Privacy Policy
Effective October 27, 2026
peta Whisper is a dictation app for Mac and iPhone, made by Zhi Ping Feng (“we”, “us”). This policy covers the apps and this website. On your own API keys, the apps talk to the AI providers directly. With a peta Whisper Pro subscription, our server relays your audio, text and optional screenshots to the provider instead, on our keys. History stays on your device unless you turn on Cloud Sync.
Your voice
When you dictate, the app sends the recording, with the words in your dictionary as spelling hints, to the speech-recognition service of the model you picked — Soniox, Google Gemini, OpenRouter or iFlytek — on your own API key. With Pro, the recording goes through our gateway to Soniox or Google instead; the gateway handles it in memory and does not save it. The app may keep your latest recording on the device so a failed one can be retried.
Each provider processes your audio under its own privacy policy:
If you turn on Polish (AI cleanup), the app also sends the transcript text and the words in your dictionary, not the audio, to a language model, so it keeps your spellings: through OpenRouter on your own key, or with Pro through our gateway to Google Gemini.
Screenshots are off unless you turn them on. With “Use a screenshot while polishing” on, the Mac app takes a screenshot of the window you are dictating into when you start speaking, reads its text on your Mac, and sends the picture and that text with the transcript to the language model, so names on screen come out spelled right. With “Use my latest screenshot” on, the iPhone app does the same with a screenshot you took in the minute before you dictated, found in your photo library. With Pro the picture passes through our gateway in memory for that one request; it is never saved there.
What stays on your device
Your transcripts, history, dictionary words, replacement rules and settings, API keys included, are stored on your device. On the Mac, right after a dictation is pasted, the app reads the text field it pasted into so it can learn a word you correct there and add it to your dictionary; that reading happens on your Mac and sends nothing anywhere.
Subscriptions and usage
Pro is billed by Apple when you subscribe in the iPhone app, or by Stripe for MCB Holdings Limited when you subscribe on this website. We keep the subscription identifier, its dates and which account it belongs to; we never receive your card details. We count audio duration and model requests by account across devices to enforce the 30-hour monthly soft cap, 15-second delay after it, and abuse controls. The gateway does not log request bodies, audio, text, screenshots or provider API keys.
Request records are retained for 35 days and monthly usage totals for 13 months. Deleting your account removes these records and your devices, cancels a website subscription and deletes its Stripe customer record, saved card included; Stripe keeps the payment records the law requires. Apple subscriptions must be cancelled through your Apple Account. An unlinked purchase identifier is kept so the same purchase can’t be claimed twice.
Your account
An account is optional: dictation on your own keys works without one. You need one for Cloud Sync and for Pro. You can sign in with Apple, with Google, or with an email address and password. For an account we store:
- your email address and, if you give one, your name;
- the identifier Apple or Google uses for your account, when you sign in with them;
- for email sign-in, your password, stored only as a one-way hash;
- the list of devices signed in to your account: each device’s name, when it signed in and when it last synced.
Sign in with Apple lets you hide your email address; we then receive a private relay address from Apple instead of your real one. We may also keep a token Apple issues, so that when you delete your account we can ask Apple to end the app’s link to your Apple ID. When you sign in on this website, it sets a cookie that keeps you signed in.
Cloud Sync
When you sign in from the app, it keeps copies of your API keys and settings, dictionary, replacement rules and history in our database, so your Mac and iPhone share the same copy. Our sync service encrypts each copy with AES-GCM before it is stored, and the key is kept only on the sync service, apart from the database. This is not end-to-end encryption: the sync service decrypts your data to hand it back to your signed-in devices. We use synced data only to keep your devices in sync.
Words for your work
On your account page on this website you can describe your line of work and get suggested dictionary words. What you type, together with the words already in your dictionary, is sent to OpenRouter, which runs a Google Gemini model, on our key; the site reads your synced dictionary through the sync service to do this, and adds the words you pick to it. We don’t keep what you typed or what came back. We keep only a record of when each request was made, to limit how many requests an account can make per day. The apps offer the same suggestions; there, the request goes from your device to OpenRouter on your own key, or with Pro through our gateway to Google Gemini.
Updates and this website
Copies of the Mac app downloaded from this website check it about once a day for a newer version. That check carries no account or personal information. This website uses no analytics, no advertising and no tracking cookies; the only cookies it sets are the ones that keep you signed in. Like any website, its host may keep standard request logs, such as IP address and browser type, for running and securing the service.
Who handles your data for us
- Vercel hosts this website.
- Neon hosts our database, which holds the account records and the encrypted Cloud Sync data, and runs sign-in.
- DigitalOcean runs the sync service and the Pro gateway.
- OpenRouter, with a Google Gemini model, answers word suggestions on this website.
- Soniox and Google (Gemini) transcribe and clean up Pro dictations, on our account with them.
- Stripe takes website payments; Apple takes App Store payments.
- Apple and Google handle sign-in when you choose them.
On your own API keys, the speech and language providers work for you, under your account with them, not on our behalf.
What we don’t do
We show no ads, don’t track you across other companies’ apps or websites, and don’t sell or share your data with data brokers or advertisers. We don’t use your voice or your words to train any model.
Keeping and deleting your data
We keep your account and synced data for as long as you have an account. You can delete your account at any time in the Mac app, in the iPhone app, or on your account page. Deletion happens immediately: it erases your account, all synced data, your list of signed-in devices and your word-suggestion records, and asks Apple to end Sign in with Apple for the app. Deleted data may linger in our database provider’s short-term recovery history until it is overwritten. What the app stores on your device stays there until you delete it or remove the app. Data a speech or language provider holds is governed by that provider’s policy.
Children
peta Whisper is not directed to children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export or delete your personal information. Your account page shows what we hold and lets you delete it; for anything else, contact us.
Changes
If this policy changes, we will post the new version here with a new effective date.
Contact
Questions or requests about your data: email peta@hookova.com.