Privacy and data
This page is the practical companion to the privacy policy. It describes what the software actually does with your data.
We don’t store your data. We can’t. Your recordings, transcripts and notes are kept on your machine, never with us; Recordist has no server that could hold them. We keep nothing about your meetings. We keep only the email you give us on a receipt or on one of our forms, and what each form says it stores.
Where your data lives
Your meetings and the app’s own files are inside one folder of your own. Settings → General shows its path, with a Show in Finder link. Inside:
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Meetings, transcripts, notes, action items, markers, templates, speaker names and the search index | One database file |
| Audio | One folder per meeting, with your microphone and the other participants as separate files |
| Transcription models you downloaded | A models folder |
| The built-in notes engine and its model | Their own folders |
| Preferences | A settings file. It holds no API keys, but it does hold any calendar feed addresses you added. |
API keys for a cloud AI provider, if you add one, are stored in your operating system’s keychain, not in this folder. So are a few small records, such as when the app was installed, when its trial started and how many AI notes the Free plan has written this month, so that a new data folder does not start a second trial or reset that count. The app’s log is kept outside it too, in ~/Library/Logs/app.recordist.desktop/; it contains no transcript text, but it can name meetings.
The exact paths on each platform are in the Developers section.
What leaves your machine
By default, nothing about your meetings. The list of what the app can send, and when, is short:
| Traffic | When | What is sent | How to stop it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Model downloads | During setup, when you pick another transcription model, and once for the built-in notes engine and its model | A download request; nothing about you | Untick the larger model during setup; other models download only when you pick one, and the notes engine only while the built-in engine writes your notes (Settings → AI notes) |
| Calendar feeds you add | Every five minutes while the app runs, except during a recording | A request for the feed address you entered; nothing about you | Remove the address in Settings → Detection → Calendar feeds |
| Update check | At launch and every six hours while the app runs | A request for one fixed file, with no identifier and nothing about you | Settings → General → Check for updates automatically |
| First-launch mark (from 1.0.3) | Once, with the first update check after you install the app | A request for one fixed address naming only the app’s version and the platform, such as a Mac with Apple silicon; no identifier | Sent once only, and never while Settings → General → Check for updates automatically is off or your organisation turns update checks off |
| First-step marks (from 1.0.7) | Once each, with an update check: your first call of a minute or more recorded, the Pro trial starting, the License screen opened | A request for one fixed address naming only the step, the app’s version and the platform; no identifier | Settings → General → Count first steps anonymously, or update checks off |
| Licence check | With each update check, only while a licence key is stored | A request to license.recordist.app; no key, licence id or account | Settings → General → Check for updates automatically, or remove the licence key (Settings → License → Deactivate on this machine; Deactivate on this device on Windows and Linux before version 1.0.7) |
| Automatic renewal (from 1.0.5, Pro subscriptions only) | With the update check: once when a subscription key is saved, then about once a day in the last days of each paid period, until the renewed key arrives | Once, the key with a one-way code of a random secret kept in your keychain; after that, only the key’s licence id and that secret, to license.recordist.app. The privacy policy says what is kept and for how long | Settings → General → Check for updates automatically; the renewal email still brings each key |
| Pro after you buy in the app (from 1.0.9) | Only after you open Pro checkout from the app: every few seconds for 15 minutes, then at launch, when you switch back to Recordist and about once an hour, until the key arrives or 24 hours pass | Only a random code the app made for that checkout, to license.recordist.app; the answer brings the key bought with it. The page the app opens carries only a one-way code made from it, which cannot collect the key; that one-way code can appear in our host’s standard server logs for up to 30 days and goes to Stripe with the order | It stops by itself once Pro is on; buy at recordist.app/pricing in your browser instead and the key comes by email only |
| Your email for the Pro key (from 1.0.10) | Only if you give it, when Recordist first opens or after the update; tried again while offline for up to 7 days | The address, a random code for this install, the platform, the app’s version, your time zone and which words you saw, to recordist.app. If you answer How did you hear about Recordist?, that one word, the platform and the version go on their own, as a count. Listed in the Privacy Ledger | Continue with Free (or Not now) instead of giving an address; your organisation can turn the ask off (managed settings) |
| Update download | From 1.0.9, by itself after a check finds a new version, never during a recording, while Install updates automatically is on (the default); otherwise when you choose to install an update | A download request; nothing about you | Settings → General → Install updates automatically, and a banner asks first; or Check for updates automatically off, and nothing is downloaded |
| Notes with your own key | Only if you chose a cloud AI provider | The transcript text of that meeting, its title and attendee names, the date of the meeting and your template, to that provider | Use the local model instead |
| Notes from your own Ollama on another machine | Only if you chose Ollama and set its address to another machine | The same meeting content, to that machine; the Privacy Ledger marks these requests Local network or Internet | Use the built-in engine, or an Ollama on this machine |
| Your organisation’s archive | Only on a Mac your organisation manages, after each meeting, when its settings name its own storage | That meeting’s record, with the audio as recorded, the transcript and the notes, to your organisation’s storage; never to us | Your organisation turns it on and off |
Apart from the first-launch mark and the three first-step marks above, each sent once with no identifier, and the address you choose to give for your Pro key, there is no tracking, no crash reporting and no analytics in the app. What happens to that address is in the privacy policy, section 3.2. This website counts page views without cookies or identifiers; the privacy policy says what is counted and who processes it.
The app also writes these requests to the Privacy Ledger (Settings → Privacy), with the destination, the size and the reason, so you can check the claim rather than take it on trust. It marks each request This machine, Local network or Internet (This Mac before version 1.0.4), and each request that can carry meeting content is written before it is sent, so one that fails still has its row. The Privacy receipt button there adds up the last 30 days or all time, including how many bytes of meeting content left your machine. A few kinds of request are not recorded yet; The Privacy Ledger, explained lists them, and none carries anything about your meetings. With the default setup the ledger shows the downloads, the update checks and the app’s requests to the notes engine on your own machine. The public version of this table is on the Trust Center.
Your AI agents
If you connect Claude Desktop, Cursor or another assistant, it reads your meetings through a connection that exists only on your own machine. Where that assistant then sends what it read is up to the assistant and its provider; the ledger records only what Recordist sends.
Encryption
- Audio and the database are ordinary files protected by your user account and, if it is on, by full-disk encryption (FileVault on macOS). We recommend turning FileVault on.
- Recordist does not add encryption of its own on top of that; FileVault is what protects these files at rest.
How long things are kept
Audio is deleted 30 days after a meeting by default (see Recording). Transcripts and notes are kept until you delete them.
Exporting
- One meeting as a document: Save as PDF and Save as Word, at the top of the More menu on a meeting (from version 1.0.3 on a Mac and 1.0.7 on Windows and Linux, where Save as PDF opens the print window), write a file note with the notes, their times, the notice to the others, the audio’s fingerprint and the transcript to the export folder. On a Mac, Share, beside the star, hands the Word file to the app you pick in the share menu, such as Mail, which sends it; Recordist sends nothing.
- One meeting: Export → Markdown, plain text, SRT, VTT or JSON, written to the export folder. The JSON file also includes lines the meeting window hides as a likely echo; the Markdown file leaves them out. Export to folder… saves the Markdown file in a folder you pick, such as an Obsidian vault. From version 1.0.10, Free exports Markdown, plain text and JSON and Pro adds PDF, Word, SRT and VTT; an install on Free made before 10 November keeps every format until 31 December.
- Everything: there is no single export of all meetings yet. The data folder holds everything, and you can copy it while the app is closed.
- Continuously: Settings → Privacy → Auto-export Markdown after each meeting writes a Markdown file per meeting to the export folder you set there, for Obsidian and other notes apps. It is off by default.
- Notion: Recordist has no Notion connection. In Notion, choose Import → Text & Markdown and pick the exported files.
The Markdown file starts with properties (title, date, start time, length, attendee names, tags and template), then the reminder to check against the recording, the notes, the action items as a checklist and the transcript. An export never replaces a file that is already there.
Deleting
- One meeting: Delete meeting… in the meeting’s … menu removes it from the database and deletes its audio.
- All your meetings: Settings → Privacy → Delete all my data removes every meeting, transcript, note and audio file, the copies of the database the app set aside before upgrades or after a repair, the exports in the data folder and the Privacy Ledger. Your settings, templates, downloaded models, the notes engine, your licence, your API keys and the log stay, and the app keeps running. The log can still name past meetings.
- Everything: Settings → Privacy → Remove everything and quit also removes your own templates, the downloaded models, the notes engine, your settings, the licence, the API keys in the keychain and the app’s log files, switches off launch at login and quits. Some things remain even after you then drag the app to the Trash: the data folder with the emptied database, which keeps the built-in templates and the date the Privacy Ledger was emptied; the app’s small records in the keychain, such as when its trial started; the log folder; small macOS folders for the app’s window; the permissions you granted; exports you saved to a folder of your own; and the gateway’s npm cache if you used it. How to delete everything lists each one and how to remove it.
- Without opening the app: delete the data folder, the log folder and the app itself, then remove the
app.recordist.desktopentries from Keychain Access. How to delete everything has the steps.
What we hold, and how to delete that
If you bought a plan, we hold your email, the plan and the payment records; tax law requires keeping transaction records for a period. If you used a form on this site, we hold what you typed. If you gave an address for your Pro key, we hold it until a week after the last of three short notes, never longer than 30 days, and then only a one-way code of it (privacy policy, section 3.2); “This wasn’t me” in the key email or any of the three notes deletes it at once. Email privacy@recordist.app and we delete what we legally can within 30 days. Nothing from inside the app was ever with us to delete.