Privacy and your data
Where your data is stored, what leaves your device and when, encryption, anonymous statistics, and how to delete.
- macOS
- iPhone
- iPad
The basics
By default, nothing leaves your device. Transcription, translation, and summaries with the Default engine all run on your device. The app has no user accounts and doesn't collect data to track you.
Where your data is stored
- Audio:
.m4afiles. On a Mac, they're in the folder you chose the first time you recorded, and you can open them in Finder. - Text, translations, summaries: in the app's data store on the device.
- API keys: in the system Keychain.
When data leaves your device
| Situation | What is sent | Where to |
|---|---|---|
| You set an engine to Cloud | Audio, text, or recording content (depending on the capability, see Add a cloud connection with an API key) | The provider you chose |
| You turn on iCloud sync | Title, text, translations, and summary, end-to-end encrypted. No audio | Your iCloud |
| You download a language pack or model | Files are downloaded only | Apple, Hugging Face |
| You agree to share statistics | Anonymous usage numbers (see below) | TelemetryDeck |
Anonymous statistics (optional, off by default)
If you agree, the app sends a few counting events, such as app opened, recording started, summary created, and which screen was opened, along with the app version, OS version, device type, interface language, and the engine you picked. The service that receives them is TelemetryDeck (based in Germany).
Never sent: audio, text, translations, summaries, titles, or your name or account. Your identifier is a random number generated on your device and scrambled before it's sent.
You can turn this on or off at any time: Settings → Storage → Share anonymous usage statistics (Mac) or Settings → Privacy (iPhone, iPad).
Audio encryption (Mac)
The Encryption switch (Settings → Storage, off by default) encrypts the audio files of new recordings with AES-256, using a key kept in your Mac's Keychain.
- Only audio files are encrypted. Text, translations, and summaries aren't.
- Encrypted files can't be opened in Finder or other apps.
- If the key is gone (you reinstalled macOS or moved to another Mac), you can't play the audio back, but the transcript, translations, and summary are still there.
- Encrypted recordings don't share their content with Sonasi Notebook.
Sharing with Sonasi Notebook (Mac)
Keep recordings in Sonasi Notebook (Settings → Storage) is on by default: a copy of the text and recording details is stored on your Mac so Sonasi Notebook can search it. Audio never leaves Meetings, and the data doesn't travel over the network. Turning this switch off removes the shared copies.
Delete data
- Delete a recording: in the Library. This also deletes the audio on this device, and on your other devices if you turned on iCloud.
- Delete a model or a connection: delete the model from Local models, or delete the connection to remove its API key from the Keychain.
- The app doesn't have a button to delete all your data at once yet.
The full text is in the Privacy policy.