Privacy Policy

Cadence for Mac, iPhone and iPad. Effective 17 September 2026.

Summary

Cadence does not collect anything. Your recordings and transcripts stay on your device, there is no account to create, and the app has no analytics or tracking of any kind. This website — which is a different thing from the app — keeps cookieless visitor statistics, described below.

What Cadence stores, and where

The transcripts Cadence produces, your settings, and its record of which files you imported are stored locally in the app's own container on your Mac:

~/Library/Containers/io.mgcrea.Cadence/Data/

The audio itself usually stays where you put it. When you open or drag in a file from Finder, Cadence remembers where it is and reads it from there rather than making a second copy. The exception is audio shared or dragged in from another app — a memo from Voice Memos, a mail attachment — which arrives in a temporary folder that app deletes behind itself. Cadence copies that into its own container so the recording does not vanish, and deletes the copy when you delete the recording. Settings ▸ Models shows how much space those copies use.

On iPhone and iPad, the same things are kept in the app's own container on the device, and every recording is copied in: from Files, from the share sheet, or dragged in on iPad. A file shared from another app waits in a folder only Cadence and its share extension can read, until Cadence next opens and takes it. Deleting a recording deletes its copy, and Cadence asks first.

Speech models you choose to download are stored alongside them, under Application Support, unless you choose another folder for them in Settings ▸ Models. Settings ▸ Models shows the exact folder and the space in use, and lets you delete any model to reclaim it.

Cadence runs under the macOS App Sandbox on the Mac, and the iOS app sandbox on iPhone and iPad. It reads the audio and video files you explicitly open or share with it, and the models folder if you choose one on the Mac, and nothing else.

Dictation, on the Mac

Dictation exists only on the Mac: on iPhone and iPad, Cadence has no microphone access. On the Mac it is off until you switch it on in Settings ▸ Voice. While it is on:

• The microphone is open only while you dictate, from the moment you press the shortcut or mouse button to the moment the text is inserted or you press Esc. Speech is recognized on your Mac, by Parakeet or Apple Speech. Cadence never saves the audio or sends it anywhere, and keeps no copy of the text.
• Cadence listens for its own shortcut, not your typing. The keyboard shortcut is a system hot key, so Cadence is told when that one combination is pressed and sees no other keystrokes. If you set up a mouse trigger, Cadence watches the middle and side mouse buttons, and nothing else about the mouse.
• The text goes in through the clipboard. With permission under Privacy & Security ▸ Accessibility, Cadence puts the text on the clipboard, presses ⌘V for you, and puts back what the clipboard held before. Without that permission, the text is left on the clipboard for you to paste.

What leaves your device

Transcription runs entirely on device. Your audio, your transcripts and their contents are never uploaded, and Cadence has no server to upload them to.

Cadence makes network connections in exactly two situations:

1. Downloading a speech model. When you choose an engine that needs one, the model is fetched from Hugging Face, once. The request carries nothing about you or your recordings; it asks for a published model file. Apple Speech, the default engine, needs no download at all, so Cadence works offline from first launch.
2. Purchasing or restoring Cadence Pro. This is handled by Apple's StoreKit. Cadence never sees your payment details, and receives only whether the purchase is valid.

Once a model is downloaded, transcription works with no network connection.

What Cadence does not do

• No account, sign-in, or email address
• No analytics, telemetry, crash reporting, or usage statistics in the app
• No advertising and no advertising identifiers
• No third-party SDKs that collect data
• No iCloud or cross-device sync
• No recording: Cadence transcribes files you already have. On the Mac it opens the microphone only while you dictate, and on iPhone and iPad it has no microphone access

Feedback form

The app collects nothing; this website has one page that does — thefeedback form, and only when you choose to fill it in and press send. Cadence itself never sends feedback: it opens a web address in your browser and stops. That is why the sections above still hold, and why this one is separate from them.

We receive what you typed — the subject and the details — and your email address if you chose to give one. The address is optional; leave it blank and the report is anonymous, and we will still read it.

Opening the form from inside the app (Help → Send Feedback on the Mac, or the feedback row in Settings on iPhone and iPad) also fills in four technical facts: your Cadence version, your macOS or iOS version, your device's model identifier (like Mac16,10or iPhone17,1), and your language. They arrive in the web address itself, so you can read them in your browser's address bar before anything is sent, and the form shows them as ordinary editable fields you can change or clear. Nothing is hidden. That is the entire list — never your username, your device's name, and never a recording, transcript or file name.

Submissions are stored in a Cloudflare D1 database hosted in Western Europe and emailed tosupport@mgcrea.io so we can reply. We keep them fortwelve months, then delete them. They are never used for marketing, never sold, and never shared. The form sets no cookie, and nothing in the code that handles your submission ever reads or stores your IP address. Like every page here it loads the site-wide visitor statistics described next, which are cookieless and do not identify you. To have a submission deleted sooner, email support@mgcrea.io.

Website analytics

This website uses Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits. It is there so we know which pages are read; it is not in the app, and it never sees anything from the app.

It sets no cookie and stores nothing on your device. There is no identifier kept between page loads, no localStorage, and no fingerprinting of your browser or IP address. A visit is counted by looking at whether the page you came from was on this site — not by recognising you. Because nothing is written to or read from your device, this does not require a consent banner under the ePrivacy Directive (in France, Article 82 of the loi Informatique et Libertés), and you will not find one here.

What is sent, on each page view: the page address, the address you came from, your browser and operating system, your screen size, and page load timings. Cloudflare derives an approximate country from your IP address and does not give us the address itself. We see only aggregate totals — never a profile, never an individual, and never anything across other websites.

Our lawful basis is legitimate interest: understanding how our own site is used. Cloudflare acts as our processor under its Data Processing Addendum. To opt out entirely, any content blocker or a browser Do Not Track setting will stop the script loading.

Third parties

Cadence has no data-sharing arrangement with anyone. Three services are contacted only as described above, under their own terms:

• Hugging Face, which hosts the speech models, when you download one
• Apple, for the App Store purchase of Cadence Pro
• Cloudflare, which hosts this website, stores feedback submissions, and provides the visitor statistics described above

Children

Cadence is not directed at children and collects no personal information from anyone, including children.

Your rights

Because Cadence collects no personal data, there is nothing for us to disclose, correct, export or delete on your behalf. Your data is on your own Mac, iPhone or iPad and under your control: deleting a recording in the app, deleting the container folder above on the Mac, or deleting the app on iPhone or iPad, removes it.

Changes

Any material change to this policy will be published on this page with a new effective date, alongside the app release it applies to.

Contact

Questions about this policy: cadence.mgcrea.io/support, orsupport@mgcrea.io.