privacy

the short version

• No accounts. You never sign in, and there is no user database.
• No telemetry, no analytics, no crash reports in the desktop app. It does not phone home.
• Your files stay yours. Recordings, notes, tasks, habits, statistics, transcripts and your license key are files on your own disk. Delete the folder and they are gone.
• Speech recognition runs on your CPU. Audio is never sent anywhere.

the desktop app

Everything the app makes lives in its data folder on your computer (in AppData, under app.owntools.desktop). Nothing in that folder is synced, backed up or read by us. If you uninstall the app, the folder is yours to keep or delete.

The app connects to the internet only when you ask it to do something that needs it:

• Dictation and transcription, first use. The app downloads the whisper.cpp engine from GitHub Releases and the speech model you pick from Hugging Face. Like any download, those servers see the request and your IP address. From then on dictation, transcription and translation work with the wi-fi off, and you can remove models again from the model manager in dictate.
• Launch, when you paste a URL. The app fetches that page from your computer, the way a browser would, to read its title, copy, colours and images. The site you paste sees a request from you; we see nothing.
• Update checks. The app may ask our release server whether a newer version exists. That request carries the app version and your platform - nothing about you or your files.

The screen-time heatmap and the scroll guard in focus watch which window is in front. That happens on your machine, for your eyes only, and never leaves the app.

the website

owntools.app has no login and sets no cookies of its own. Your day/night choice is kept in your browser’s local storage and is never sent to us.

• Analytics. We may use Plausible, a privacy-friendly analytics service: no cookies, no personal data, no cross-site tracking - only aggregate counts of page views and referrers. When it is on, its script loads from plausible.io.
• The free launch video maker. When you paste a URL, your browser sends it to our server, which fetches that page and returns its text, colours and images to you - browsers cannot read other sites directly, so we have to. The URL and the page are processed in memory and not stored. The video itself is rendered in your browser and is never uploaded.
• Hosting. Like every website, the server that hosts this one keeps ordinary access logs (IP address, time, page requested) for a short time to run the service.

payments

The Pro key is sold through Polar.sh, which acts as merchant of record: Polar takes the payment, issues the invoice and handles VAT. Polar’s own privacy policy applies to the checkout.

From each order we receive what is needed to deliver and support your key: your email address and the order details (product, amount, country). We use them to send you the key, to answer your support requests and to process refunds - and for nothing else. No newsletters unless you ask for one, no sharing with anyone.

your rights

Because the app keeps no account, most of what would be “your data” is already in your hands: it is on your disk. What we hold is the purchase record described above. You can ask us to show it, correct it or delete it (once any legal retention period for invoices has passed) - write to the contact below. If you are in the EU, you also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.

changes

When something here changes, we update the date at the top of this page. Substantial changes are also listed in the changelog.

operator & contact

Operator details are listed at the address below.

Contact: contact details will be published before launch