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📊 Telemetry

Telemetry is how we understand what's working and what needs improvement in Lektr. Think of it as a friendly check-in that helps us make the platform better for everyone.

🤔 Why Telemetry Matters​

Building open-source software is like cooking for a party—you never really know which dishes people love until you see what gets eaten. Telemetry helps us figure out:

  • What features people actually use Are people using the Kindle extension more than manual imports? Should we invest more time in the web clipper?

  • Where to focus development If most users have libraries with 10,000+ highlights, we know we need to optimize for scale. If most use semantic search heavily, we can prioritize better embedding models.

  • System Health Are automatic imports failing? Is the background job queue getting stuck? Telemetry helps us spot these trends without needing you to file a bug report.

🔒 What We Collect (And Don't Collect)​

We take privacy seriously. Lektr is a local-first application, and your data belongs to you.

✅ What We DO Collect​

  • Anonymous ID: A random UUID that identifies your Lektr instance (but not you!).
  • App Version: Which version of Lektr you're running.
  • Usage Statistics:
    • Total number of books
    • Total number of highlights
    • Tags usage count
  • System Info:
    • Theme preference (light/dark/auto)
    • Extension connection status (is the browser extension detected?)
    • Database type (e.g., SQLite)

❌ What We DON'T Collect​

We intentionally exclude anything personal or sensitive:

  • Book Content: We never track book titles, authors, cover images, or text content.
  • Highlight Text: Your highlights and notes are strictly local.
  • Personal Information: No email addresses, usernames, or passwords.
  • Network Data: We configure our telemetry provider (PostHog) to discard IP addresses.

Everything is aggregated and anonymous. We legitimately cannot tie this data back to you as an individual.

🛠️ How It Works​

Telemetry data is sent periodically and on specific events (like adding a book).

How to Disable Telemetry​

We default telemetry to On because it helps the project grow, but we respect your choice to opt out.

  1. Go to Settings (click the gear icon in the sidebar).
  2. Scroll to the Privacy & Telemetry section.
  3. Toggle the switch to Off.

That's it! No hard feelings. The system will immediately stop sending events.