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Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 26, 2026

In short: kilde runs entirely on your Mac. Your recordings are written to your own disk and are never sent to us or anyone else. Transcription (macOS 26 or later) runs on your Mac too — your audio and the transcript text are never sent anywhere; the only connection it adds is downloading the transcription language model from Apple when that language's model is not yet on your Mac (the system manages these models and may remove unused ones, so the download can happen more than once). The menu bar app measures anonymous usage statistics (such as launches, app and macOS version) with Google's Firebase Analytics and sends a crash report with Firebase Crashlytics when it crashes, and never your recordings or settings; apart from that model download, the kilde command-line tool sends nothing at all. This website uses Google Analytics to count page views, configured so that it stores no cookies on your device and cannot recognise you across visits.

1. Scope of this policy

This policy explains how personal data is handled in connection with kilde, an open-source screen and audio recorder for macOS, and with this website (kilde.site). It covers two separate things:

• the kilde command-line tool and menu bar application that you install and run on your own Mac, and
• the website you are reading now.

kilde is distributed under the MIT License. This policy describes the software as it is published by the kilde project; if you build or modify it yourself, or obtain it from a third party, the behavior described here may not apply.

2. The kilde application

Your recordings and settings are never collected

kilde never collects, transmits or sells your recordings or your settings. It has no user account, no sign-in and no advertising, and there is no kilde server for it to contact.

Transcription runs on your Mac (macOS 26 or later)

The transcription feature writes a recording's audio to text as sidecar files (markdown, SRT, VTT, plain text or JSON) next to the recording. It runs entirely on your Mac, using the speech recognition built into macOS:

• Neither your audio nor the transcript text is ever sent — not to kilde, not to Apple, not to anyone.
• The transcript is written only to sidecar files next to the recording.
• No separate Speech recognition permission is needed.
• If the language model for the language you transcribe is not on your Mac, kilde downloads it from Apple. The system manages these models and may remove one that has not been used in a while, so this download can happen more than once. It transfers only the model itself — your audio and transcript text are not sent (as with any network request, your IP address reaches Apple, which handles it under Apple's privacy policy).

Usage analytics in the menu bar app

The menu bar app (both the Mac App Store version and the directly distributed version) uses Google's Firebase Analytics to measure how the app is used. Versions 0.3.0 and earlier do not include it.

• What is sent: usage statistics such as app launches and how often the app is used, the app version, the macOS version, the device model, and a coarse region that Google estimates from your IP address. Firebase associates these with a random app-instance identifier that it generates; it is not your name, email, Apple ID or an advertising identifier.
• What is never sent: the content of your recordings (video, audio, file names, save locations) and your settings (hotkeys, output directory, audio sources and so on).
• Who sees it: the data is sent to Google's servers and processed under Google's privacy policy. The developer only sees aggregated statistics. Advertising features are disabled and the data is not used for advertising.
• How to turn it off: version 0.24.0 and later have a setting for this. In the menu bar panel, under "Privacy", uncheck "Send app usage statistics and crash reports" — this stops both usage statistics and crash reports immediately, and when the app is launched with the setting off, the analytics SDK is not initialized at all.
• The kilde command-line tool contains no analytics or crash reporting and sends nothing apart from transcription language-model downloads from Apple.

Crash reports in the menu bar app

When the menu bar app (both the Mac App Store version and the directly distributed version) terminates unexpectedly, it sends a crash report with Google's Firebase Crashlytics so that the developer can find and fix the bug. Versions 0.5.0 and earlier do not include it.

• What is sent: the stack trace at the time of the crash (where in the app it crashed), the app and macOS versions, the device model, device state such as free memory and disk space, the time of the crash, and a random identifier assigned to each installation of the app.
• When: the report is sent the next time you launch the app after a crash.
• What is never sent: the content of your recordings, file names, save locations and your settings.
• Who sees it: the report is sent to Google's servers and processed under Google's privacy policy. The developer uses it only to fix bugs.
• How to turn it off: the same "Privacy" setting (version 0.24.0 or later) stops crash reports immediately and deletes any reports still waiting on your Mac.

Other network access

• Mac App Store version: apart from the analytics and crash reports above, updates are delivered by the App Store.
• Directly distributed menu bar app (the kilde-<version>-macos.zip on GitHub Releases): to check for updates, the Sparkle update framework downloads the update feed from GitHub. As with any web request, GitHub receives your IP address and the app version; the developer does not. Sparkle asks whether to check automatically, and you can decline.
• Transcription language models (all distribution channels, macOS 26 or later): transcription runs on device, but if the model for the language you transcribe is not on your Mac, kilde downloads it from Apple. The system manages these models and may remove unused ones, so this can happen more than once. Only the model itself is transferred — your audio and transcript text are not sent (your IP address reaches Apple, which handles it under Apple's privacy policy).
• Command-line tool: apart from the transcription language-model download above, makes no network connections. When installed with Homebrew, updates happen only when you run brew upgrade.

What stays on your Mac

Data	Where it lives	Why
Recordings (video and audio files)	The output path you choose, or your configured output directory	They are the product of the tool. They are written directly to your local disk.
Settings	~/.kilde/config.json (or the directory set via KILDE_CONFIG_DIR)	Persistent recording defaults such as output directory, audio sources, codec and hotkey.
Monitor-mode state	monitor-state.json in the same directory	Lets kilde restore your audio device configuration after a monitored recording.
Recent recordings shown in the menu bar app	Read live from your output directory	Displayed in the panel so you can reveal a file in Finder. Nothing is copied elsewhere.
Transcripts (macOS 26 or later)	Sidecar files (markdown/SRT/VTT/text/JSON) next to the recording	Written by the on-device transcription feature. Sent nowhere.

You control all of this. Deleting a recording, editing the configuration with kilde config, or removing the ~/.kilde directory removes the data from your machine. Transcripts are separate sidecar files next to the recording, so delete them along with the recording if you no longer need them.

Recordings may contain personal data

A screen or audio recording can capture whatever is visible or audible at the time — faces, voices, names, documents, messages and other people's contributions to a meeting. kilde never sees or receives that content, but you become responsible for it once it is on your disk, including for obtaining any consent the law or your organization requires before recording. See the Terms of Service for more on that responsibility.

3. macOS permissions

macOS, not kilde, controls access to capture. kilde asks the system for the permissions it needs, and macOS asks you:

• Screen & System Audio Recording — required to capture a display or a window and the sound the system is producing.
• Microphone — required only when you record a microphone or another input device.
• Notifications — optional; used by the menu bar app to tell you a recording finished.
• Launch at login — optional; registered through the macOS SMAppService API when you enable it in the menu bar app.

These permissions are used only to perform the recording you asked for. You can review or revoke any of them at any time in System Settings → Privacy & Security. Running kilde doctor shows which permissions are currently granted.

4. This website

This site is a set of static pages. It sets no cookies, writes nothing to local storage, shows no advertising, and loads no third-party fonts.

Audience measurement

To understand how many people visit the site and which pages are useful, this website loads Google Analytics 4. It is deliberately configured in a privacy-preserving way:

• Client-side storage is disabled, so no analytics cookies and no local storage entries are created.
• Because there is no identifier, we cannot link your visits together or recognise you on a return visit.
• Google Signals, advertising features and ad personalisation are switched off, and ads data redaction is enabled. Your data is not used for advertising.
• IP addresses are anonymised by Google and are not available to us.
• The script is not loaded at all if your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal.

What we receive is aggregate, non-identifying: page URL and title, referring site, approximate country or city derived from the IP address, device type, browser and language, plus a few interaction signals -- how far down a page you scrolled, clicks on links that lead off this site, and downloads of files linked from it. We use it only to decide what to document and improve. It is never sold or shared for advertising. Google processes this data as described in Google's privacy policy; see also how Google Analytics uses data.

You can opt out entirely by enabling Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control in your browser, by installing the Google Analytics opt-out add-on, or by blocking googletagmanager.com with any content blocker. Nothing on this site depends on analytics, so blocking it does not affect how the site works.

Hosting

The site is hosted on Cloudflare. Like any web host, Cloudflare processes technical request data — such as your IP address, the requested URL, the time of the request, and your browser's user-agent string — in order to deliver the page and to protect the service from abuse. That processing is governed by Cloudflare's privacy policy. We do not use this data to identify or profile visitors.

Cloudflare also runs its own Web Analytics on this site, which counts page views at the edge. It sets no cookies, uses no client-side storage and does not fingerprint or track visitors across sites; it reports the same kind of aggregate figures described above. We run it alongside Google Analytics because it counts page views without any identifier at all, while Google Analytics adds detail such as which site a visit came from.

5. Third-party services

Some things you may do around kilde take you to services operated by other companies, each with its own privacy policy:

• GitHub — the source code, releases, issues and documentation are hosted on GitHub. Downloading a release, filing an issue or opening a pull request is subject to GitHub's privacy statement.
• Homebrew — installing via brew downloads release artifacts from GitHub. Homebrew's own behavior, including any analytics it performs, is governed by the Homebrew project, not by kilde.
• Google Analytics — used on this website only, in the cookieless configuration described in section 4. Processing is governed by Google's privacy policy.
• Firebase Analytics (Google) — used by the menu bar app to measure anonymous usage, as described in section 2. Processing is governed by Google's privacy policy and Firebase's privacy information.
• Firebase Crashlytics (Google) — used by the menu bar app to send crash reports, as described in section 2. Google keeps crash reports and their associated installation identifiers for 90 days and then starts removing them from its live and backup systems. Processing is governed by Google's privacy policy and Firebase's privacy information.
• Apple — on macOS 26 or later, the transcription feature downloads its language models from Apple whenever a language's model is not on the Mac (all distribution channels). Your audio and the transcript text are not sent; see section 2. Apple's handling is governed by Apple's privacy policy.

The kilde project does not receive personal data from these services beyond what any public repository owner can see, such as the GitHub account name attached to an issue or a pull request you choose to submit.

6. Your choices and rights

The kilde project holds no personal data about you that could be accessed, corrected, exported or erased: your recordings and settings never leave your Mac, and the app usage statistics the developer sees in Firebase are aggregated and cannot be traced back to an individual. Crash reports in Firebase Crashlytics are individual reports, but they are linked only to a random identifier assigned to each installation of the app — never to your name, email address or Apple Account — so the developer cannot tell whose Mac a report came from, and for the same reason cannot single out the reports from your Mac on request. After 90 days, Google automatically starts removing crash reports from its systems. If you do not want the menu bar app to send usage statistics or crash reports, turn them off in the app itself: the "Privacy" setting in the menu bar panel (version 0.24.0 or later) stops both immediately. The kilde command-line tool sends neither — its only network connection is the transcription language-model download. The data kilde produces is on your own machine and under your control, and you can remove it at any time. Website measurement is aggregate and contains no identifier that could be traced back to you, so there is nothing for us to look up on request — but you can stop it being collected at any time using the opt-out options in section 4.

If you contact the project — for example by opening a GitHub issue — the content of that message is public and is retained by GitHub for as long as the repository exists. Ask via the same channel if you would like something you posted removed.

7. Children

kilde is a developer tool and is not directed at children. No data is knowingly collected from anyone, including children.

8. Changes to this policy

This policy may change as the software changes. The current version is always published at this address, with the date at the top updated. Material changes will be noted in the project's release notes on GitHub.

9. Contact

Questions about privacy can be raised as an issue at github.com/kilde-team/kilde/issues. Please do not include sensitive personal data in a public issue.