Your data is yours

Local-first

On Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android, Sayable can transcribe speech, write AI summaries and tell the speakers apart using models that run on the device itself. In local mode, the audio never leaves the device, and neither do the transcripts and summaries of your meetings. The meetings are only stored on the device, and none of it goes to the cloud or to a third party unless you move or share a meeting yourself. You decide for yourself whether to use the cloud for speed and long meetings. On the Mac you can also choose transcription and text AI separately, under Advanced in the settings. If you choose local transcription with text AI in the cloud, which the app shows as “Local, text AI in the cloud”, the audio stays on the Mac, but the text goes to the text AI in the cloud, the same one as in cloud mode: the dictation to be tidied up, and the transcript when the summary is made or you ask about the meeting. If you have Sayable Local and have added your own OpenAI key, the text goes straight to OpenAI instead.

There is one exception you choose yourself: if you have Sayable Local, you can add your own API keys, in the Mac app with OpenAI, Gladia or xAI (Grok), and in the Windows and iPhone apps with OpenAI or Gladia. The audio or the text then leaves the device and goes straight to the provider you have chosen, under your own agreement with them and without going through Sayable's servers. Gladia is based in the EU, OpenAI and xAI in the USA. Gladia and xAI are only used for transcription. OpenAI can be used both for transcription, on the Mac also for live text, and for text AI: summaries, chat and insights, and on the Mac tidying up dictation. When you dictate on the Mac, the words in your dictionary are sent along to OpenAI and xAI. The app asks Gladia to delete the audio and the text once the text has come back, and tries again later if that did not work. At OpenAI and xAI their own storage rules apply. The keys are only stored on your device and are never sent to us. Where the meeting is stored follows your choices as usual, and without Pro, Team or Cloud for Local it is only stored on the device.

If you are signed in, some things still reach your account in local mode. The words in your dictionary are synced between your devices. Summary templates you create yourself are synced between your devices if you turn on syncing for the template, even when the cloud is locked: they are setup you create, not content from your meetings. In local mode, a new template stays on the device until you turn on syncing, and your choice of template for all meetings also stays on the device. Your notes are synced when note syncing is on. On the Mac and Windows it is on by default when you have the trial, Pro or Team, unless you have turned it off yourself. On iPhone and Android it is off in local mode, unless you have turned it on yourself. If you have Sayable Local without Pro, Team or Cloud for Local, the cloud is locked: your notes are then not synced, and in the Mac, Windows and Android apps neither is your dictionary, and “Ask the archive” and processing meetings in the cloud again are turned off. The apps report how many minutes you have transcribed. The Mac app and the phone apps tell your account whether they are recording, when the recording started and what the device is called, and the Mac app includes a random ID for the meeting. That way they know about each other and do not record the same meeting twice. If you dictate from the phone to the Mac, the text goes through the cloud to reach the Mac, but the audio stays on the phone, and the text is deleted from the cloud after about an hour. Meetings you already have in the cloud stay there, and what you do with them, such as edits and questions, goes to the cloud as before.

When the speakers are told apart, the voices are computed while the meeting is being processed, and they disappear with the job. We store no voiceprints, and voices from one meeting are never matched against another. The names you give the speakers are text you write yourself, and they stay with the meeting.

Live dictation on the phone, where the text appears while you speak, uses the speech recognition built into the phone: Apple's on iPhone, and the phone's own service on Android. It may send the audio to the provider of that service, depending on your settings there. In local mode, both apps only use recognition that happens on the phone itself.

What we collect

• Account: your email address, for signing in, for receipts and for messages about your account: help getting started during the trial, a notice when it ends, and a notice before the audio and video in the cloud are deleted after your subscription has ended. Signing in is passwordless, with a link or code sent by email. On the web and in the Mac, Windows and Android apps, the code and the link only work in the browser or on the device that asked for them, so others who see the email cannot use them. On the web this is held in a necessary cookie that lasts 15 minutes. You can opt out of the help emails; notices about your own account are sent regardless.
• Email from us: the links in newsletters, tips and other emails from us that are not about your account go through api.sayable.no, so we can see whether you click and on which link. We only store the first click per link and when it happened, never whether you opened the email (we use no tracking pixel). The clicks are deleted after twelve months, or when you delete your account. We also keep a log of which emails have been sent to you and whether they arrived, without the content, for twelve months or until you delete your account.
• Your meetings: recordings, transcripts and summaries of the meetings you put in the cloud, stored on your account. If your subscription ends, or a payment does not go through, the audio and video from your meetings in the cloud are kept for at least 30 days. Before they are deleted, you get three emails: when the countdown starts, when there are seven days left and when there are two days left, so you have time to download them. The transcripts and summaries stay on your account, and if you take up the subscription again before the deadline, nothing is deleted.
• Usage: how many minutes and how much storage you use, so we can handle quotas and subscriptions. The minutes you transcribe in local mode are counted too when you are signed in, but only the number is sent, never audio or text.
• Your surfaces: where you use Sayable from, for example the Mac or Windows app, the iPhone or Android app, or the browser, and when you first and last used each of them. We use this to show you what you have not connected yet, and to see how many people use each of our surfaces. Deleted with your account.
• Invitations: who invited you, who has created an account with your link, and whether a reward has been given. We use this to give the reward and prevent abuse. The person who invites only sees how many have created an account and how many have paid, never who. If you ask for a sign-in code from an invitation link before you have an account, we keep your email address with the invitation for at most a day. The rest is deleted with your account.
• How your account is used: to be able to follow up with our customers, we look at how active each account is. We count which days you have used Sayable, from which apps, and how many dictations you have made. Together with, among other things, the minutes, the storage, the number of meetings, notes and dictionary words, and what the account has paid, this gives a picture of the use over the last 7 and 30 days and an estimate of what the account costs us. For accounts in the trial, free accounts and accounts with Pro as a gift, we calculate a score for how likely the account is to become a paying one. For accounts that pay, we get a warning when the account looks like it is on its way out, for example when use drops sharply or the subscription has been cancelled. We use this to see who we should help get started or get in touch with, and nothing happens to your account automatically because of it. It never contains recordings, text or titles. The days are kept for 400 days, and everything is deleted with your account.
• Your calendar: only if you turn it on in the app. The app then reads the calendar on your device to show today's meetings, give the recording the right title and, on the phone, notify you when a meeting starts. The app never changes your calendar. The title of the meeting you record becomes the title of the recording, and is stored with the meeting on your account when the meeting is processed in the cloud. Location, notes and attendees are only read on the device and are never sent to us.
• The names of your devices: while the apps are in use, the Mac app and the phone apps send the name of the device to your account, meaning what you have called it, otherwise the model name. That lets the Mac show which phone is connected, and the phone which Mac. Only the latest name is stored, and it is deleted with your account.
• Payment: on the web, payment is handled by Stripe. If you buy Pro, Sayable Local or Cloud for Local in the iPhone app, Apple takes the payment, and in the Android app, Google does (see “Purchases in Google Play”). We never store your card number, and from Apple we get neither your card nor your Apple ID. For every payment, wherever you pay, we store the amount, the currency, when it was made and the ID with Stripe, Apple or Google, until you delete your account. For App Store purchases, the app sends us the purchase as Apple signed it, and we check it with Apple. We store Apple's ID for the purchase and for the latest transaction, the product, the dates of the purchase and of when the period ends, whether the subscription renews automatically, whether the purchase is active, expired or refunded, and whether it is a test purchase. Apple sends us notifications when something happens to the purchase, for example when a subscription renews, is cancelled, expires or is refunded, and we note which notification it was and when it arrived. If you cancel, we note when you cancelled and when the subscription ends. All of this is deleted with your account. If a purchase has been refunded, we still keep Apple's ID for the purchase and when the refund became known, with no link to you, so the purchase cannot be used again. Deleting your account does not stop an App Store subscription: you have to cancel it yourself, in Settings on your iPhone under your name and Subscriptions.
• Purchases in Google Play: if you buy Sayable Pro, Sayable Local or Cloud for Local in the Android app, Google takes the payment. We get neither your card, your name nor the email address of your Google account. When you buy, the app gives Google a random ID for your Sayable account, the same ID the account has with us, so the purchase can be linked to the right account. It is not your email address. After a purchase, the app sends us the purchase token from Google Play and which product the purchase is for, and when you tap “Restore purchases”, it does this for every Sayable purchase on the Google account. We look up the purchase with Google and acknowledge it there. From Google we store the purchase tokens, the product and whether it is monthly or yearly, when the period ends, whether the subscription renews automatically, whether the purchase is active, waiting on a failed payment, expired or refunded, whether it is a test purchase, and for Sayable Local when you bought it. For every payment we fetch Google's order ID, the amount you paid, the currency and when the payment was made. Google also tells us which country the purchase was made in, but we do not store that. Google sends us notifications through Google Cloud when something happens to the purchase, for example when a subscription renews, is cancelled, expires or is refunded. We then look up the purchase with Google again, and note which notification it was and when it arrived. If you cancel, we note when you cancelled and when the subscription ends. We keep this for as long as you have the account, and everything is deleted with the account. If a purchase has been refunded, we still keep the purchase tokens and when the refund became known, with no link to you, so the purchase cannot be used again. If you came to Sayable from an ad and turned on ad measurement on sayable.no before you created the account, we may report your first purchase to Google Ads or Meta, also when it was made in Google Play: the click ID, the time, a random ID from us, the amount and the currency, never your email address or anything about your Google account (see “Cookies on the website”). When the app connects to Google Play, to buy or to show the prices, Google Play Billing, Google's own code for purchases built into the app, may send technical information to Google about the phone, the app and how the purchase feature works. It does not go through us, and Google decides what is sent. Google processes the payment, your Google account and this information under Google's own privacy policy, and may process it on servers in other countries, including outside the EU/EEA. Deleting your account does not stop a subscription in Google Play: you have to cancel it yourself, in Google Play under the profile icon, Payments & subscriptions and Subscriptions, or with “Manage subscription” in the app before you delete the account.
• Feedback and error reports: what you write to us in the apps and on the web, and technical reports about errors and crashes. Crash reports from the Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android apps are only sent if you have said yes to it yourself. The browser extension and Sayable on the web send a report on their own when an unexpected error occurs, but we only accept it when you are signed in. Reports are linked to your account and contain the error message, app version, operating system and stack trace, from Windows the error log from the previous run, and from the browser which browser you use and where in Sayable the error happened. They never contain recordings or text. The Android and Windows apps also automatically send a short error message with no content when a call to our servers fails: which part of the service, the error code, app version and operating system. It is also linked to your account, and you can turn it off in the settings. Error and crash reports are deleted after 90 days. To find and fix errors faster, we sort them into groups: the reports from the apps, meetings that could not be processed, transcriptions that failed, and emails that did not arrive or were marked as spam. A group is only the type of error and the names of the functions in the code where it happened, never the error message or anything you have written or recorded. Each time an error happens, we note when, on which account and, when we know it, in which version. This is deleted after 180 days, and the link to the account is removed when you delete your account. The groups and how many times each error has happened are kept with no link to anyone.
• Booking meetings: if you book a walkthrough of Sayable with us on sayable.no, or we invite you to a meeting, we store your name and email address, the time, your time zone and language, and your company and what you write about what you want to go through, if you fill that in. We only use this to arrange and hold the meeting. You get a confirmation by email with a calendar file and a link where you can move or cancel the meeting, and, if you booked well ahead, a reminder the day before. Your name, email address, company and what you write in the form are also stored in our calendar in Microsoft Outlook (Microsoft 365), together with a Teams meeting for the appointment. If we add more participants to the same meeting, their names and addresses are there too. If your booking is cancelled, or you delete your account, you are taken out of the meeting in the calendar, and the meeting is deleted when nobody else is left in it. At the latest, it is deleted one year after the meeting. Microsoft processes this as our data processor. The information we hold is deleted one year after the meeting, or sooner if you delete your account.

Where the data is stored

Cloud recordings and transcripts are stored encrypted with Cloudflare R2 in the EU. The service is operated in Europe. Transfer always happens over an encrypted connection (TLS).

When local mode is off, you choose on Mac and Windows where new meetings are stored: only on the computer, both on the computer and in the cloud, or only in the cloud. If your account has cloud storage and you have not chosen anything, the meeting is stored in both places, so it is also on your phone and on the web. If you choose only in the cloud, the recording on the computer is deleted once the cloud has received everything. If your account has no cloud storage, for example because your subscription has ended, new meetings are stored only on the computer, even if you have chosen only in the cloud. If you choose only on the computer, the meeting is not stored on your account, but the audio is still sent to the cloud to be transcribed. The text then only stays with us for a short while, so the app can fetch it, and for at most a day. If the meeting is locked because the cloud quota has been used up, the text stays with us until the meeting has been unlocked and the app has fetched it, and then for at most two days. With Pro, Team or Cloud for Local, the meeting is unlocked automatically when a new month makes room in the cloud quota. Otherwise it is unlocked when you upgrade, and if it is still locked after 32 days, the text is deleted. In local mode, the choice does not apply: the meeting is then only stored on the computer, and it is not uploaded unless you move or share it yourself.

The browser extension

The extension only records when you start a recording yourself. It then captures the tab's video and audio, and your microphone, and uploads the recording to your account for transcription, together with the tab's title. While it records, it also tells your account that it is recording and when the recording started, and includes a random ID for the meeting, so the Mac app does not record the same meeting. It does not read other content on the pages you visit.

There is one thing the extension also does when you are not recording. As long as you are signed in and have a meeting open in Google Meet or Zoom, or Microsoft Teams open in the browser, it tells Sayable that a meeting is in progress. That lets your Mac app start recording as soon as you press the Sayable button in the meeting, and lets the phone app show that the extension is in use. Every 20 seconds the extension sends which of the three services the meeting is in, and the server notes the time. In between, it asks about once a second whether the Mac app is recording. The meeting's address, its title and who is taking part are not sent. Only the latest message is stored, and it is deleted with your account. This also happens if you do not have the Mac app, and it stops when the meeting tab is closed or you sign out.

The Windows app

You get the Windows app from the Microsoft Store or download it from sayable.no. When you record a meeting with it, it records the microphone and the PC's audio separately, and the screen, all of it or an area, only when you ask for it. So that you can hold the hotkey down while you dictate, the app uses a keyboard hook in Windows. It compares keystrokes with your hotkey and lets all other keys through, and it never stores or sends keystrokes.

Notifications

The phone apps can tell you when a summary is ready, when a meeting in your calendar starts, and while a recording is in progress. The Android app creates all notifications itself on the phone, without going through any notification service. The iPhone app gets some notifications through Apple's notification service, for example when a summary is ready or the Mac is recording. When the Mac is recording, we send the Mac's name there. The meeting title is only included if you have turned on “Show meeting title in notifications” yourself, which you will find under Privacy and storage in the Mac app; otherwise there is no title in the notification. The app gives us a notification key that is deleted with your account. You can turn notifications off in the phone's settings.

Shared summaries

You can share a meeting summary as a web page via a link. Sharing is entirely under your control: nothing is shared until you choose it, and by default only the summary is shared, never the transcript or the recording. If you explicitly choose to include the recording, the link covers audio and video too, and you confirm at the same time that the participants know about the sharing.

The links contain a random, practically unguessable key, the pages are marked so search engines stay away, and access to recordings is checked on every playback. You can withdraw a share at any time (“Stop sharing”), and the link then stops working. If you delete the meeting or the account, the share dies automatically.

Team archive

With a team account you can choose to share individual meetings to the team's shared archive. Sharing is always an active choice per meeting: nothing is shared automatically, and private meetings stay private. You decide whether the recording comes along, or only the summary.

The meeting stays yours: if you delete it, or leave the team, the share is withdrawn from the team archive automatically. The team owner and administrators can see who has shared what, but never have access to unshared meetings.

Subprocessors

We use a few trusted services to deliver the cloud features and the website. They process only what their task requires. The exceptions are Google Ads and Meta, which process what they receive from ad measurement under their own terms, and Meta may use it in its own advertising services (see “Cookies on the website”). Purchases in the App Store and Google Play are processed by Apple and Google under their own terms and privacy policies, which is why they are not in the table.

If you use local mode on Mac, Windows, iPhone or Android, none of the services for transcription or AI are involved in what you dictate or record. What you do with meetings that are already in the cloud goes to the cloud even in local mode. On iPhone and Android, chat, a new summary and insights for such meetings are then made by the cloud services; the Mac and Windows apps make them on the computer. If you ask the archive, the question goes to the cloud services. The models that run on the device are downloaded once from Hugging Face, and on Android and Windows also from GitHub; that is a software download, and neither audio, text nor account information is sent there. Your own API keys (see Local-first) are an agreement between you and the provider, which is why those providers are not in the table.

Cookies on the website

The cookie window on sayable.no asks about two things: statistics and ad measurement. You can accept all, choose necessary only, or turn statistics and ad measurement on separately under “Let me choose”. If you choose necessary only, or do not answer, none of the cookies below are set, and nothing is sent to Google Analytics, Google Ads or Meta.

The statistics are Google Analytics. They count visits and which pages are read, so we can see whether anyone actually reads this. They do not get your name or email address, and we do not sell them. With statistics only they are not shared; if you also turn on ad measurement, Google Ads may use them to measure the ads. The information may be transferred to the USA, under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. The cookies are called _ga and _ga_ followed by a code, and last for two years.

Ad measurement is Google Ads (Google Ireland Limited) and Meta (Facebook and Instagram, Meta Platforms Ireland), and it is only used when you have turned it on, or accepted all. They then learn whether you came here from an ad, which pages you view here, and whether you downloaded the app or went on to start for free. That is how we see which ads work. We do not let Google use this to tailor ads to you, but Meta may use it in its own advertising services, for example to choose which ads you see later. If you are logged in to Facebook or Instagram, Meta may link the visit to your account there. For the collection through the Meta pixel, A-JOB and Meta are joint controllers; what Meta does with the information afterwards is Meta's responsibility. The information may be transferred to the USA, under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.

The cookies on sayable.no are called _gcl_ and _gac_ followed by a code, from Google, and _fbp and _fbc from Meta, and last for 90 days, and Google also keeps the click ID in your browser's local storage (_gcl_ls). Google and Meta may also use their own cookies on their own domains, such as doubleclick.net and facebook.com.

With ad measurement on, our own cookie sayable_kilde also remembers where you came from, for 90 days: the ad, search engine or website that sent you here, the campaign, the click ID from the ad and the page you landed on. If you create an account, this is stored on the account. The click ID is removed from the account 90 days after the click, while the channel and the campaign stay until the account is deleted. When such an account is created, or pays for the first time, on the web, in the App Store or in Google Play, we may report it back to Google or Meta with the click ID, the time and a random ID from us, and for a purchase the amount and the currency, never your email address. If you answer “Where did you hear about Sayable?”, the answer is also stored on the account.

You can change your choice at any time with the “Cookies” link at the bottom of the page. Your choice is remembered in your browser's local storage (sayable-samtykke) and is not sent anywhere. If you withdraw your consent, the cookies are deleted: the ad cookies and sayable_kilde when you turn off ad measurement, and the statistics cookies when you turn off statistics. If you have created an account, the source is stored on the account. To withdraw your consent after the account has been created, go to Sayable on the web, Innstillinger (Settings), Konto (Account), and choose “Ikke meld kjøp til Google eller Meta” (do not report purchases to Google or Meta). The click ID is then removed, and we report nothing more. You can also write to hei@sayable.no.

Your rights

• Delete a single meeting, or your account, whenever you want.
• Download recordings and transcripts to take them with you.
• Ask for access to what we have stored about you.

How to delete your account, and what is kept

Contact

Questions about privacy? Write to hei@sayable.no. The data controller is A-JOB.

This is a plain-language summary of how we process data. It does not replace legal advice, and it is updated as the service develops.