach affects your information we will tell you, and we will tell you what actually happened.
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top. For anything that meaningfully affects how your information is handled, we will tell you inside the app rather than quietly editing the page.