Your canvases are the whole point, so it helps to know exactly where they live and who can reach them. livediagram stores canvases 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, which covers every liveworkspace app, is the formal statement for the hosted service.
Where your canvases live
Canvases are saved through a single Cloudflare Worker API. The browser never talks to storage directly.
- Durable storage is one Cloudflare Durable Object per canvas, reached only through the API: the canvas's tabs, comments and the images it places are stored there. Where it is filed, its folders, share links and its Timeline events are kept by liveworkspace's index, the shared library behind every liveworkspace app.
- Real-time state (who is in the room, live cursors, in-flight edits) is handled by the same Durable Object, the canvas's room. It 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 are kept by liveworkspace's media service, and a cached picture of each canvas, used for its thumbnail and live image, in Cloudflare R2 object storage; both are 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 canvas 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, and it stays that way until you choose Sync Canvas to move it to the cloud.
livediagram runs on Cloudflare. Your canvas content goes to another company only when you use a feature that needs one:
- Reading sticky notes from a photo sends small crops of the notes, never the whole photo, to the reading model the deployment uses (Google's Gemini on livediagram.app). On a deployment without a reading model the notes are read in your browser and nothing is sent. Nothing is sent until you import a photo.
- Google Drive, if you connect it, gets a copy of your canvases 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 canvas, 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 canvas 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 canvas is in can read a canvas. A canvas you share to the Community is public until you remove it. Opening a canvas 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 canvases without ever creating an account. See working as a guest.
- Keep it in the browser. Offline Mode keeps a canvas off the server entirely.
- Share on your terms. Add a share password to a canvas or an expiry to a share link, and revoke links at any time.
- Delete what you own. Deleting a canvas 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 canvases, folders, images, tokens and preferences straight away (canvases 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. Canvas 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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