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. A video leaves your machine only when you create a share link for it.
• 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.
• Share links, when you create one. screeni uploads that one exported video, with a still for the preview, to storage we rent from Cloudflare (R2), and the link plays it on owntools.app. Anyone who has the link can watch and download it; it is unlisted and kept out of search engines. It stops working after 30 days and the files are deleted from storage within a couple of days after that - sooner if you remove the link in the export dialog. We do not watch shared videos unless one is reported to us.
• 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.
• 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.
• Watching a shared video. The page comes from this site and the video from Cloudflare’s storage; both see your IP address the way any server does. The page sets no cookies and counts nothing.

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.

The key is e-mailed to the address you paid with, and again whenever that address is entered at owntools.app/key. Those e-mails are sent through Resend, which receives your address and the e-mail’s content to deliver it and keeps a delivery log for a short time. We keep no copy and no list of our own: the record of your purchase stays with Polar, and the key is worked out from the order each time. Open and click tracking are switched off.

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

owntools is operated by OwnTools, Poland.

Contact: hello@owntools.app