Privacy Policy
Last updated: 1 October 2026
[x] This policy covers the website Local Transcriber (this site) and the free, open-source desktop app of the same name. In short: the app sends us nothing, the website uses no cookies and stores nothing on your device, and we never see your recordings or transcripts.
1Who is responsible (data controller)
Local Transcriber is a non-commercial, personal open-source project. No Data Protection Officer is appointed because the law does not require one for this activity.
2The website
2.1 Hosting and server logs
The site is hosted by Vercel Inc. (440 N Barranca Ave #4133, Covina, CA 91723, USA). When you open a page your browser sends technical data that every web server receives — IP address, date and time, the page requested, browser type and referring page. Vercel processes this on our behalf to deliver the site and keep it secure, and keeps it only for a short period under its own retention rules.
Legal basis: our legitimate interest in running a secure, working website (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
2.2 Visitor statistics and performance (Vercel Web Analytics and Speed Insights)
We use Vercel Web Analytics to count visits and Vercel Speed Insights to measure how fast pages load. Neither uses cookies or stores anything on your device. Vercel recognises a visit through a hash computed from the request, which changes every day and is discarded automatically, so you cannot be identified or followed across days or other sites. We only see aggregated figures: page views, referring sites, country, browser, operating system, device type and load-time metrics. When you click a download button, Web Analytics also records a “Download” event containing only the name of the file and which button on the page was used (for example, LocalTranscriber_1.2.0_macos_arm64.dmg from the recommended-download button), so we can count downloads per version and platform. It is counted the same cookieless, anonymous way as a page view.
Legal basis: our legitimate interest in understanding, in aggregate, how the site is used and keeping it fast (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can object at any time (section 6); blocking scripts from /_vercel/ in your browser also stops it.
2.3 Download list loaded from GitHub
To always show the newest version, the download section asks GitHub's public API (api.github.com) for the release list directly from your browser, and the download buttons point to files hosted by GitHub. GitHub therefore receives your IP address and browser data. GitHub, Inc. (USA) acts as an independent controller for these requests; see the GitHub Privacy Statement. We receive nothing from these requests; GitHub only publishes a public total of how many times each file has been downloaded, which we use to count downloads.
Legal basis: showing you the downloads you came for (Art. 6(1)(b) and 6(1)(f) GDPR).
2.4 Cookies and device storage
This site sets no cookies and writes nothing to your device's storage (no localStorage, no IndexedDB). That is why there is no cookie banner. Fonts, images and video are served from this site itself, not from third-party services.
2.5 Contacting us
If you email us, we use your address and message only to reply, and delete them when the conversation is finished unless we need to keep them for a legal claim. Legal basis: your request (Art. 6(1)(b)) and our legitimate interest in answering (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Issues and discussions you open on GitHub are public and governed by GitHub's terms.
3The desktop app
The app has no account, no analytics and no telemetry. Recordings, transcripts, summaries and settings are stored only on your computer. We do not receive any of it. The app connects to the internet only in these cases:
- Update check — on launch, and when you click “Check for updates”, the app reads a small file (
latest.json) from GitHub and, if you click Update & restart, downloads the new version from GitHub. GitHub sees your IP address. You can turn the launch check off in Settings → App → Updates. - Speech-model download — the first time you transcribe, the app downloads the speech model you chose from Hugging Face (
huggingface.co), which sees your IP address. - Integrations you switch on — GitLab, calendar (CalDAV, Microsoft 365/Graph, Exchange EWS) and remote LLM endpoints. They are off by default and send text (never audio) only to the servers you configure, under your agreement with those providers. We are not involved in, and have no access to, that data.
Passwords and tokens you enter for integrations are stored locally on your computer.
4Recipients and international transfers
The only service provider processing data for us is Vercel (hosting, statistics, performance). Vercel is based in the USA; transfers rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and/or the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses included in Vercel's Data Processing Addendum. GitHub and Hugging Face receive requests directly from your browser or app as independent controllers. We do not sell or share data with anyone else, and we do not use it for advertising or profiling.
5Retention
Server logs and aggregated statistics are kept by Vercel only as long as its retention rules provide. Emails are kept as described in 2.5. We hold no other personal data.
6Your rights
You can ask for access to, correction or deletion of your personal data, restriction of processing, data portability, and you can object to processing based on legitimate interest — by emailing grzessierocki@gmail.com. We answer within one month. Because we hold almost no data that identifies you, we may need details (such as the date and time of your visit) to find anything at all.
If you think we have not respected your rights, you can complain to the Spanish data-protection authority, the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD), or the authority in your own EU country.
7Children
The site and app are not directed at children under 14, and we do not knowingly collect their data.
8Changes
If what we collect changes, we will update this page and the date at the top. The full history of this page is public in the site's source repository.