Privacy — Audient

Scope

This section covers Audient for macOS. It does not cover the async-digital.com marketing site or any other Async Digital product — those have their own sections on the privacy hub.

Status. Audient is in development and is not yet available on the App Store. This policy describes the app's data handling as it currently stands, and is the URL that will accompany Audient's App Store submission when that happens. It is published ahead of submission so it is in place at the moment of review.

The description below matches the current build of Audient. If a future release changes how data is handled, we will update this section and record the change in the register of updates before that version ships.

The short version

Audient runs on your Mac. Your recordings, transcripts, and the data derived from them stay on your Mac. We do not receive them, and no third-party service receives them in the course of normal use.

The rest of this section goes through that in detail, because a privacy policy that just says “we collect nothing” is not actually useful.

What happens on your device

Audient does four things with your data, all locally:

• Audio capture. When you record, the audio is written to Audient's storage on your Mac. It is not uploaded anywhere.
• Transcription. Audio is transcribed using a speech recognition model (OpenAI Whisper, run locally via WhisperKit) that runs entirely on your Mac. No audio, no transcript, and no intermediate artefact is sent to any remote server for transcription. Whisper is used as an on-device model — we do not call the OpenAI API.
• Semantic search. Transcripts are turned into numerical embeddings using a small sentence-embedding model bundled inside the app. The model runs on your Mac. Your transcript text is not transmitted.
• Storage and retrieval. Recordings, transcripts, embeddings, and search indexes are kept under ~/Library/Application Support/Audient/ on your Mac — a per-user location inside your macOS account. Other users on the same Mac do not see your Audient data unless they share your macOS user account.

macOS asks for microphone permission the first time you start a recording. If you revoke it from System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone, Audient can no longer record, but any recordings you already made remain accessible on your Mac until you delete them.

What Audient sends over the network

Nothing that contains your content. In detail:

• No telemetry SDKs. Audient does not embed Crashlytics, Firebase, Sentry, TelemetryDeck, Amplitude, or any other analytics or crash-reporting SDK.
• No calls to our servers. Async Digital does not operate a backend that Audient talks to for user content, transcription, search, or analytics.
• No calls to third-party AI providers. No part of the app calls OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or any other cloud AI service with your audio, transcripts, or derived data. The on-device Whisper and embedding models we rely on are local only.

macOS itself may make standard network requests on your Mac's behalf (for example, to verify the app's notarisation with Apple at launch, or to report crashes if you have opted in — see Apple's diagnostic sharing below). Those are operating-system-level requests, not things Audient initiates.

Apple's diagnostic sharing

Apple offers a system-level setting at System Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements → Share with App Developers. If you turn it on, Apple may share anonymised crash, energy, and performance reports about Audient with us via App Store Connect.

• This is controlled by you in System Settings. It is off by default for many users and is not something Audient can enable or bypass.
• Apple aggregates and strips the reports before we see them. We do not receive your audio, transcripts, account identifiers, or content.
• What we do receive is aggregate crash and performance data, scoped to Audient. We use it to find and fix bugs.

You can switch this off at any time from System Settings, and it takes effect immediately.

Subscriptions and in-app purchases

Audient does not offer in-app purchases or subscriptions. No StoreKit purchase flow is presented, and no receipt or entitlement data is handled.

Retention and deletion

Because everything is on your Mac, retention is primarily in your hands:

• You can delete a recording or transcript from within Audient at any time. Deletion removes the recording, its transcript, and any derived embeddings for that item from the app's storage.
• Deleting the app. Moving Audient from /Applications to the Trash removes the application bundle but, by macOS convention, does not automatically remove your Audient data. Your recordings, transcripts, embeddings, and caches live under ~/Library/Application Support/Audient/. To remove all locally stored data, delete that folder in Finder in addition to moving the app to the Trash. We are committed to adding an in-app “Erase all data” option before Audient's general release; this section will be amended and added to the register of updates when that ships.
• No iCloud sync. Audient does not declare iCloud entitlements and does not store your content in iCloud Drive or CloudKit. Your data stays on the Mac that created it, under your macOS user account.
• Time Machine and other local backups. If you have Time Machine or another local backup tool configured, Audient's data may be included in those backups. Those backups are controlled by you under your macOS account and are not accessible to us.

We do not hold a copy of your recordings or transcripts anywhere, so we cannot delete them for you — but we also cannot accidentally leak or retain them. Deletion is controlled by you and by macOS.

Categories of personal data

Personal data that Audient handles on your Mac:

• Audio recordings you create (which may contain your voice and the voices of other people in the recording environment).
• Transcripts derived from those recordings, which may contain the content of anything spoken during the recording.
• Embeddings and search indexes derived from those transcripts.
• Metadata such as recording timestamps, titles, and tags you add.

We do not collect account identifiers, device identifiers for advertising, contacts, calendars, photos, location, or any other category of personal data. Audient does not ask for those permissions and does not read them. The only system permission Audient asks for is microphone access, and only at the point you first start a recording.

Recording other people. If you record another person, you are the one controlling that recording. Whether you may lawfully record them depends on where you are, the context, and what you plan to do with the recording. We do not have sight of your recordings and cannot advise on specific cases; the responsibility for obtaining consent where required rests with you.

Purposes and lawful basis

For the on-device processing Audient performs, we do not act as a controller or processor of your content — the content never leaves your Mac and we cannot access it. You are in control of it.

For the minimal data we may indirectly receive (aggregated crash and analytics reports via Apple, only where you have opted in to Apple's diagnostic sharing, and any email you send to our support address), we rely on legitimate interests (UK GDPR Art 6(1)(f)) — keeping the app working and responding to enquiries — balanced against the minimal impact on you.

Recipients and sub-processors

Audient does not send your recordings, transcripts, embeddings, or search data to any recipient. There is no cloud backend that processes your content.

Parties that are incidentally involved in Audient's operation:

• Apple Inc. distributes the app through the Mac App Store, operates the macOS platform it runs on, and (if you have opted in) aggregates diagnostic reports on our behalf. Apple's handling of that data is governed by Apple's own privacy policy.

We do not use third-party AI providers (OpenAI's API, Anthropic, Google, etc.) for any Audient feature. The on-device Whisper and embedding models are software components bundled inside the app, not services that receive your data.

Where Audient is distributed

Audient is sold on the Mac App Store in every country where Apple makes the Mac App Store available. Because Audient does not transmit your content or identifiers anywhere — nothing leaves your Mac during normal use — worldwide distribution does not create cross-border transfers of your personal data within the meaning of UK GDPR. You download the app from Apple, and the app then operates locally on your machine.

International transfers

Because your content stays on your Mac, no international transfers of that content arise from Audient's normal operation. Standard Apple Mac App Store and macOS operations may involve processing by Apple in the United States under Apple's own safeguards.

Automated decision-making

Audient uses machine-learning models (Whisper for speech recognition, a MiniLM-family model for embeddings) but does not use them to make decisions about you, grant or refuse you anything, profile you, or produce legal or similarly significant effects within the meaning of Article 22 UK GDPR. The models transcribe and index audio so you can search it. That is the whole scope of their involvement.

Use by children

Audient is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 13 — we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone. If a child uses Audient on a shared or family-managed Mac, all the same on-device-only handling described in this section applies.

Who we are

The data controller for Audient is:

Async Digital Ltd
167–169 Great Portland Street, London W1W 5PF, United Kingdom
Registered in England & Wales, company number 16950485
Contact: r.nash1@async-digital.com

If you are asking us to act on your data protection rights, email the address above with enough detail for us to identify the data in question (for example: which product, which email address you used to contact us, or what dates are involved).

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you have the right to:

• ask what personal data we hold about you (right of access);
• ask us to correct data that is wrong or incomplete (right to rectification);
• ask us to delete data (right to erasure), where we do not have an overriding legal reason to keep it;
• ask us to restrict how we use your data (right to restriction);
• object to our processing (right to object);
• ask for a copy of data you provided in a portable format (right to data portability), where applicable.

In practice, because Audient does not send your recordings or transcripts to us, most of these rights are exercised by you directly on your Mac — deleting a recording in the app removes it, and clearing ~/Library/Application Support/Audient/ removes all locally stored data. If you have emailed us (for example, for support) and want that correspondence deleted, email the address below and we will do so unless we have an overriding legal reason to retain it.

Async Digital is a UK company, so UK GDPR is our baseline. If you are in the EU, the EU GDPR gives you substantively the same rights; we apply them in the same way, and you may complain to your national data protection authority. If you are a California resident, we do not sell or share your personal data within the meaning of the CCPA or CPRA; because we do not collect personal data through the app (beyond email correspondence you choose to send us), the rights described above are what we will honour. We take the same approach in other jurisdictions: we apply the rights described here to anyone who asks, regardless of where they live.

If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113. We would appreciate the chance to address any concern first.

Register of updates

Last updated: 2026-04-21

• 2026-04-21 — Section published ahead of Audient's Mac App Store submission. Audient is a macOS app in development and not yet available. Distribution will cover every country in which the Mac App Store operates.