Privacy policy

1. Scope

This policy covers the Tonebox website at tonebox.io, the Tonebox macOS and iPhone apps, and the Tonebox account and sync service. It does not cover third-party services you choose to connect from inside the app (e.g. Anthropic, OpenAI, or a self-hosted Ollama instance), which have their own policies.

2. The macOS app

Tonebox is local-first. Recordings, transcripts, summaries, and the local search/embedding index are stored in a folder on your Mac. The default location is ~/Library/Application Support/Tonebox, configurable in Settings. The app:

• Does not require an account, login, or email address.
• Does not send usage metrics or crash reports unless you opt into each channel separately.
• Does not check for updates against a remote server unless you click "Check for updates."
• Runs Whisper transcription, diarisation, and the local embedding index on-device. Nothing is shipped to a server for those steps.

Tonebox makes outbound requests for features you enable or use, including encrypted sync, update checks, integrations, cloud transcription, LLM calls, Cloud agents, and optional crash reporting. When you summarise a session or ask a question, Tonebox sends the relevant transcript snippets directly to the provider you configured, such as Anthropic, OpenAI, or your own Ollama endpoint.

Conversation insights is off by default. If you turn it on, Tonebox uses the transcripts already on your Mac to work out who spoke in each meeting, for how long, and how. It also builds an overall profile from those numbers. If you use sync, each meeting's statistics travel inside that meeting's end-to-end encrypted sync copy to your other devices, so they do not have to work them out again. They are never included for a meeting in a shared project. The overall profile is never synced and stays on the Mac that built it. A separate switch, "Let AI explain my speaking numbers", sends those statistics to the AI provider you configured, never transcript text or meeting titles. Turning Conversation insights off on a Mac deletes everything it created on that Mac and stops that Mac sending the statistics. Your other Macs keep their copies until you turn it off there too.

If you mark people as peer or senior to split your talk share by who was in the room, that label is your own private note. It travels only inside your end-to-end encrypted sync to your other devices and is never shown to the person it describes.

Cloud agents (Settings → MCP → Cloud agents) is off by default. When you enable it and issue a credential, your Mac keeps a connection to the Tonebox relay at api.tonebox.io. A cloud agent holding that credential can reach your Mac through the relay. Requests and results are end-to-end encrypted between that agent and your Mac: the relay cannot read them or your library.

The relay does see metadata: which credential connects to which Mac, when, and the size and timing of encrypted messages. It stores each credential's label, expiry, last-used time and a hash of its relay secret, never the secret itself or message content. Revoking a credential on your Mac cuts the agent off even if the relay is unreachable. The agent can read the data its scope permits your Mac to return; its provider's own privacy policy applies to that data.

Anonymous usage metrics are also off by default. If you enable them, Tonebox sends only four event types: app launched with its version, recording finished with its length in whole minutes, transcription failed with a fixed failure category, and dictation inserted with a character count. A random installation ID distinguishes installations without using an account or hardware identifier. No recording, transcript, title, task text, project name, file name, or text you typed is included. Turning the switch off drops queued events and deletes that random ID.

Crash and error reporting is off by default and has its own switch. If you enable it, the app sends crash details, stack traces, its release and build, and limited operational error fields to Tonebox's self-hosted Crashbox service. Reports exclude recordings, transcripts, summaries, notes, task text, screenshots, account identifiers, and IP addresses. Tonebox does not use this channel for usage analytics.

3. The iPhone app and sync service

The normal sync path encrypts recordings, transcripts, notes, and tasks on your device before upload. Tonebox's sync service stores ciphertext and cannot read that library content.

Transcription is a separate operation. Once an iPhone is paired, it sends a recording over TLS to the authenticated Tonebox API, which streams it to the configured speech worker and returns the transcript. This transfer is encrypted in transit but is not covered by library end-to-end encryption because the worker must read the audio. The API does not keep a durable file, database, object-storage, or queue copy. If transcription fails, the phone retains the original and retries it. Sending recording audio over cellular or Low Data Mode remains under the phone's Settings.

Crash reporting on the phone is off by default and independent of the Mac switch. If you enable it in Settings → About, the phone sends the crash, stack trace, app release and build, and limited failure details to Crashbox. It does not attach recordings, transcripts, task text, screenshots, account identifiers, or IP addresses.

4. The website

The Tonebox marketing site is statically rendered, served over HTTPS, and (at launch) carries no analytics SDK and no third-party cookies. We may add privacy-respecting analytics (server-side or without cookies) later. If we do, this section will say so before they go live.

When reporting is enabled for a deployed website, admin site, API, or background service, operational errors can be sent automatically to Tonebox's self-hosted Crashbox service. A report can include the error type and message, time, release, build, environment, affected route or operation, stack trace, and the deployed browser frame URL and SDK/platform metadata needed to de-minify that stack. Request and account data, recordings, transcripts, summaries, notes, task text, screenshots, email addresses, credentials, tokens, and IP addresses are excluded. Crashbox is used for reliability and security response, never product analytics or behavior tracking.

5. Contact form & early-access waitlist

If you submit the contact form, the message body, your name, and your email address are stored in our support system so we can reply. We retain those records for as long as needed to resolve your request, plus a small archive window (12 months) for follow-up.

If you join the early-access waitlist, we store the email address you give us (plus the optional name and use-case note) solely to send your invite and essential early-access updates. It is never sold, shared, or used for marketing beyond that. You can ask us to delete either record at any time at [email protected].

6. Cookies

The site does not set tracking cookies. We may use a strictly technical, first-party session cookie if needed for forms or rate limiting, never for advertising or cross-site tracking.

7. Children

Tonebox is not directed at children under 13 (or 16 in the EU/UK) and we do not knowingly collect data from them.

8. Your rights

Delete local data with the controls in each app. You can delete your Tonebox account and its synced ciphertext from Settings. For website, contact, or account-data requests, write to [email protected] and we'll handle them within 30 days.

9. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll update the effective date at the top and post the diff in the GitHub repository so you can audit what changed.

10. Contact

Questions, requests, or disclosures: [email protected]. Security issues should go to [email protected].