What stays on your iPhone
Margin keeps these in its own storage on your iPhone:
- Your spaces, with their names, symbols and colours, their pins and tabs, and each space’s archive of tabs you closed or Margin put away, up to 500 per space.
- Your history: up to 5,000 pages, each with its address and title, how many times you’ve opened it and when you last did. Margin uses it to suggest pages as you type.
- Site icons, in Margin’s cache.
- Your settings: search engine, whether Margin opens to a new search, when tabs are archived, which side the buttons are on, and what the left edge does.
- Cookies, which keep you signed in to sites, and the cache and other data websites store. WebKit, Apple’s web engine, keeps these in Margin’s own storage, separate from Safari’s.
None of this is sent to Connor. Deleting a space deletes its tabs and archive; your history stays. Margin 0.4 has no button to clear history or website data, so to remove them, delete Margin from your iPhone, which deletes all of it. Like any app’s data, it can be included in your iPhone’s backups.
What leaves your iPhone
Pages you visit
Opening a page sends a request to that website, and to any other servers the page loads things from, as in any browser. Those sites see your IP address and the usual details a browser sends. Margin presents itself as Safari on iPhone, so sites serve their usual pages. Pressing and holding a link can show a preview of it, which loads that page too.
Margin opens plain http pages as well as secure https ones, and says Not Secure beside the site’s name on an http page. What you send to and receive from an http page isn’t encrypted, so others on the same network can see or change it.
As in Safari, WebKit may check whether a page is a known fraudulent or malware website before it opens. For that check it may send information calculated from the page’s address, never the address itself, to the safe browsing services Apple uses for Safari.
Searches
When you submit words rather than an address, Margin sends them to the search engine chosen in Settings. Google is the default; DuckDuckGo, Bing, Ecosia, Startpage, Kagi, Brave Search and Qwant are the others. Nothing is sent while you type: suggestions come from your own history and open tabs.
Site icons
After a page loads, Margin downloads the icon the page lists, or the site’s standard favicon.ico, from the address the page gives, over https, except for addresses on your own network. These requests carry no cookies or saved sign-ins, and no outside icon service is used.
Speech models
The first time you dictate, iOS may download Apple’s speech recognition model for your language from Apple.
TestFlight
Margin is in beta through TestFlight, Apple’s app for testing apps. While you test it, Apple collects some details and shares them with Connor: when you installed Margin and how many times, which version you have, how many sessions and crashes you’ve had, crash reports, your device model and an identifier for it, your iOS version and language, and how you joined the beta. If you send feedback, Connor also gets your comments and any screenshots you attach, with details of your device at the time, such as its carrier, time zone, battery level and free space.
If you joined through the public link, Connor doesn’t see your name or email address, unless you add your email address to feedback. If you were invited by email, Connor sees your name and email address. Apple’s TestFlight privacy notice covers what Apple itself collects and keeps.
What happens only on your iPhone
Ask
Ask reads the title, address and text of the page you’re on and gives them, with your question, to Apple Intelligence’s model on your iPhone. Margin doesn’t use Apple’s Private Cloud Compute or any other server for Ask. Your eight most recent conversations are kept in memory while Margin runs. They are never saved to storage and are gone when Margin quits.
Dictation
Dictation turns your speech into text on your iPhone, with Apple’s on-device speech recognition. Margin’s mic is on only after you tap it. It turns off when you tap it again, when you pause after speaking, or if nothing is heard for six seconds. Margin doesn’t save your audio or send it anywhere. iOS asks for microphone and speech recognition permission the first time they’re needed.
Content blocking
Margin blocks requests to a built-in list of advertising and tracking networks inside WebKit, before they’re made, and hides the empty boxes their ads leave. The list ships inside the app: Margin doesn’t download it, report on it or count what it blocks.
Photos
If you save an image from a page, iOS asks for permission to add to your photo library. Margin can only add photos. It can’t see your library.
What websites can ask for
A website can ask to use your camera or microphone, for example for a video call or voice search, or your iPhone’s motion and orientation sensors. Margin asks you first, naming the site. Only the page you’re looking at can ask, and only for itself; anything embedded in it from another site is turned down without asking you.
If you allow it, what the camera, microphone or sensors pick up is available to that website, under its own privacy policy. Margin doesn’t record it, and doesn’t keep a list of the sites you’ve allowed. The first time a site uses the camera or microphone, iOS also asks whether Margin may use them, and you can turn that off in Settings › Privacy & Security.
What Margin doesn’t do
- No accounts or sign-in.
- No analytics, tracking or advertising, and no third-party code that does them.
- No selling or sharing of your data. Margin doesn’t collect it in the first place.
- Margin has no access to your location or contacts.
- Margin itself never reads your clipboard.
Websites and search engines
The websites you visit and the search engine you use have their own privacy policies. Margin can’t control what they collect when you use them.
This website
This website sets no cookies and runs no scripts or analytics. Its host keeps standard request logs, such as your IP address and browser, to serve and protect the site.
Children
Margin is a general-purpose web browser and isn’t directed at children under 13. Apart from the TestFlight details above, this website’s request logs and anything you choose to email, Connor receives no personal information from anyone, children included.
Changes
When a version of Margin handles data differently, this page is updated before that version reaches testers, with a new effective date at the top.
Contact
Questions about privacy: hello@marginbrowser.com
If you email, Connor sees your address and message and uses them only to reply.