Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 29, 2026

Talkaway ("the app") is a Mac app that turns your speech into text on your Mac. It is made by Talkaway (trading name), an individual developer in Japan ("we", "us"). This policy explains what the app and talkaway.app do with information.

The short version: your voice and the text you dictate stay on your Mac. We have no accounts, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking. The app connects to the internet only to check for updates and, if you buy Pro, to activate and periodically confirm your purchase.

1. What stays on your Mac

• Audio. Processed in memory to create text. It is never saved to a file and never sent anywhere.
• Dictated text. Pasted into the app you are typing in. Recent history follows your setting in Settings > Privacy. By default the last 5 items are kept in memory only and cleared when you quit. If you choose to keep history (1 day, 7 days, 30 days or forever), it is saved to ~/Library/Application Support/Talkaway/history.json, readable only by your user account, and older items are deleted automatically. You can delete all history at any time.
• Text around the cursor. When you start dictating, the app reads the text just before and after the cursor so the new sentence fits in. It is used once and discarded. Password fields are never read.
• Auto-learn (Pro, when turned on). After pasting, the app reads the same field to see whether you corrected the text. Only the corrected word pairs are kept in your dictionary. Password fields are never read.
• Settings, personal dictionary and skins. Stored in the app's preferences and in ~/Library/Application Support/Talkaway/.
• Weekly word count (Free). Counted on your Mac and stored in your login Keychain with a signature so it cannot be edited. It is not sent to us.
• Logs. The app writes diagnostic logs to the macOS unified log (counts, states and error codes). They never contain what you said, the text in your fields or which app you were typing in.

2. Apple features the app uses

Speech recognition uses macOS on-device speech recognition. Text cleanup uses the on-device Apple Intelligence model. Translation uses macOS on-device translation. None of these send your speech or text off your Mac. If the language data for your chosen language is not yet on your Mac, macOS downloads it from Apple. That download is made by macOS and is covered by Apple's privacy policy.

3. When the app connects to the internet

The app itself makes only these connections:

1. Update check. About once a day (you can turn this off in the app), the app reads the update list at talkaway.app and, if there is a new version, downloads it. The request contains only what any web request contains: your IP address and a User-Agent with the app name and version. The option that would send your Mac model and macOS details is turned off.
2. Pro activation and confirmation (only if you buy Pro). When you activate Pro, the app sends our license server (license.talkaway.app) the one-time code from your purchase link, a random identifier created for this Mac, and the Mac model (for example "MacBook Air"). About every 3 days it sends the identifier and its current activation certificate to confirm the purchase is still valid. It does not send your Mac's name, your speech, your text or how you use the app. If you use Free, the app never contacts the license server.
3. Restoring a purchase. If you lost your purchase email, you can type the email address you bought with. We use it only to look up your purchase with Paddle and send you a link, and we do not store it.

Web search (optional). If you use the voice search shortcut, the app opens a search page (Google, DuckDuckGo or Perplexity, your choice) with your words in your default browser. That request is made by your browser and is covered by the search provider's privacy policy.

The app contains no analytics, advertising or crash-reporting SDKs.

4. Purchases (Paddle)

Pro is sold through our online reseller Paddle.com, which is the Merchant of Record for all orders. Paddle collects your name, email address, billing country and payment details and processes them under Paddle's privacy policy. We never receive your card number.

To activate Pro, our license server stores: your Paddle customer ID and transaction ID, the random identifiers and models of the Macs you activated (up to 3), activation dates, and a log of activation events. We do not store your email address on our server. When we send you a purchase or confirmation email, the address is fetched from Paddle and passed to Cloudflare for delivery only.

We keep this purchase data for as long as your purchase is active, and for 7 years after a refund for accounting and fraud prevention. Backups of the license database (without email addresses) are kept for 30 days.

5. Website and email

• talkaway.app is hosted on Cloudflare. Cloudflare processes your IP address and request details to deliver the site and protect it from attacks. We do not use cookies, analytics or tracking on the site.
• Email you send to support@talkaway.app is forwarded to our mailbox at Google (Gmail) and kept as long as needed to answer you. We may use an AI assistant to help draft replies; replies are reviewed by a person before they are sent.
• Purchase and confirmation emails are sent through Cloudflare Email Service.

6. Service providers and international transfers

We use these providers, which may process data outside your country (including the United States, the United Kingdom and the EU): Paddle (payments, tax, refunds), Cloudflare (website, license server, email delivery) and Google (support mailbox). We do not sell or share personal information for advertising.

7. Your rights

Depending on where you live (for example the EU/UK GDPR, California law or Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information), you may have the right to access, correct, delete or export your personal data, or object to its use. Email support@talkaway.app and we will reply within 30 days. For data held by Paddle, you can also contact Paddle at paddle.net. Data on your Mac is under your control: deleting the app's folder in ~/Library/Application Support/Talkaway/ and its preferences removes it.

Legal bases (EU/UK): performing our contract with you (activation, support), our legitimate interests (preventing license abuse, security) and legal obligations (tax and accounting records).

8. Children

Talkaway is not directed at children under 13 (or under 16 in the EU), and we do not knowingly collect their personal data.

9. Changes

If we change this policy, we will update the date above and, for material changes, note it in the app's release notes.

10. Contact

Talkaway Email: support@talkaway.app