Your documents are the whole point, so it helps to know exactly where they live and who can reach them. livediagram stores documents on Cloudflare infrastructure behind an authenticated API, never in a third-party analytics product, and you keep control of them whether you sign in or stay a guest. This page explains how it works; the Privacy Policy is the formal statement for the hosted service.
Where your documents live
Documents are saved through a single Cloudflare Worker API that holds the database binding. The browser never talks to the database directly.
- Durable storage lives in Cloudflare D1, the API's database. Each document, its tabs, folders, share links, and its Timeline events are rows there.
- Real-time state (who is in the room, live cursors, in-flight edits) is handled by a Cloudflare Durable Object, one room per document. The room also keeps a working record of collaborative input (answers, ideas, ticks, votes, comments and live polls) in its own storage, so that saves made at the same moment can be merged.
- Images you add, and a cached picture of each document used for its thumbnail and live image, are stored in Cloudflare R2 object storage and served back through the same API. Location and camera details are stripped from a JPEG before it is stored.
Or nowhere but your own machine. A document created in Offline Mode lives only in this browser's IndexedDB. It is never stored by the API, so none of the storage above holds a copy of it (using the AI assistant on it still sends the current tab's elements through the API to the AI provider, as below), and it stays that way until you choose Sync Document to move it to the cloud.
The hosted version runs on Cloudflare, and a self-hoster runs the same stack on their own account. Your document content goes to another company only when you use a feature that needs one:
- The AI assistant sends your prompt and the elements on the current tab to the AI provider the deployment uses (OpenAI on livediagram.app) to get an answer. Reading sticky notes from a photo sends crops of the photo to Google's Gemini. Nothing is sent until you use them, and a deployment without an AI key has neither.
- Google Drive, if you connect it, gets a copy of your documents in your own Drive, written straight from your browser.
- Image search sends what you type in the image picker's Search tab straight from your browser to Openverse, the open image search engine; no livediagram server sees it.
- Emails about your work go through the email provider. They name the document, and a mention or an assigned action quotes a little of the comment or action (see Email Notifications).
What is stored, and who can read it
A document is owned by an identity. That identity is either a signed-in account or, for guests, a per-browser id kept in your browser's local storage. Only the owner, people holding a valid share link, and the members of the team whose library the document is in can read a document. A document you share to the Community is public until you remove it. Opening a document you cannot access returns a plain "not found", so its contents and name are never revealed.
Staying in control
- Guest by default. You can build and share documents without ever creating an account. See working as a guest.
- Keep it in the browser. Offline Mode keeps a document off the server entirely.
- Share on your terms. Add a share password to a document or an expiry to a share link, and revoke links at any time.
- Delete what you own. Deleting a document moves it to the Trash for 30 days, then removes it with its tabs, comments and share links; you can delete it permanently from the Trash sooner. Signed-in users can delete their whole account, which removes their personal documents, folders, images, tokens and preferences straight away (documents in a team library stay with the team).
- Opt out of analytics. The anonymous usage events have a switch in Settings. See What We Collect.
livediagram does not claim end-to-end encryption. Document content is protected by authentication and access controls, not by client-side encryption. Found a way around them? Please report it privately.
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