Privacy Policy
In short: Whimbrel collects nothing. It turns your speech into text on your phone. Your voice and your words never leave the phone, there are no accounts, and there is no advertising, analytics or tracking.
1. Information Whimbrel Collects
None. Whimbrel has no sign-in and no server of its own. We never receive your recordings, your text, or anything that identifies you, and we have no record that you have installed the app.
2. Your Voice and Your Words
Speech is turned into text by a model that runs on your phone, which is why Whimbrel works in airplane mode. Your voice is never sent anywhere, and neither is the text it becomes.
What you keep in Whimbrel, your notes and any recordings, is stored in the app's private storage on your phone, which only Whimbrel can read. It leaves the phone only when you export or share it yourself, as plain text. When you dictate into another app, Whimbrel types your words into that app, and what happens to them there is up to that app.
3. Internet Access
Whimbrel uses the internet for one thing only: downloading its speech models. That download carries no audio and no text. Like any download, it shows the server that hosts the models your IP address.
4. Permissions
Whimbrel asks for the microphone, and uses it only while you dictate. While it listens it runs as a foreground service, as Android requires, and on Android 12 and later the status bar shows the microphone indicator. It does not ask for your location, contacts, camera, photos, files or call history.
5. Purchases
Anything you buy in Whimbrel is processed entirely by Google Play. We never receive, see or store your name, billing address, card number or any other payment details: the app only asks Google Play whether this device owns the purchase. Google handles payment information under the Google Privacy Policy.
6. No Advertising, Analytics, or Tracking
Whimbrel contains no advertisements, no analytics or crash-reporting services, and no third-party tracking software. Nothing you say or do in the app is measured, profiled or reported.
If you have chosen to share usage and diagnostics data with Google on your phone, Google Play may show us a report when Whimbrel crashes: the app's version, the phone's model and Android version, and where in the app the crash happened. Those reports do not include your recordings or your text.
7. Backups and Deleting Your Data
Whimbrel's data is not included in Android's backup to your Google account. Uninstalling Whimbrel deletes everything it stores, so export anything you want to keep first.
8. Children's Privacy
Whimbrel is not directed at children under 13, and it collects no data from anyone.
9. Your Data Rights
Privacy laws such as the GDPR and CCPA give you rights to access, correct, or delete personal data a company holds about you. We hold none from Whimbrel, so there is nothing for us to return or erase: what the app stores stays on your phone, where you can export or delete it. Records of a purchase are held by Google Play, and can be managed through your Google account.
10. Email
If you email us, we receive your email address and whatever you send, through our email provider, Proton, which handles it under the Proton Privacy Policy. We use your email address only to answer you, and we never add you to a mailing list.
11. Changes To This Policy
If this policy changes, the revised version will be posted at this address with a new date.
12. Contact
Questions about this policy or about privacy in Whimbrel: