Privacy

Last updated: August 27, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains what information Daniel Timothy Wilson trading as Vocaldi (ABN 72 534 144 982) ("Vocaldi", "we", "us") handles across the Vocaldi website (vocaldi.com), the Vocaldi macOS app, license purchase and activation, app updates, feedback reports, and support — and what we deliberately avoid collecting.

Vocaldi is a local-first macOS beta product operated by an Australian sole trader. Daniel Timothy Wilson trading as Vocaldi is the controller of personal information handled for Vocaldi's own purposes. Dictation and Read Aloud run on your Mac. We voluntarily use the Australian Privacy Principles as our baseline and apply the protections described in this policy to users everywhere, while also respecting mandatory privacy rights that apply in a user's location.

The short version

• Your audio, transcripts, dictated text, clipboard text, and text you narrate are processed on your Mac and are not sent to us for core speech processing. Anything you deliberately attach to feedback or support is the exception.
• Dictation History can retain original microphone recordings on your Mac for playback and retry transcription. This is enabled by default when no previous preference exists, including after an upgrade, and is bounded by age, recording count, and disk space.
• Vocaldi has no app user accounts or separate customer database. Purchasing requires an email address at Polar checkout, and purchase records remain in Polar's merchant-of-record system.
• Payments are handled entirely by Polar as Vocaldi's authorised reseller, merchant of record, and customer-facing seller for checkout. We never see or store card details.
• App diagnostics are content-free. First-run setup shows both sharing switches (they start on), and you can turn either off there or in Settings at any time.

What Vocaldi never collects

Vocaldi telemetry and crash reporting never include raw clipboard text, selected text, transcripts, dictated or typed text, prompts, text sent to speech synthesis, audio recordings, filenames, local file paths, URLs, window titles, app titles, screenshots, document contents, or API keys.

Feedback reports and support emails are different because you choose what to write or attach. Do not include private material in a feedback message, attachment, or email unless you want it sent to Vocaldi support.

Local app data and Dictation History

Vocaldi stores settings, trial and license state, downloaded models, and enabled history features in your macOS user account. This material remains on your Mac and is not transmitted to or accessible by Vocaldi merely because the app stores it locally.

Text history keeps recent dictations locally for up to 30 days and at most 100 entries. When Keep recent recordings is enabled, Dictation History also keeps the original microphone recording independently of whether transcription succeeds, fails, or is interrupted. This lets you play and seek through the recording, hear unclear words, and retry transcription with your currently selected local model.

Recording retention is enabled by default whenever no saved preference exists, including for an upgraded installation. A previous explicit opt-out remains off. The default limits are:

• recordings up to 30 days old
• the newest 100 recordings
• a 2 GiB hard audio-storage ceiling

Settings lets you choose a 20, 50, or 100 recording limit and a 512 MiB, 1 GiB, 2 GiB, 5 GiB, or 10 GiB storage limit. When any age, count, or storage limit is reached, Vocaldi removes the oldest original recordings first. Their transcript rows may remain until the separate text-history age or entry limit removes them.

Retry transcription stores the newly displayed successful transcript and can retain up to 10 recent successful transcript versions for that History row, together with local timestamps, selected-model identifiers, status, and confidence metadata when the model provides it. A failed retry does not replace the previous successful text.

You can play, seek, retry, open the recordings folder, delete an individual History entry, or clear History. Lowering a limit asks for confirmation when it would remove stored audio. Turning recording retention off through Keep recent recordings asks you to confirm deletion of existing original recordings; after successful deletion, future dictation audio is not retained, while transcript history remains unless you delete it separately. Copies you make yourself, including copies outside Vocaldi's folders, are outside these controls.

Original recordings, transcript versions, and History metadata are not included in app diagnostics or crash reports. They leave your Mac only if you deliberately attach or paste them into feedback, a support message, or another service.

Website

The website collects:

• Analytics. The site uses Google Analytics 4 in advanced consent mode. The Google tag loads with analytics storage denied and sends limited cookieless measurements for aggregate traffic reporting, including the page URL and title, consent state, broad browser and device details, and standard request data such as the IP address used to deliver and secure the request. In this state, Google Analytics does not read or write its first-party analytics cookies. If you allow analytics cookies through the website banner, analytics can distinguish visits over time and we also measure a small number of product-interest actions (download clicks, checkout clicks, support form submissions, and support email clicks). You can withdraw that choice later through the "Analytics preferences" link in the footer; doing so returns measurement to cookieless mode and removes the site's Google Analytics cookies. Advertising storage, advertising user data, and advertising personalisation remain disabled. We do not send names, email addresses, message contents, or other details you enter to analytics.
• Support form. If you use the support form, the name, email address, topic, and message you enter are delivered to our support inbox by Web3Forms, a form-forwarding service. The form sends only what you type into it.
• Server logs. Standard hosting and content-delivery logs (such as IP address, requested page, and browser type) are generated by the platforms that host the website and the download server (downloads.narrato.tech), as is normal for any website.
• Browser storage. The site uses local storage to remember your analytics choice and session storage to remember small interface states (for example, that you dismissed a banner). This storage is not used for tracking.

The website does not create user accounts and has no login.

Purchases and licensing

License purchases are handled by Polar as Vocaldi's authorised reseller, merchant of record, and customer-facing seller for checkout. Payment details are entered on Polar's checkout pages and are never collected by this site or the app.

To deliver your license and handle support and refunds, Polar makes order records available to us, which can include your name, email address, country, order details, and license key status. We use these records only to deliver licenses, respond to support requests, process refunds, and keep required business records.

When you activate Vocaldi, the app sends your license key and your Mac's device name to Polar, which returns an activation ID for that Mac. Later license checks send the license key and that activation ID. Your Mac's device name may include your personal name (for example, "Alex's MacBook Pro"); you can rename your Mac in macOS System Settings before activating if you prefer.

Trial state and license state are stored locally on your Mac. We keep no separate license or customer database.

We receive purchase information from Polar rather than directly from you. Other information described in this policy is collected directly from you, generated automatically when you use an enabled diagnostic feature, or supplied by your browser or device as part of a network request.

Why we process personal information

Depending on where you live, our legal bases are:

• Contract. Purchase, license activation, license checks, refunds, and support needed to provide Vocaldi or respond about your purchase.
• Consent. Cookie-based website analytics and any optional material you deliberately include in feedback, logs, attachments, or support messages. You can withdraw analytics consent through the footer.
• Legitimate interests. Limited cookieless traffic measurement, content-free product diagnostics, crash reporting, fraud prevention, security, and service reliability. Our interests are understanding whether the site and app work, fixing defects, and protecting licensing and delivery systems. We limit the data, provide off switches for app diagnostics and crash reporting, and do not use these systems to collect working content or advertise to you.
• Legal obligation. Tax, accounting, consumer-law, fraud, dispute, and regulatory records that we must keep or disclose.

Where a legitimate-interest basis applies, you may object by turning the relevant app switch off or contacting us. We will stop unless we have a compelling lawful reason to continue.

Beta app diagnostics (your choice)

First-run setup shows a usage-diagnostics switch, on by default, so you can turn sharing off before setup finishes — and you can change it at any time in Settings. We send these diagnostics on the basis of our legitimate interest in keeping Vocaldi reliable and improving it: they are content-free, tied only to a random pseudonymous install ID, and turning the switch off stops them. Vocaldi preserves that choice through app updates and settings resets.

If enabled, diagnostics are sent to PostHog (hosted in the European Union) and can include: a random pseudonymous install ID, a per-launch session ID, app version, build number, release channel, macOS version, hardware profile, memory bucket, the tool or mode used, model and voice IDs, playback speed, input and output size buckets (ranges, not content), timing buckets, settings states, result codes, sanitized error codes, update lifecycle events, and feedback submission outcomes.

Diagnostics are used to understand reliability, feature usage, setup success, and performance. They never include the text or audio you work with.

Crash reports (your choice)

The same first-run setup shows a crash-reports switch, also on by default, and the choice can be changed in Settings at any time. Crash reports are likewise sent on the basis of our legitimate interest in keeping Vocaldi stable and secure.

If enabled, crash reports are sent to Sentry and can include technical crash details, stack traces, app version, build number, release channel, macOS version, hardware details, and the random pseudonymous install ID. We configure Sentry to disable its default collection of personally identifying information.

Feedback reports

The app includes "Report Bug or Request Feature". Reports are sent through Sentry as user feedback and can include:

• the message you type
• an optional contact email
• optional attachments you choose
• an optional content-free diagnostic summary
• optional recent redacted app logs, only if you tick the log box (off by default)

If logs are included, only redacted app and recording logs are attached. Speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and model input/output logs are excluded because they may contain content previews. Attachment filenames are replaced with generic names before upload.

App updates

Vocaldi uses Sparkle to check an update feed hosted under www.narrato.tech and downloads updates from downloads.narrato.tech. Update checks show when an update is available; the app does not silently install updates. Sparkle's separate system-profile reporting is disabled — update checks send no user identifier or hardware details to us.

Voice and speech models

Vocaldi downloads speech models from public Hugging Face repositories during setup. No account or key is used. Like any download, Hugging Face's servers see standard request data such as your IP address. Downloaded models are cached locally on your Mac.

Support email

If you email support, your email address and message are used to respond to your request, troubleshoot issues, and improve Vocaldi. Support currently runs through josh@wilsonbros.dev.

Third-party services

We rely on these providers, which process data under their own policies:

• Polar — authorised reseller and customer-facing seller for checkout, payments, customer transaction taxes, receipts, license-key infrastructure, refunds, and chargebacks (merchant of record)
• Google Analytics 4 — website analytics
• Web3Forms — website support-form delivery
• PostHog (EU region) — optional app diagnostics
• Sentry — optional crash reports and app feedback reports
• Hugging Face — speech model downloads
• Vercel — website hosting
• Cloudflare — download delivery, including the Sparkle update feed
• your own email provider, when you contact support

International transfers

Vocaldi is operated from Australia. The providers above process data in other regions, including the European Union (PostHog) and the United States (including Google, Sentry, Polar, and Web3Forms). Vercel, Cloudflare, Hugging Face, and email infrastructure may process standard request or message data in more than one country as part of their global networks.

Where we have a choice, we use privacy-protective configurations, including PostHog's EU hosting and Sentry's PII controls. We assess provider terms and data-protection commitments and use contractual or other legally recognised transfer safeguards where applicable and available. No transfer mechanism changes the local-processing boundary for your dictated audio, transcripts, selected text, or synthesized speech because those are not uploaded for core processing.

Retention

We keep data only as long as it is reasonably useful, and we target these windows:

• Local Dictation History text: up to 30 days and 100 entries on your Mac
• Local original dictation recordings: while recording retention is enabled, up to 30 days and subject to the selected count and storage ceilings; defaults are 100 recordings and 2 GiB
• Website analytics (GA4): up to 14 months
• App diagnostics (PostHog): up to 12 months
• Crash reports and feedback reports (Sentry): approximately 90 days
• Support emails and non-order correspondence: normally up to 24 months after the issue is resolved, unless an active dispute, security issue, or legal requirement needs longer retention
• Order, refund, tax, and accounting records available to us: normally at least 5 years, or longer when required by law or an active dispute
• Order and payment records held by Polar: retained under Polar's own policies and merchant-of-record obligations

The Dictation History limits above describe local app storage, not information retained on Vocaldi's servers. When a local limit is reached, the app removes the oldest applicable recordings or history entries. When a service retention period ends, we delete or anonymise information we control where reasonably practicable. Backup copies and provider deletion queues may take additional time to expire.

Security and data breaches

We use access controls, provider security settings, data minimisation, content exclusion, and limited retention to reduce risk. No storage or transmission system is completely secure. If a breach affects personal information, we will contain and assess it and notify affected people and regulators when applicable law requires notification.

Your choices and rights

• Turn app diagnostics and crash reporting off in Vocaldi Settings at any time.
• Change Dictation History recording limits, delete individual entries, clear History, or turn recording retention off and confirm deletion of retained original recordings.
• Choose not to send feedback reports, logs, attachments, or support emails.
• Email us to request access to, correction of, or deletion of personal information we hold about you (for example, feedback reports or support threads). We will acknowledge the request, verify identity only as reasonably necessary, search the relevant service providers, and respond within one month where the GDPR applies or within the period required by other applicable law. We will explain if something cannot be deleted (for example, records we must keep for refunds or tax).
• If you are in the EEA, UK, or a region with similar laws: we process purchase and license data to perform our contract with you; app diagnostics and crash reports on the basis of our legitimate interest in keeping Vocaldi reliable and secure, in the limited, content-free forms described above — you can object at any time by turning them off in Settings; limited cookieless website traffic measurement on the basis of our legitimate interest in understanding aggregate site use, with cookie-based analytics and product-interest measurement only with your consent; and support data to respond to your requests. You can withdraw analytics-cookie consent through the website banner and can object to legitimate-interest processing by contacting us. You may also have rights to portability, restriction, objection, and to complain to your local supervisory authority.
• We do not sell or share personal information for advertising.
• Vocaldi does not use personal information to make solely automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about you.

Privacy complaints

Email josh@wilsonbros.dev with "Privacy complaint" in the subject and explain what happened and the outcome you want. We will acknowledge the complaint, investigate it, and aim to respond within 30 days. If we need more time, we will explain why.

If you are unsatisfied after giving us a reasonable opportunity to respond, you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) or, where applicable, the privacy or data-protection authority in your country.

Children

Vocaldi is not intended for users under 16, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the product evolves. The "Last updated" date at the top reflects the current version, and material changes will be noted on this page.

Contact

Privacy questions about Vocaldi: josh@wilsonbros.dev.