Privacy Policy

The short version

Calliope records and transcribes speech entirely on your iPhone or iPad. Your recordings and their transcripts are written to your device and stay there. The guess of a file’s language when you import one is made on your device too, by a model built into the app. Summaries, key points and flashcards are different: on iOS 27 they can be made on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, which means the text of a transcript — never the audio — goes to Apple to make what you asked for and is deleted once it comes back. That happens only with your permission, which the app asks for before any text is sent; say no and it is made on your device instead. There is no Calliope account and no Calliope server. Jules Le Prince, who makes Calliope (“we”), never receives your audio, your text, or any information about how you use the app: what goes to Apple goes to Apple, and never through us.

Summaries, key points and flashcards on Apple’s servers, with your permission

What is sent, and to whom. When you create a summary, key points or flashcards on iOS 27, Calliope can send the text of that transcript — never the audio, never anything else — to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, Apple’s own servers for Apple Intelligence, reached through iOS. They read a whole long transcript at once and do this far better than your device can.

Only with your permission. Before any text is sent, the app asks you: it says what would be sent, to whom, what for and what becomes of it, and you choose Use Apple’s Servers or This Device Only. Until you allow it, the app asks every time you create one; say no, and that one is made on your device, which can take a transcript of up to about ten minutes. Your answer is a switch in Calliope’s Settings › Summaries, Key Points and Flashcards › Use Apple’s Servers, which you can turn off at any time; off, the app asks again next time. On iOS 26 there are no such servers and nothing is sent. The app also says where each one is being made while it is made.

What it is used for, and how it is protected. The text is used for one thing: to make the summary, key points or flashcards you asked for, which come back to your device and are kept there. Apple states that Private Cloud Compute uses the data “for the sole, exclusive purpose of fulfilling the user’s inference request”, keeps it “only until the response is returned”, deletes it afterwards with “no user data retained in any form”, and that it “is never available to Apple — even to staff with administrative access”. It never passes through us: there is still no Calliope server.

What is stored, and where

• Recordings. The audio you record or import, as .m4a files in Calliope’s own folder on your device.
• Transcripts, summaries, key points and flashcards. Text, in a database on your device.
• Titles, folders and settings. The same place.

All of it sits inside the app’s container on your device. Deleting a recording deletes its audio and its text together. Deleting the app deletes everything at once. We cannot reach any of it, before or after — there is no copy anywhere else.

Calliope does not sync through iCloud. If you back up your device, to iCloud or to a computer, that backup includes Calliope’s files along with every other app’s, under your own Apple Account and Apple’s encryption. That backup is yours and Apple’s; it is not ours, and we have no access to it.

What the app asks permission for

• Microphone. To record. Asked the first time you record, and used at no other time.
• Speech recognition. To turn speech into text. That recognition runs on the device itself.
• Apple’s servers (optional, iOS 27). To send a transcript’s text to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute for a summary, key points or flashcards, as described above. Asked each time until you allow it, and changeable in Calliope’s Settings.
• Notifications (optional). One local notification, to tell you a long import has finished transcribing while you were in another app. Local means composed by your device and shown by your device; it passes through no server.

You can withdraw any of these at any time in Settings › Calliope, and the rest of the app carries on without them.

When anything touches the network

Calliope makes no network requests of its own. Three things reach Apple, all through iOS rather than through us:

• Summaries, key points and flashcards. On iOS 27, and only once you have allowed it, the text of a transcript goes to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute to make them, as described above; without your permission, or when those servers cannot, they are made on your device.
• Speech models. The first time you transcribe in a given language, iOS downloads that language’s speech model from Apple. That is a model arriving on your device. Your audio does not leave it.
• The App Store. If you buy Calliope Pro, Apple handles the purchase, as it does for every app.

There is nothing else. The language of an imported file is guessed by a model from Desert Ant Labs that is built into the app and runs on your device; no request is made and nothing is reported. No analytics, no crash reporting service, no advertising, no tracking, no identifier for advertisers, and no third-party SDK that reports anything anywhere.

Calliope Pro

Calliope Pro is a one-time purchase sold by Apple through the App Store. Apple processes the payment and holds the transaction. We never see your name, your payment details or your Apple Account. Calliope asks iOS one question — whether this Apple Account has bought Calliope Pro — and gets back yes or no. Apple’s privacy policy covers that side of it.

Sharing is yours to do

Exporting a recording or a transcript hands the file to the iOS share sheet, and it goes where you send it — Mail, Files, another app. What happens to it there is governed by that app or service, not by this policy. Calliope sends nothing on its own initiative.

Children

Calliope is not directed at children, and it collects no data from anyone — children included.

Your rights

The GDPR, the UK GDPR, the CCPA and laws like them give you rights — access, correction, portability, deletion — against whoever holds your personal data. We hold none of yours, so there is nothing for us to produce, correct or erase. Your data is on your device, where you can already read it, rename it, export it through the share sheet, and delete it.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the new version appears on this page under a new effective date, and anything material about it goes in the App Store release notes as well.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or about anything on this page: [email protected].