Subtitles

Subtitles · Privacy

The app collects nothing.
Here is the long version.

Most privacy policies are long because there is a lot to disclose. This one is short for the opposite reason, and the interesting parts are the three places where something does leave your machine: buying the app, downloading the model, and visiting this website.

The app

There is no server, no account and no transcript, so there is nothing to collect and nowhere to put it. The source is published if you would rather verify this than believe it.

  • Audio is never stored. It goes from the process tap into the recogniser and is discarded as it arrives. Nothing is written to disk, which is also why there is no transcript feature: the captions ⌥ brings back live in memory until you quit.
  • Your microphone is never opened. The app reads what your Mac plays. It has no reason to request microphone access and does not ask for it.
  • There is no account and no telemetry. No sign-in, no analytics, no crash reporting, no usage counts, no licence check phoning home. There is no opt-out because there is nothing collected to opt out of.
  • One network call, once. On first run it downloads the speech model, which is third-party weights, roughly 583 or 633 MB depending on the language pack. After that it makes no network calls at all and works with the machine offline.

Buying it

The app is sold through Gumroad, who are the merchant of record. That means Gumroad, not this site, takes your payment details, handles VAT and issues receipts and refunds, under their privacy policy. Your card number never reaches anything I run, because there is nothing of mine for it to reach.

Gumroad has your email address, because that is where the download and the update notices go. Each buy button carries a short tag naming the page it was clicked from, so that sales can be attributed to a page rather than to a person. It records which page, not who.

This website

The site is static, hosted on Netlify, and sets no cookies. Visits are counted with Simple Analytics, which is cookieless, collects no personal data and builds no profile across sites, which is why there is no consent banner asking you to accept anything. Netlify keeps ordinary server logs as any web host does.

The one third-party script is Gumroad's checkout, loaded so that buying does not have to leave the page. It runs on the page whether or not you click, which is a trade for the checkout working; the buy buttons are ordinary links and still work if you block it.

Questions

Can you see what I caption?
No, and there is no mechanism by which I could. The audio and the captions never leave your Mac, and the app has no channel back to me. This is not a promise about what is done with your data; it is that there is no data.
Where does the model come from?
It is third-party weights, downloaded on first run and then kept on your Mac. That download is a request to whoever hosts the weights, like any other download, and it happens once. Nothing about what you later caption is sent anywhere.
Is it safe to use on a work call?
That is your employer's rule to check rather than mine to promise, but the facts are these: nothing joins the meeting, nothing is recorded, nothing is written to disk, and no third party receives the audio. Compared with a notetaker bot, there is materially less to disclose. Some workplaces still require you to say what you are running, and that is a fair rule.
Do you sell or share anything?
There is nothing to sell. The site has no advertising, no trackers beyond the analytics described above, and no data broker in the chain.
How do I delete my data?
The app holds nothing to delete: quitting it clears the caption history from memory, and removing the app removes the model. For anything connected to your purchase, that lives with Gumroad and their support can act on it.

The same overlay, elsewhere

Learning a language

Subtitles in the language being spoken, not translated into yours.

vs Apple Live Captions

macOS has this built in and free. Where it stops being enough.

Zoom

Captions without the host switching anything on.

Microsoft Teams

Captions that do not depend on what your tenant's admin allows.

Google Meet

On-device captions, and no Workspace tier to be on.

Slack huddles

Captions with no workspace app to get approved.

Lectures

Captions live, rather than once the recording is processed.

Podcasts

Captions for the shows that never had a transcript.

vs Granola and notes apps

Complementary, not alternatives. Notes after, captions during.

Nothing leaves the Mac. That is the product.

14-day refund, no questions asked

Buy for $9

One-time $9, every future update included · macOS 14.2 or later · Apple Silicon
Unlimited live captions, for as long as you own the Mac. No minutes to buy, no account, no subscription.