Privacy

Last updated 14 October 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, and only when you use them. 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, each of these asks before its first use, and until you agree it sends nothing. You can take that agreement back in Settings. 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 an AI service, 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.

The AI service is a separate company. How long it keeps a request is set by its own terms, and we can't promise it from here. If you don't want a note's text to leave your device, don't use these features. 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 (good for 10 minutes, one use), 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: every session on every device, any pending code, the usage counts kept against your account, 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, optional, Mac

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, while the library stays on your Mac. Each connection gets an access key, and 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 nobody answers expires after 5 minutes, and every request and its answer are deleted an hour after the request was made. Recordings are never sent, and neither are 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 rather than the key, 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.

Ads and tracking

No advertising, no tracking across other companies' apps and sites, and no crash reporter of ours. An account is optional.

Children

Wavenote isn't made for children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect anything from them.

This website

The site counts page views and downloads through Umami, running on a server we run ourselves rather than at an analytics company. 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.