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Shipped 2026-04-27 · Permissions The previous permission model was workspace-wide: every member could read everything, full stop. It worked for tight teams. It didn’t work when a PI needed to draft a grant in private, when a manuscript review needed to stay between two people, or when a regulated workspace needed certain notes locked down. Every note and every collection in Bower now has its own access control, with the level of granularity enterprise teams expect — and the inheritance and defaults that keep it from getting in the way.

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Three privacy modes

Every note and collection sits in one of three modes. Switch between them from the Manage access dialog. Defaults stay open: every new note inherits the workspace-wide setting, so collaboration doesn’t slow down. Restrictions are deliberate, not accidental.

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Per-person grants: View, Edit, or Manage

In Only specific people mode, you assign each person a specific grant:
  • View — read the content.
  • Edit — read and change the content.
  • Manage — read, change, and re-share (edit the access list itself).
Add people one at a time by name or email. Remove someone by clicking their role and picking Remove — access is revoked on their next request.

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Inheritance: set it once on a collection

Every privacy setting cascades. If you mark a collection Only specific people and add three collaborators, every note inside it inherits that access automatically. Notes can opt out by setting their own privacy. Notes can opt back in with Use parent’s settings — future changes to the parent flow back down to them. The Manage access dialog shows you exactly where access is inherited from, with a clickable link so you can navigate up and edit at the right level.

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”Just me” really means just you

There’s a structural difference between Only specific people and Just me that matters for trust:
  • In Only specific people, the workspace Owner retains read access. This is intentional — Owners need oversight of team work.
  • In Just me, no one else can read the content. Not the Owner. Not an Admin. Only you.
This is the mode that goes beyond admin oversight. It’s the right choice for half-formed drafts, personal observations, or anything you want to develop without leadership reading over your shoulder. The moment you add another collaborator, Bower auto-promotes the note to Only specific people and the Owner regains access — there’s no “private to two people” mode.

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A compliance toggle for regulated workspaces

Some industries can’t allow content the workspace Owner can’t read — HIPAA-covered work, IRB-governed research, audit-everything environments. The Owner can disable Just me for the whole workspace in one click. With it off, clicking Just me falls back to Only specific people with the user on the list, and the Owner retains oversight of every note.

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Request access on restricted content

Following a link to a restricted note doesn’t show a blank “access denied.” It shows a calm splash with the owner’s name and email and a Request access button that opens an email pre-filled with a polite request. Restricted content stays private; the human handoff stays human.

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Audit log captures every change

Every privacy-mode change and every grant added or revoked is recorded in the audit log — who, what, when, on which note. The body of the note is never logged; only the metadata.

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Try it

Open any note or collection → ⋮ menu → Manage access. The dialog shows the current mode, the access list (or where it’s inherited from), and the public-link controls in one place.