Privacy Policy – Centaur for Desktop
Effective date: 24 September 2026
This privacy policy explains how Centaur for desktop, published by MADiFold Studio ("MADiFold", "we", "us"), handles your information. For the Android version of Centaur, see the Centaur for Android privacy policy. Visits to our website are covered by the website privacy policy.
1. Who we are and how to contact us
MADiFold Studio is an independent app developer based in the Netherlands. For anything related to privacy, including questions or requests about your data, contact us at:
Email: madifold.studio+privacy@gmail.com
We aim to reply within 30 days.
2. In short
- Your work stays on your computer. Centaur stores your manuscripts in a folder you choose. We never receive them.
- No accounts. Centaur does not require you to create an account or sign in.
- No internet use. Centaur does not connect to the internet. It has no online services, no automatic updates and no cloud features of its own.
- No advertising, analytics or tracking. Centaur contains no advertising, no analytics or crash-reporting services, and no tracking of any kind. We do not sell or share your data.
3. What Centaur stores, and where
3.1 Your projects
Each Centaur project lives in a folder on your computer that you choose. Your manuscript and everything that belongs to it (parts, chapters, scenes, version checkpoints, notes and the entity registry of characters, locations and other items) are stored in a database file inside that folder, in a subfolder named .centaur. You can copy, move, back up or delete that folder like any other folder.
If you place a project folder in a folder that is synced by a cloud storage service (for example OneDrive, Nextcloud, Google Drive, Dropbox or Proton Drive), that service will upload and store the project under its own privacy policy and your agreement with that provider. Centaur does not communicate with those services itself.
3.2 App settings
Your preferences (such as theme, font, text size and editor options) and which projects folder and project you last opened are stored locally on your computer, in Centaur's own app data. To offer every font installed on your computer in the font picker, Centaur reads the list of installed fonts locally. This list is never sent anywhere.
3.3 Exporting
When you export a manuscript (ODT, RTF, Markdown or plain text), Centaur asks you where to save the file with a standard Save dialog and writes it only to the location you choose.
3.4 Voice dictation and the microphone (optional)
Centaur has an optional dictation feature that turns your speech into text. It uses your microphone only while you have actively started dictation.
Speech recognition runs entirely on your computer, using the open-source Vosk speech recognition engine and English and Dutch language models that are installed with Centaur. The audio never leaves your computer and is not sent to us or to any other party. Centaur does not record or store the audio; it keeps only the recognised text, which is shown to you for review and added to your manuscript only when you choose to insert it. Your chosen dictation language is saved in the project.
You can control microphone access for desktop apps in your operating system's privacy settings (on Windows: Settings → Privacy & security → Microphone). Everything in Centaur except dictation keeps working without microphone access.
3.5 Components provided by your operating system
On Windows, Centaur displays its interface using Microsoft Edge WebView2, a component of Windows. Centaur does not use WebView2 to load anything from the internet. Any diagnostic data that Windows or WebView2 itself sends to Microsoft is governed by your Windows diagnostic settings and Microsoft's privacy statement, not by Centaur.
3.6 Summary
| Information | Where it is stored | Shared with MADiFold? |
|---|---|---|
| Manuscripts, notes, entities, version history | In the project folder you choose | No |
| App settings and last-opened project | In Centaur's app data on your computer | No |
| Microphone audio (dictation only) | Not stored; processed on your computer only | No |
| Exported files | Where you save them | No |
4. Data security
Your projects are protected by the security of your computer and of the folder you keep them in. We recommend using your operating system's user account password and disk encryption (such as BitLocker on Windows), and keeping backups of your project folders. Because we do not collect your data, there is no copy of it on our side that could be exposed.
5. Data retention and deletion
- Projects and exports: stay where they are until you delete them. Uninstalling Centaur does not delete your project folders or exported files, so your work is never lost by accident.
- App settings: are stored in Centaur's app data on your computer and can be removed by deleting that app data after uninstalling.
- Emails to us: if you contact us, we use your email address and message only to respond to you. We keep that correspondence only as long as needed to handle your request and then delete it.
6. Your rights
Under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) you have the right to access, correct, delete and export personal data about you, and to object to or restrict its processing. Since Centaur does not send your data to us, the only personal data we could hold is correspondence you send us. You can exercise your rights by emailing us at the address above. You also have the right to file a complaint with a data protection authority. In the Netherlands this is the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens.
7. Children
Centaur is not specifically directed at children. It does not collect personal information from anyone, including children.
8. Changes to this policy
If Centaur gains a feature that changes how data is handled (for example optional sync between devices, or automatic update checks), we will update this policy before that version is released and change the effective date above.