Privacy policy

As of 12 October 2026. This policy covers the Dicnote Mac app, the Dicnote server (api.dicnote.app) and the dicnote.app website. The German version is the binding one.

Controller

Steffen Mayer, Marie-Curie-Weg 16, 76646 Bruchsal, Germany. Email: info@appovo.com

In short

• We store neither your recordings nor the recognised text.
• To be turned into text, a recording goes through our server to Google’s Gemini speech recognition, a paid service that is not used for training.
• Per installation, we only count how many dictations and how many seconds of audio there are each day.
• There are no user accounts, no cookies and no tracking.

Dictations

When you dictate, the app sends the recording, German and English as language hints, your vocabulary and the “smart formatting” setting to our server api.dicnote.app. The server runs at Cloudflare and passes the data to Google’s Gemini API; the recognised text goes back to your app. On our server, recording and text exist only in memory while they are processed and are not stored.

Google processes the data on our behalf under the terms for paid Gemini services: Google does not use it to improve its products and logs requests and responses only for a limited time to detect abuse. We do not let Google keep a conversation history.

The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR: turning speech into text is the service you request by dictating. Please do not dictate health data or other particularly sensitive information about other people.

Installation ID and usage counters

On the first dictation, the app registers with the server and receives a random ID, kept in your Mac’s keychain. The server stores only an irreversible hash of it, plus:

• the day of registration and the day of last use,
• the app version and the macOS version,
• for each day, the number of dictations and the total length of the recordings.

We do not link this to any other data, and it does not tell us who you are. It serves operation, protection against abuse through daily and monthly limits, and measuring how much the beta is used. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; our legitimate interest is a secure, affordable service and deciding how to develop Dicnote.

We delete the counters when the beta ends, at the latest 24 months after an installation was last used. To have the counters of your installation deleted right away, send us the ID shown in the app under Settings › Models.

IP addresses

Every connection technically transmits your IP address. Cloudflare processes it on our behalf to deliver the website, server and downloads and to protect them from attacks. So that nobody can register installations in bulk, our server stores, when an installation registers, a hash of the IP address (for IPv6 only its network part), the date and a secret key. The IP address cannot be recovered from it, and it is deleted by the next day at the latest. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR.

Website and downloads

dicnote.app uses no cookies, no analytics and no external fonts. Clicks on the download are counted only as a daily total, without reference to any person.

Updates

Once a day, the app asks updates.dicnote.app for a new version. This transmits your IP address and the app version; we do not analyse these requests.

Data on your Mac

The history with recordings and texts stays on your Mac; keeping the recordings can be turned off in the settings. Your own API keys stay in your Mac’s keychain.

Your own API keys

If you add your own key for Gemini or OpenAI and choose that provider, the app sends your recordings directly to it, under your own agreement with that provider. Our server is not involved.

Recipients and transfers to the United States

• Cloudflare, Inc., 101 Townsend St, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA: running the website, server and downloads.
• Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA: turning speech into text (Gemini API).

Both process the data on our behalf and are certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, on which the transfer to the United States is based.

Your rights

You have the right to access, rectification, erasure and restriction of processing, to data portability, and to object to processing based on Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. An email to info@appovo.com is enough. You can also lodge a complaint with a data protection authority, for example the State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information of Baden-Württemberg.

Minimum age

Dicnote is intended for people aged 18 and over.

Changes

We update this policy when the app or the law changes. The version published here applies.