How Tagst Protects Your Data by Design
Data breaches stopped feeling like news a long time ago. Every few weeks another service apologizes and promises to take privacy seriously. Meanwhile your email, your habits, and sometimes your most private notes end up in a database somewhere on the internet.
Bookmark managers and note apps are quietly some of the most sensitive tools you use. They map your interests, your research, your half-formed ideas. Most of them store all of that on servers they fully control — and ask you to trust them with it.
Tagst is built differently. Not by asking for trust, but by reducing how much trust is required in the first place.
Option 1: Local-only — your data never leaves your device
The simplest path: pick a local account and everything stays on your device.
No sync, no server, no account to create. Open the app and start saving.
In this mode, you are fully in control. Your bookmarks live in your browser, exactly where you put them. Back them up, export them, move them — your call. Tagst doesn't store them anywhere else.
For many people, this is enough. No account is the most private kind of account.
Option 2: Encrypted cloud — sync without exposing your data
If you want access across devices, you can opt into a cloud account. This is where most apps start collecting data. Tagst doesn't.
No passwords. Tagst uses Passkeys — the same mechanism your device already uses to unlock with biometrics or a hardware key. There's nothing to invent, leak, or forget.
No email. Without passwords, there's no password reset flow. Without password resets, there's no need for an email address. Tagst doesn't ask for one.
End-to-end encryption by default. Your data is encrypted on your device before it is sent anywhere. The server only ever stores encrypted blobs and anonymous identifiers.
Decryption requires both your registered Passkey and server-side account material. Neither is useful on its own.
If the server were compromised, the result would be unreadable data — not user content.
Multiple devices and recovery
You can register additional Passkeys on other devices — a phone, a second laptop, or a hardware key. Each new key must be approved by an existing one.
This also defines your recovery model.
There is no password reset, no email recovery, and no support override. The only way back into your account is through a Passkey you've already registered.
That means setting up a backup key isn't optional — it's part of the system's design. It trades a bit of convenience for a significant reduction in account recovery attack surface.
What Tagst's server actually stores
As little as possible.
No email. No name. No usage analytics. No tracking scripts or third-party resources.
Tagst does not know what you save, how often you use the app, or how you organize your data.
When you use Tagst, you are communicating with Tagst — not a chain of third-party services.
Privacy by architecture, not by policy
A privacy policy is a statement of intent. Architecture is a statement of capability.
Tagst is designed so that it cannot read your data — not because it promises not to, but because the system does not have access to it in a usable form.
Even if Tagst wanted to analyze your bookmarks, there would be nothing readable to analyze.