Privacy — Aloud

1. What stays on your device

Aloud records and transcribes on your Mac. Recording, speech-to-text transcription, screenshot capture, annotation, and export are all performed there, and your sessions are stored there.

Your audio recording and your screen recording are never transmitted to us. Neither is the recording of a session you never run an AI step on. We have no way to reach any of it. Deleting a session in the application removes it from your device, and we hold no copy to delete.

The AI steps are the part of Aloud that needs a server, because the models that do that work run on ours. Section 2 sets out exactly what they send.

2. Information we collect

Account information. Using Aloud requires an account. We collect your email address in order to authenticate you by one-time code, to administer your account, and to measure use of the Services against it. We do not collect passwords or request other profile information.

Content processed by the AI steps. Aloud's AI steps — cleaning up the transcript, asking the follow-up questions, choosing and cropping screenshots, and writing the plan — run on our servers and on the model providers we use. Running one of them sends us the material that step works on: the transcript text of that session, its title and your notes, your answers to the questions Aloud asks, and the individual still frames taken from your screen recording that Aloud examines in order to place and crop a screenshot, sent as compressed images. We receive this in order to produce your result, and we keep it for up to 90 days so that we can see where these steps get things wrong and make them better — which is the only way they improve. After 90 days it is deleted automatically. Your audio and your screen recording are not part of this and are never sent.

Application usage information. The application reports technical and usage information so that we can operate and improve the Services: feature and screen usage, timings, counts, configuration changes, and error codes, together with the application and operating-system version. This information describes actions, not content — it does not include audio, video, screenshots, transcript text, notes, session titles, file names or paths, window or application names, or your email address. It is grouped under a randomly generated install identifier that is not derived from your device or your account.

Network information. To enforce fair-use limits on the free tier, we process network identifiers in pseudonymized (one-way hashed) form. We do not store your IP address for this purpose, and the pseudonymized value is not used for any other purpose.

Website information. The aloud.sh website collects aggregate, cookieless analytics: pages viewed, referrer, interaction and scroll events, and coarse technical attributes such as country, browser, operating system, and device class. The website sets no cookies and stores nothing in your browser. Identifiers used for same-day aggregation are pseudonymized and rotate daily, so visits cannot be linked across days. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, this collection does not run.

3. How we use information

to provide, operate, and maintain the Services, including the features you request;
to produce the results the AI steps return to you;
to review how well those steps worked and improve them — the prompts, the choice of model, and the parts that get things wrong;
to authenticate you and administer your account;
to monitor, secure, and improve the quality and reliability of the Services;
to enforce fair-use limits and prevent abuse;
to communicate with you about the Services, such as delivering sign-in codes.

We rely on your agreement to these purposes, given when you create your account, and on our legitimate interest in operating and improving the Services. We do not train models on your content. Improving these steps means reading where they went wrong and changing the instructions we give the model, not learning from your words.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use your information for third-party advertising or cross-site tracking.

4. How information is shared

We share information only with service providers who process it on our behalf to operate the Services. These include providers of cloud infrastructure and database hosting (with primary data storage in the European Union), AI language processing, transactional email delivery, and website hosting and analytics. Service providers are permitted to process information only as needed to provide their services to us. Some processing may take place outside your country of residence. We do not share your information with third parties for their own marketing purposes. We may disclose information where required by law.

5. Data retention

Content processed by the AI steps — the text and the still frames sent, and the results produced from them, are retained for up to 90 days, then deleted automatically by a scheduled job. Technical details of a request — when it ran, how long it took, which model, whether it worked, and what you did with the answer — are kept after that, without the content itself.
Application usage information — event-level records are retained for up to 180 days, then deleted automatically. A summary record for each install — the install identifier, first and last activity dates, application and system version attributes, and an event count — is retained beyond this period and is deleted when the associated account is deleted.
Account information — retained for as long as your account exists.

6. Your choices and rights

The AI steps. They run only when you ask for them, and each one sends what Section 2 describes — that is how they work, so there is no setting that runs them without it. Everything else in Aloud — recording, the live transcript, screenshots, annotation, and export — works on your Mac without them, and a session you never run a step on is never sent anywhere. You can also bring your own API key, in which case the model calls are billed to you; the content is still processed and retained as described here.

Your agreement. When you create an account you are asked to agree to this policy and to the Terms by ticking a box that is not ticked for you. You can withdraw at any time by deleting your account, as below; withdrawing does not affect processing that has already happened.

Usage reporting. You can disable application usage reporting at any time in Settings → Privacy → Send usage data. No further information is collected or sent, and pending data is discarded.

Account deletion. You can delete your account in the application under Profile → Delete account. Deletion takes effect immediately and removes the information associated with your account, including your email address, the transcript text and still frames processed by the AI steps, and the associated usage reports — without waiting for the 90 days.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or receive a copy of your personal information, and to object to or restrict certain processing. To exercise these rights, contact us as described below.

7. Security

We use appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect information, including encryption in transit and access controls on the systems that hold it. What we receive is held in a database that only our own server can read, and it is deleted on the schedule in Section 5. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure — which is part of why your recordings stay on your device, where they are never in our possession at all.

8. Children

The Services are not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

9. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the date below, and where changes are material we will provide additional notice through the Services.

10. Contact

For questions about this policy, or to exercise your privacy rights, write to privacy@aloud.sh.

Last updated 20 August 2026.