Privacy Policy

Last updated 4 August 2026 · supersedes the version of 23 July 2026 · applies to SongCatcher for iPhone

What stays on your phone

Every song you catch is a row in a database on the device itself. That includes the song's title and artist, when you heard it, the lyrics once fetched, the written meaning and translation, any place you recorded, and the note you wrote.

None of it is uploaded, synced or backed up to us. There is no account to sign into and no copy of your library anywhere else. If you delete the app, it is gone. If your phone is backed up to iCloud, your library is included in that backup, which is Apple's system and governed by Apple's terms rather than ours.

The microphone

While a listening session is running, the app records into a short rolling buffer in memory — a few seconds at a time, continuously overwritten.

• Audio is never written to storage. Not on your phone, not on our server, not anywhere.
• Apple's ShazamKit tries first and matches on the device, without sending audio anywhere.
• If that can't place the song, a few seconds of audio are sent to ACRCloud for fingerprint or melody matching. ACRCloud receives audio and nothing else — no identifier for you, no location, no library.
• iOS shows the orange microphone indicator the entire time a session is running. When you stop, recording stops.

Location

Location is off by default and does nothing until you turn it on in Settings.

With it on, each catch is stamped with where you were. The coordinates are used for two things and stay on the device for both: turning the position into a place name, and opening that spot in Maps if you tap it. Turning coordinates into a place name uses Apple's geocoding service, which means the coordinates are sent to Apple for that lookup — the same as any app that shows an address. They are not sent to us.

Places already recorded stay on their songs when you turn the setting back off.

Our server

SongCatcher runs one small service that sits between the app and the paid services it uses, so that no third-party key has to ship inside the app. It holds as little as it can:

The service keeps no request logs tying songs to devices, stores no audio, and stores no lyrics.

Sharing a song

Sharing is entirely optional and nothing is published unless you tap Share. When you do, the app shows you exactly what the page will contain and lets you switch each item off first.

• Always included: the song's title, artist and cover art.
• On by default, switchable off: the date, the neighbourhood or city, and a short excerpt of the written meaning.
• Off by default: your own note. It is only ever published if you switch it on for that share.
• Never included, and not possible to include: song lyrics, and your street address or coordinates. The service has no field for either, so no version of the app can send them.

A shared page is public to anyone holding the link — it is not listed or indexed by search engines, but a link can be forwarded. Shared pages are deleted after about a year.

Other services the app talks to

To fill in a song, the app sends the smallest thing that will do the job — usually just a title and artist.

Each has its own privacy policy covering what it does with what it receives.

What there isn't

• No analytics. No usage statistics, no crash reporting service, no event tracking.
• No advertising, and no advertising identifier is read.
• No third-party SDKs. The app is built from Apple's own frameworks and code written for it.
• No tracking across apps or websites. The app's privacy manifest declares this to Apple, and you can verify it on the App Store listing under App Privacy.
• No selling or sharing of personal information, because none is collected.

Children

SongCatcher isn't directed at children under 13 and knowingly collects nothing from them. Since it collects no personal information from anyone, this holds for every listener.

Your control

• Delete a song, or your whole caught library, from inside the app.
• Turn location off at any time in Settings, or revoke it in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security.
• Revoke microphone access in iOS Settings; recognition stops working, nothing else is affected.
• Disconnect Spotify or SoundCloud in Settings.
• Uninstalling deletes everything held on the device.

To have a shared page taken down, or to ask anything about this policy, email guy_merin@outlook.com — include the link.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, the date at the top changes with it and previous versions remain in the app's public repository history.

What changed on 4 August 2026

• Sharing was added, and with it the first thing SongCatcher publishes anywhere. The “Sharing a song” section above describes what a shared page can and can't contain.
• A correction. The previous version said the written meaning was generated from a song's title and artist. It is in fact generated from the song's lyrics as well — that is what makes it a reading of the song rather than a guess from the name. The section above now says so. Nothing about the app's behaviour changed; the earlier description was simply incomplete.
• Cover-art lookup (Apple's iTunes Search) and the optional Spotify and SoundCloud connections are now listed among the services the app talks to.