Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-10-16

Tingdong is a live interpretation app that listens all day, so privacy has to be stated in hard terms. This page describes what we actually collect, where it goes, and how long it stays.

Audio: processed live, never stored

• While interpreting, audio streams in real time to a third-party speech-recognition provider (based in the United States) for transcription and translation. Audio passes through memory only — neither we nor the provider store recordings.
• Capture happens only after you explicitly start a session and stops the moment you stop it. A persistent indicator stays visible in the app and the menu bar for the whole capture.
• Call mode must hear audio rendered by system processes such as FaceTime and Phone. While a call-mode session is active, it therefore reads all system audio currently playing on this Mac, excluding Tingdong's own translated speech. That audio is likewise processed in memory only and is never stored.
• Captions and transcripts are stored locally on your Mac only, deletable any time, never uploaded.

Account & purchases

• Membership is keyed to a license. We store: the license key, subscription status, your email (for web purchases), and one randomly generated anonymous identifier per device.
• Web purchases are processed by Stripe; Mac App Store purchases by Apple and RevenueCat. We never see or store your card details.
• Usage is metered as per-minute credit counts (to enforce quotas) — numbers only, never content.
• If you ask Apple for a refund on a Mac App Store purchase, Apple asks us about that purchase. Through RevenueCat we answer with whether the purchase was delivered to your device and that a free trial is available before buying. No recordings, no captions, and nothing about what you translated or for how long. We do not tell Apple whether to grant or refuse the refund — that is Apple's decision. By purchasing through the Mac App Store you consent to us giving Apple this information for the purpose of handling your refund request.

What we don't do

• No recording is ever stored or replayed;
• No ads, no third-party tracking SDKs, no selling of any data;
• No screen contents are captured — the system-audio permission is used to read sound only.

Performance and crash numbers

The app sends anonymous performance and crash numbers: for each session its length (sent in seconds; we round it to the minute before storing), delay, disconnects and audio interruptions, and why it stopped; and counts of crashes, hangs and resource exceptions, with crash type codes. They carry the app's version, build number and edition (Mac website version, Mac App Store version, or Windows). The Windows app sends only the per-session numbers, plus, when a capture cannot run, which one (microphone or computer audio) and why (no device, access turned off, would not start, lost), counted by week: no crash numbers and none of the usage details below. The app does not send your words, audio, subtitles, license key or any device identifier, and we store these numbers without your IP address. They are kept by date only, with no time of day, and deleted after 180 days.

At the end of each session the app also sends how it was used: the audio source (room, Mac audio, both, or a call); whether a second display or mirroring was connected; how long the big-screen subtitles were open; whether the external-display prompt appeared and whether you accepted or dismissed it; and the subtitle display mode, text size and subtitle window height at the end. We keep these only as weekly counts: big-screen time only as "not opened / under 10 minutes / 10 minutes or more", session length only as "under 10 minutes / 10–30 minutes / 30 minutes or more", never stored with a session's exact length or any identifier, and deleted after 180 days. The App Store version also counts, per week, how many times it asked you for a rating and how many times its two “Rate Tingdong” links (in the menu and in Settings) were clicked; these too are kept only as counts with no identifier, and deleted after 180 days.

Retention & deletion

License and usage records are kept for up to 12 months after a subscription ends (tax and reconciliation), then deleted. Email hi@tingdong.app any time to request deletion of all data related to you.

Contact

GREP ADVISORY PTE. LTD. · hi@tingdong.app