Privacy

Last updated 2 November 2026. It covers the Mac app, the iPhone app and this website.

Dictation and transcription

Speech recognition happens on your device, on the Mac and on the iPhone. Neither the audio nor the resulting text is sent anywhere for that. The first time, the app downloads the data it recognises speech with, and that download carries none of your audio or text. After it, both keep working with the network off.

What sends text off your device, Wavenote+

These features send text off your device. Rewriting sends what you said and the instruction you wrote. Asking a question sends the question and the passages of your notes that best match it, up to about 36,000 characters in one request. Summaries, titles and reworking a note send that note's text. Task suggestions send a note, or your open tasks and recent days. Organising sends a note's text and the names of your Spaces. What you write under About you, up to 1,500 characters, goes along with each of these as background.

On the iPhone, nothing is sent until you say yes. Once Wavenote+ or its free trial is active, the app asks you first. It says what text is sent and who gets it, and you choose Allow or Don't Allow. If you allow it, every recording gets a summary and a title when it ends, and that sends its text too. You can take back your yes, or turn off each kind of sending, in Settings under About, in What leaves this iPhone. On the Mac, rewriting runs only once you turn it on, and organising asks before its first use.

The text goes to our server and from there to Anthropic, our AI provider, which processes it and returns the result. Our server holds the text in memory for that one request and doesn't save it. It doesn't write the content to any log either. It records counts only: how many requests, how many tokens, and when, against your account (a hash of your address), your licence key or your device identifier.

Anthropic is a separate company. How long it keeps a request is set by its own terms, and we only use providers whose terms protect your data at least as well as this policy. If you don't want a note's text to leave your device, don't use these features, and on the iPhone turn them off in Settings. For Japan's APPI, the recipient is a company in the United States.

Signing in with your email, optional

Wavenote works without it. You sign in only to carry a purchase between your Mac, your iPhone and the web. We email you a code. There is no password. We store your email address, a hash of the code (it works once, within 10 minutes), and one session per device with the device's name, its identifier and when it was created. A session you don't use for 30 days stops working.

The trial and your device identifier

When the 48-hour trial starts, the app sends one identifier made from your device. On the iPhone it is built from the app vendor's identifier, on the Mac from the hardware, and it is one-way hashed before it leaves, so we never see the original. We keep it to count the trial down and to stop deleting and reinstalling from restarting it. We don't link it to your email address.

Purchases

Apple handles purchases and payment in the App Store, and no card details reach us. If you sign in, the app sends us the transaction Apple signed (the product, its id and when it expires) and we tie it to your email so your Mac can see it. If you buy on the web, we keep your email address, your name, the payment provider's customer id and an identifier for each Mac you activate. We never handle card numbers.

Keeping and deleting

On the iPhone, open Settings, then Licence, and choose Delete account. That deletes everything signing in created. It deletes every session on every device and any pending code, plus the usage counts kept against your account. It deletes the records tying an App Store purchase or a licence key to your email, and any remote access you set up. It doesn't touch the notes and recordings on your devices. Your App Store purchase stays with Apple, and Restore Purchases brings it back at any time.

Some records stay. A purchase made on the web (the licence key, your email address and the payment reference) is the licence your Mac runs on, and we have to keep the payment record for our accounts. The trial record stays so the trial can't restart. To have the web purchase erased too, email hello@getwavenote.com. We will erase it, and the licence ends with it.

Remote access to your library on the Mac, optional

Nothing here happens unless you set it up. It lets an AI chat app you use somewhere else read your library, or add notes and tasks to it. The library itself stays on your Mac. A connection gets its own access key. When you connect an app such as ChatGPT through the sign-in screen, that key lasts an hour and the app renews it on its own until you disconnect it. A small program on your Mac collects each request, answers it from the library and sends the answer back. In between, our server keeps the request and the answer in its database. A request that gets no answer expires after 5 minutes, and every request and its answer are deleted an hour after the request is created. The app never sends recordings, or the names of recording or attachment files.

We keep your email address, the names you give the connection and the Mac, a fingerprint of each access key (never the key itself), and a record of each request's type, outcome and time, without its contents. Removing a connection or a Mac stops its key working at once and deletes its requests.

Wavenote Capture, the browser extension

The extension reads a page only when you press its button or use its menu on that page. It reads that page's title, address, the text you selected and, if you choose the whole page, its text, and hands them to the Wavenote app on the same Mac, which writes them into your library. Nothing it reads is sent to us or to anyone else, and it keeps no history beyond a short list of what you saved, which clears when the browser closes.

If the extension itself breaks, it sends a short report to Sentry. That's Sentry's EU region on sentry.io, and a save that can't reach the app is one case. The report holds the error name and a message with any web address removed. It also says where in the extension's code it happened and which version you run. It never carries a page, a selection, a title or an address, and it isn't linked to you.

Ads and tracking

No advertising and no tracking across other companies' apps and sites. An account is optional.

Crashes and errors

When the app crashes, hangs, or hits an error it can't recover from, like a transcription that fails or a model that won't load, it sends a short report to Sentry, in its EU region on sentry.io. The report says what broke, where in the code, and which version of the app and the system you run. We use it to fix the bug.

It never carries a recording, audio, a transcript or a note, and file names and folder paths are taken out before it leaves. It isn't linked to you, and it's never used for tracking.

Children

We didn't make Wavenote for children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect anything from them.

This website

The site counts page views and downloads with Umami, on a server we run ourselves. No analytics company hosts it. It sets no cookies, follows nobody between sites, and keeps no personal data.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data, and requests to erase it, go to hello@getwavenote.com.