FlosForge ArEm Buddy — privacy policy

FlosForge ArEm Buddy communicates exclusively with your reMarkable tablet over a local USB cable through the tablet’s built-in web interface. It saves your notes as PDFs in a local directory you choose, stores settings and caches locally on your computer, and operates with no user accounts, no cloud sync, no tracking, and no background update checks.

What FlosForge ArEm Buddy collects about you

Nothing. There is no account, no telemetry, no analytics, no crash reporting and no identifier of any kind. The app has no server of its own to send anything to, and it does not phone home to check for updates — there is nothing to check for — you download a newer release from GitHub whenever you decide to.

What it stores, and where

Your saved notes: PDF documents, and optional .rmdoc backup files, are stored in your selected destination folder. By default this is reMarkable_PDFs inside your Google Drive My Drive folder when Google Drive for desktop is installed (allowing Drive to back them up without ArEm Buddy ever connecting to Google), or in Documents otherwise. You can select any local folder in Settings to keep files entirely offline.
Download record: A lightweight .remarkable-sync.json file in your save folder records download dates, file sizes, and checksums so unchanged notebooks are skipped during subsequent backups.
Settings: Your destination directory, tablet IP address, saved device nicknames, and preferences are stored locally in config.json in the user data folder.
Caches: Thumbnails, temporary reader previews, and text extracted for search are cached in the user data directory and refreshed automatically whenever a notebook changes.

Everything it can connect to

Each of these is a connection you cause — by adding something, enabling something, or pressing a button — and none of them is made on a schedule you did not set.

Your tablet: The tablet’s local USB web server at http://10.11.99.1 (or a custom address you configure). The app connects only while its window is open, and transfers files only when you click Download or if you enable auto-download on connect.
Links in About: External links to the FlosForge website and GitHub repository open in your system default web browser.

What never leaves your computer

Nothing is sent to FlosForge, reMarkable’s cloud servers, or any third party: no accounts, no telemetry, and no crash reports.
The app never checks for updates and never runs in the background: closing the main window quits the application completely.
It never deletes or modifies content on the tablet; the USB web interface provides no deletion mechanisms.
Your notes remain strictly on your computer unless your chosen destination folder is synced by a separate third-party sync tool.

Safeguards

No half-written files: PDF downloads stream into a hidden temporary file and are renamed into place only when finished, ensuring an interrupted transfer never leaves a corrupted PDF.
Nothing overwritten by surprise: Identical files are left untouched, documents sharing identical names receive a unique ID suffix, and enabling version history moves replaced files into a dated _versions folder.
Safe file names: Special characters and symbols not permitted by your operating system’s filesystem are sanitized before files are written.
Clear failures: If an individual notebook fails to download, the error is recorded and the remaining queue continues. If the USB connection drops, the export stops gracefully and all previously saved PDFs remain intact.

Your rights, and who to ask

Because the app holds nothing about you, there is nothing for the controller to access, correct or erase on your behalf: everything it knows is in files on your own computer, under your own control. Deleting the app leaves all your saved PDFs and backups untouched in your storage folder. Its application settings and cached thumbnails live in its user data folder, which you can delete to remove all traces. For anything else, write to hello@flosforge.eu. The site-wide privacy policy covers this website, your rights under the GDPR, and the supervisory authority you can complain to.

Changes

This statement is checked against each release. If a version changes what the app stores or what it can connect to, the version and date at the top change with it.