Privacy Policy

What stays on your device

• Recordings and transcripts. Audio you record or import, and the transcripts made from it, are stored in the app on your device. Transcription and speaker detection run on the device itself.
• Your corrections and notes. Speaker names, text edits, markers and the notes you type while recording are stored alongside the recording they belong to.
• Summaries and titles. On devices with Apple Intelligence, Longhand can write a short summary of a transcript using Apple's on-device model, and can name a recording after what was said in it when the recording still has the date as its name. The summary and the name are written and stored on your device; the transcript is not sent anywhere to produce them. Both can be turned off in Settings, and a summary can be edited or removed, and a recording renamed, at any time.
• Words while recording. For languages Apple's on-device speech recognition covers, the recording screen can show words as they are said. This runs on the device, is a preview only, and is not kept: the transcript is made from the whole recording afterwards. It can be turned off in Settings.
• Voice profiles. If you choose "Remember this voice", Longhand stores a numerical voice signature so it can recognise that person in later recordings. Voice profiles are treated as sensitive: they stay on the device, are never included in any export, are excluded from device backups, and can be deleted at any time under Enrolled Voices.
• Location, only if you turn it on. Tagging recordings with where they were made is off by default. If you enable it, the coordinates are stored with the recording on your device and are never included in exports. Tapping them opens Apple Maps with that location.
• Search and the widget. Recordings and the words in their transcripts are added to your device's own search (Spotlight) so you can find them from the Home Screen or the Finder. That index is kept by the operating system on the device and is not sent anywhere; you can turn it off in Settings, which removes it. The Home Screen widget on iPhone and iPad shows the titles and dates of your latest recordings from a copy the app keeps on the device for it; it does not read transcripts or audio.
• Calendar, only if you turn it on. Naming recordings after calendar events is off by default. If you enable it, Longhand reads your calendar when a recording starts to find the event in progress, names the recording after it, and keeps the event's title and attendee names with the recording on your device so it can offer those names when you label a speaker. Nothing is written to your calendar, and the event is never included in exports.

What leaves your device, and when

• Speech models. Some languages need a speech model the first time they are used. Longhand asks before downloading it (about 626 MB, or 947 MB for the maximum-accuracy model) from Hugging Face, where the model's publisher, Argmax, hosts it. The download request contains no recordings, transcripts or personal information; like any web request, it is visible to the host as coming from your network address. Apple may also download its own on-device speech assets through the operating system.
• Apple Watch recordings. A recording made on Apple Watch is transferred to your paired iPhone through Apple's watch connectivity, between your own devices.
• What you share. A transcript or recording leaves the app only when you export, copy or share it, or hand it to a shortcut with the Get Transcript action, and it goes only where you choose. Exporting, copying a whole transcript, and Get Transcript each ask you to confirm first.
• Device backups. Recordings and transcripts are included in your device's iCloud or computer backups, like other app documents, under your Apple account. Voice profiles and speech models are not.

What Longhand does not do

• No accounts, no sign-in.
• No analytics, crash reporting, advertising or tracking.
• No third-party services that receive your data.

Deleting your data

Deleting a recording removes its audio and transcript. Voice profiles can be deleted one at a time or all at once in Enrolled Voices. Deleting the app removes everything it stored on that device; copies in your own device backups are governed by those backups.

Children

Longhand is not directed at children, and it collects no data from anyone.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be published on this page with a new effective date.

Contact

Questions about this policy can be raised on the Longhand issue tracker.