What Dettivo runs locally

Dictation and meeting capture run on your Mac. Audio, transcripts, and analysis are written to your local disk under your user account. We do not receive, proxy, or mirror that data.

What our servers do see

• License activation: your license key, the device ID of each Mac, the IP and user-agent of the activation request, and timestamps.
• Update tokens: short-lived JWTs that let Sparkle pull the signed appcast and artifact. No content.
• Purchase records: Stripe purchase metadata (email, customer ID, amount, currency, refund/dispute status).
• Optional email: if you share an email at checkout, we use it to send your license and respond to support.
• Trial email: if you start a trial, we store the normalized email with the trial license so we can enforce one trial per email, send the trial key backup, send expiry or recovery guidance, and connect an upgrade link to the same key.
• Referral cookie: when you arrive through dettivo.com/r/<code> or dettivo.com/?ref=<code>, we set a first-party dettivo_ref cookie for 90 days so we can credit the ambassador who referred you on purchase. The cookie contains only that 8-character code. No third-party trackers, no profiling, no cross-site joins.
• Ambassador data: if you sign up to the Ambassador Program, we hold your name, email, payout method, and payout details. We use it only to review your application, send your referral link, and pay commissions on referred sales. Payout details are treated as sensitive operator data, hidden from normal admin list output, and shared only with payout providers when needed to send commissions. We do not sell it or use it for marketing.

Trial lifecycle emails

Trial emails are transactional, not a drip campaign. We use them for the key backup, license recovery, trial-ended guidance, and same-key upgrade links. Existing active trials, expired trials, and paid emails receive recovery or upgrade guidance by email; the public form does not reveal existing keys.

What we never touch

• Your dictation audio or transcripts.
• Your meeting audio, transcripts, or analysis.
• Your notes, action items, follow-up drafts.
• Your local calendar or contacts.
• Telemetry, we do not collect usage analytics.

For context: what the alternatives say about themselves

We don’t draw the local-first line for the marketing of it. The category we sit next to publishes its own architecture in plain terms, these are direct quotes from their public privacy pages.

• Wispr Flow: “Transcription always happens in the cloud to provide the best speed and accuracy.” Dictation data “may be used to improve Flow’s features and AI models” unless you flip Privacy Mode on. wisprflow.ai/privacy
• Otter.ai: “We train our proprietary artificial intelligence technology on de-identified audio recordings.” Recordings are stored on AWS and shared with “data labeling service providers” for annotation. otter.ai/privacy
• Granola: “We store your Personal Data in Amazon Web Services (‘AWS’) servers located in the U.S.” Audio is shared with “Audio transcription providers and processors” and retained only until the transcript is produced. granola.ai/privacy

None of these are bad apps. They are honest about being cloud-first. Dettivo is honest about being local-first. Pick the architecture that fits the conversation you’re recording.

Cloud STT / BYOK

If you enable an OpenAI-compatible STT endpoint in Settings and configure it with your own credentials, Dettivo will send audio directly to that endpoint. That traffic is governed by your provider’s terms, not ours.

Hosted meeting AI / BYOK

You can optionally use OpenAI or Anthropic with your own API key for meeting notes, transcript polish, and Q&A. Meeting capture and transcription can stay local; hosted providers receive transcript text after transcription and do not join, record, or transcribe the meeting. Provider keys are stored locally in Keychain.

Subprocessors

• Stripe: payments and purchase metadata.
• Vercel: website hosting.
• Neon / Postgres provider: durable license ledger.
• Cloudflare: updates distribution + edge worker.
• Resend (optional): transactional email for purchase confirmation, license recovery, and waitlist confirmation.
• Ambassador payout provider (optional): the Wise, PayPal, bank, or payment-rail provider chosen by an ambassador, used only to send approved commissions.

Your rights

You can request deletion of your purchase email, revoke a device from Settings > Cloud, and request full account deletion by emailing support.

Contact

Privacy questions go to hello@dettivo.com.