Media kit

Everything here is written to be quoted, so please take whatever is useful without asking. If the thing you need is missing, or you would rather have it in another shape, mail me at media@considus.com and I will write it for you.

Catchlight is not out yet. I am building it in the open, the source is public while it is being built, and the day it launches will be announced here.

Descriptions, written to be pasted

Three lengths. They say the same thing and they do not contradict each other, so use whichever fits the hole in your piece.

About 25 words.

Catchlight is a private iPhone app where a note, a task and a reminder are one thing. No account, no server, encrypted on your device.

About 50 words.

Catchlight is a private iPhone app that makes a note, a task and a reminder one item instead of three. There is no account and no sign-up, a 12-word Privacy Phrase encrypts everything on your device, and it works with no connection at all. Open source, so the encryption can be checked.

About 150 words.

Catchlight is a privacy-first iPhone app that unifies notes, tasks and reminders into one item, a Take. There is no account and no sign-up: a 12-word Privacy Phrase encrypts everything on your device, and Catchlight runs no server of its own (optional sync uses a folder you own, in a cloud storage provider you choose). It is offline-first, end-to-end encrypted, and open source (Apache-2.0) so the encryption can be independently verified. Capture from the Lock Screen, a widget, the Action button, Control Centre or Siri, without unlocking. One flat subscription, everything included; if it ever lapses your Takes stay readable and exportable.

The facts

• Catchlight, made by Considus.
• iPhone, iOS 18 and later. Other platforms are planned.
• Open source under Apache-2.0, at github.com/Considus/Catchlight-iOS.
• One subscription at £14.99/$14.99 annually, after a free trial that is a real trial rather than a demo.
• If the subscription lapses, your Takes stay readable and exportable. You are never locked out of your own writing.
• Zero-knowledge and end-to-end encrypted on the device, under a 12-word Privacy Phrase only you hold.
• No account, no email, no sign-up, and no server of mine for any of it to sit on.
• Sync is optional and goes to a cloud folder you already own. Tested on device in September 2026 with iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Internxt Drive, Koofr and Filen, each through the full sync matrix. Others may well work, and I would rather say what has been tested than publish a list that goes stale.
• Offline-first. Every feature works with no connection.

The canonical version of all of that is the privacy policy and the feature pages on the site, and where this page and those disagree, those are right and I want to know.

Your phone, your call

A lot of privacy apps protect you by taking the choice away. I have tried hard not to build that, because deciding on your behalf is still somebody else deciding. Where iOS offers something that would send your writing out of the app, Catchlight gives you the switch, sets it to the private side, and then leaves it to you.

Spotlight indexing stays off until you raise it, and even then only the kind of thing a Take is can be indexed, never a word you wrote. Writing Tools is off until you turn it on. Sync is yours to run automatically, only when you ask, or not at all. Export is free and always there, including on a lapsed subscription, because the one thing I am not willing to do is sit between you and your own writing.

A keyboard you installed yourself keeps working too. It sees everything typed into it, Catchlight included, and I could block it, but that would be me overriding a choice you had already made, which is the same high-handedness pointed the other way.

What Catchlight deliberately does not do

The app has no analytics at all. No analytics service, no crash-reporting service, no advertising or tracking code, nothing counting you.

I run no server for the app to reach, so there is nowhere your writing can be other than your own device and the folder you chose.

Catchlight has no AI in it, though that does not mean your phone has none. Select some text in a Take and iOS will offer you Writing Tools, and if you use them Apple may take that text away to work on it, so there is a switch for it under Security, off unless you turn it on.

None of that is a sacrifice I am asking you to admire. It is mostly things I did not build, which is the cheapest kind of privacy there is, and it is worth saying plainly so you can check it rather than take my word.

Where the verification stands

No third-party audit has been published, and I would rather say so plainly than dress it up.

What has happened is that a security specialist reviewed the implementation before launch, in June 2026, against the encryption design. He signed it off verbally and there are no published findings, so on that you have my word and not much else, which is worth about what you would expect.

What you can check without my word is the rest of it. The source is public under Apache-2.0 at github.com/Considus/Catchlight-iOS, so the encryption is there to be read rather than believed. The encryption architecture paper sets out how a Take is sealed and where the keys live, and the threat model paper sets out what the design does not protect you against, which is the part usually left out.

If you would rather test it than read about it, the seven tests in "How to tell whether a notes app is actually private" work on any notes app, mine included, and I would genuinely rather you ran them.

The white papers

These are the most useful thing on this page if you are writing about privacy rather than about an app. All of them are published at catchlight.app/resources/white-papers/.

• The Catchlight encryption architecture. How a note is sealed, where the keys live, and what the design deliberately does not protect you against.
• Who might read your notes, and what each of them can actually do. A threat model one adversary at a time, from a thief to a household member to a warrant.
• How to tell whether a notes app is actually private. Seven tests you can run on any notes app in an afternoon, with Catchlight scored on the same scale as everyone else.
• Sync with no server and no account. How two devices agree without either, and what the design gives up to get there.
• Protecting your notes without Advanced Data Protection. What the UK withdrawal actually cost iPhone users, and what is still in your hands.
• What AI features cost you in a notes app. Where a model runs decides what it costs you, with the questions to ask any app that has one.
• The one star test. What sixteen notes and task apps' one and two star reviews complain about most, which complaints are growing, and what any notes app has to get right.

Considus

Considus is the studio behind Catchlight, run by Mark Stradling, and it also publishes open-source developer tools. The thread through all of it is that the thing should keep working when the company behind it does not, which is why Catchlight holds no account, runs no server and exports everything it has.

Using the marks

Please use the Catchlight wordmark and icon in anything you write, record or publish about Catchlight. Articles, reviews, listings, videos, all fine, and you do not need to ask.

Two things I would ask in return. Keep the marks as they are, so no recolouring, stretching, redrawing or effects, and give them a background they can be read against. And please don't use them in a way that suggests I had a hand in your piece, your product or your company, or as part of a logo of your own.

Screenshots are fine to use and to crop. The only thing I would rather you didn't do is edit the text inside one, since a screenshot showing something the app would never produce is the kind of thing that outlives the correction.

If you want something that isn't here, or you are not sure whether a use is fine, just ask me at media@considus.com. I would far rather answer than have you guess.