Last updated 26 September 2026
Matteshot is made by Southbound Software, the trading name of a sole proprietor based in Kentucky, USA. Southbound Software is the data controller for everything described here. You can reach us at [email protected].
This policy covers official builds of the Matteshot desktop application, the matteshot.app website, and the license.matteshot.app and share.matteshot.app services that paid versions of the app used, both of which are now shut down. It is written to describe what the software actually does, so it names specific data rather than categories.
Matteshot is free and open source. Official builds have no telemetry, no analytics, no account and no licensing, and everything works offline. Capturing, styling, OCR, editing and export all happen on your own PC.
Official builds of Matteshot do not upload, transmit, or store any of the following, and there is no setting that would make them do so:
Everything Matteshot produces is written to ordinary local files on your own PC.
The only network traffic from an official build is the update check:
https://matteshot.app/version.json.These are ordinary web requests and are logged as such. They carry your IP address and a Matteshot/<version> user agent. No identifier from the app is attached to them.
Before an update installs, Matteshot checks the Ed25519 signature on the release record and the Authenticode signature on the installer. Turning off Install updates automatically in Settings stops Matteshot from downloading and installing new versions by itself. It still checks for updates and offers new ones from the tray.
Official builds no longer include Share, and there is no hosted upload service.
Paid versions of Matteshot had a Share button that uploaded a single capture, a PNG or an MP4, to share.matteshot.app, where Cloudflare stored it in R2 object storage, and returned an unlisted link to it. Each upload was deleted automatically 30 days after it was created. The service was shut down on 26 September 2026. By then every upload had already expired, and its storage was deleted.
The source code includes an optional Share feature and a server you can host yourself (see self-hosting Share). It is not part of official builds. If someone builds Matteshot with Share and runs a server for it, shared captures go to that server. We do not operate one, and this policy does not cover it.
matteshot.app has no analytics and sets no cookies of its own. It does not load scripts, fonts or images from other sites. Earlier versions of the site collected page views and basic interaction analytics; that has been removed, and the service that processed them is listed under paid versions and past purchases.
The site and our servers are behind Cloudflare, which processes connection data including your IP address in order to serve the site and protect it from abuse.
Before it became free, Matteshot was sold with a trial and paid licenses. This section describes what those versions did and what happens to the data they produced. Older versions keep this code until you update them.
Purchases were processed by Paddle, which acted as merchant of record. Paddle collected your name, email address, billing address, and payment details directly. We never saw or stored your card details.
From each completed order we received your email address, your license key, and order metadata such as the order number and amount. Those records remain with Paddle, whose handling of them is governed by its own privacy policy. Our own copies were deleted when the license service shut down. Matteshot is no longer sold, so no new purchase records are created.
When you started the trial or activated a license, a paid version contacted license.matteshot.app and sent the hashed device identifier described below, your Windows computer name, the Matteshot version, and your license key when you activated. The server stored a record for your device containing the trial start date, and, if you had activated, an encrypted session and the email address attached to your purchase. Records were held in Cloudflare Workers KV.
The license service was shut down on 26 September 2026, and its trial, license and session records were deleted. Current versions of Matteshot never contact it.
Before launch, the website also had a form for people who wanted to hear when Matteshot came out. The few email addresses it collected are kept only to send that one notice and are deleted after it goes out. To have yours removed sooner, email [email protected].
Some data survives uninstalling. Paid versions left two timestamps in the Windows registry under HKCU\Software\Southbound Software\Matteshot after uninstall, so that reinstalling did not restart the trial. Current versions ignore them, and you can delete them by hand at any time.
The device identifier is a SHA-256 hash of your Windows machine GUID. It is not reversible into your name, email, hardware serial, or computer name.
Paid versions could send anonymous usage events to PostHog, on servers in the United States. They asked the first time they ran and sent nothing until you answered, and the setting could be switched off at any time in Settings. Each event carried only the event name, the Matteshot version, the word "windows", your Windows build number, and an identifier: the hashed device identifier described below in versions before 0.19.0, and a random installation ID in 0.19.0 and 0.20.0. Failure events also carried an operation and a general reason, both chosen from fixed lists; the error message itself was never sent.
Current versions contain no analytics code. Updating, or turning analytics off in an older version's Settings, stops those events.
| Service | What it handled |
|---|---|
| Paddle (merchant of record) | Payments, invoicing, license key issuance |
| PostHog | Usage analytics from paid versions, and website analytics |
| Cloudflare | The license service and its records, and storage for captures uploaded with Share, until both were shut down and deleted |
We do not sell your data and we do not share it for advertising. For current versions and the website, data reaches only Cloudflare, which hosts the website, the downloads and the update check, keeps connection logs, and stores the launch-list addresses described above. The services that handled data for paid versions are listed in the section above.
We will also disclose data where we are legally required to.
You can ask us to tell you what we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or send you a copy. If you are in the EU, UK, or a US state with its own privacy law, those rights are yours by statute; we extend the same handling to everyone regardless of where you live.
Email [email protected]. To find a device record we need the device identifier, which Settings in paid versions can copy for you. We aim to respond within 30 days.
We operate from the United States and our processors store data in the United States. If you use Matteshot from outside the US, your data is transferred there.
Matteshot is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.
If this policy changes materially we will update the date at the top and, where the change affects data already collected, say so on the website. Continuing to use Matteshot after a change means the updated policy applies.