Privacy

MyWords collects nothing about you. That is not a promise we are asking you to take on trust — there is no server for it to be collected to.

The app

Your voice, your transcripts and your history stay on your Mac. The recording, the writing down and the tidying up all happen there. Takes are kept in a database inside your own user account, and the recording itself is scratch: it is deleted as soon as the words exist.

There is no analytics library in MyWords, no crash reporter that phones home, and no telemetry of any kind. There is no account to create and nothing to log into.

Every request the app makes, in full

Model downloads

From Hugging Face, when you choose a speech or writing model. They see what any file download shows them: your IP address and which file you asked for. Once a model is on your disk it is never fetched again.

Update checks

From the next release onwards, against mywords.thesidejourney.com/appcast.xml on this site — and the update itself, if you accept one. The request carries nothing we made up to recognise you by: no licence key, no install ID, no serial number. You can turn the background check off on the Behaviors screen.

That is the whole list. Your licence key is checked on your own machine against a signature; the app never sends the key anywhere, and never contacts whoever issued it or whoever took your money.

This website

The home page includes a small script for its illustrative writing demo; it never asks for microphone access, captures what you type or sends demo data anywhere. The fonts are served from here rather than from a font network, so nobody is told what you are reading. GitHub, as the host, keeps its own server logs of requests, which include IP addresses. That is outside our control and is described in GitHub’s privacy statement.

Optional website analytics

If you accept analytics, we use Rybbit to measure page visits, referral sources, browser and device information, approximate location, and clicks on links such as downloads and purchases. We use this information to understand and improve the website. Analytics does not load until you accept. This choice applies only to the website; the MyWords app has no analytics.

Rybbit is cookieless. We store your analytics preference in your browser's local storage for 180 days, whether you accept or reject. You can withdraw consent or change your choice using “Analytics preferences” in the footer. Rejecting analytics does not affect your access to the site or downloads. For information about Rybbit's processing and retention, see Rybbit's privacy policy.

Buying

Purchases are handled by Polar, acting as merchant of record. They collect what a sale requires — your name, email address, payment details and the tax location they are obliged to record — and they hold it under their own privacy policy. We see an email address and an order number, which is what a licence key is issued against and what lets us send you a replacement for one you have lost. We do not sell, rent or share it.

The key itself is made and emailed by a small service of ours that hears from Polar when an order is paid. It keeps the order number and the key it issued, so the same key can be sent again, and nothing else.

Your rights, and how to use them

There is very little of yours to ask about, and you can ask about all of it. The "we" on this page is Songscape Unipessoal Lda, Portugal, trading as The Side Journey. Write to [email protected] to see what an order record holds, to correct it, or to have it deleted where we are not required to keep it for tax purposes.

Last updated 6 October 2026