← Sparks

Privacy Policy

Sparks is designed to know as little about you as possible. There are no accounts, no analytics, no advertising, and no server we operate. Below is exactly what happens to your voice when you record a note.

What Sparks does with your voice

When you tap the dot and start speaking, two things happen with the audio in real time:

An audio file is recorded to your device as an .m4a file in the app's private sandbox. It never leaves your device.
The same audio is streamed to Apple's Speech Recognition service to produce the transcript. Apple processes this audio under Apple's privacy policy; Sparks does not store anything on Apple's servers and has no access beyond the returned transcript.

Once you finish speaking (either by staying silent for three seconds or by pulling the dot up to release), the raw transcript is sent to Volcengine Ark, which runs a Doubao language model that:

Removes filler words and false starts
Classifies the note into one of five categories (idea, task, question, note, reference)

This API call sends only the text transcript — not your voice. Volcengine processes the request under their privacy terms and, per their documentation, does not persist API request content for training. Sparks does not store anything on Volcengine's side.

What is stored on your device

Each spark you capture is saved locally as:

The cleaned transcript (a plain Markdown file)
The original audio recording (.m4a)
The timestamp and category

These files live inside Sparks' app sandbox. They are never uploaded to any server we operate. If you have iCloud Device Backup enabled in iOS Settings, they may be included in your standard iCloud Backup — that is Apple's backup mechanism, not anything Sparks initiates.

What Sparks does NOT do

No user accounts. No sign-in. No personally identifying information collected.
No analytics SDKs. No crash reporters. No fingerprinting.
No advertising. No tracking. No data shared with third parties for marketing.
No background recording. The microphone is only active while you are explicitly recording.
Nothing is read or sent to any service except during the recording flow described above.

Permissions Sparks asks for

Microphone: Required, to record your voice.
Speech Recognition: Required, to obtain the transcript via Apple's service.

That's it. Both can be revoked at any time in Settings → Sparks on your iPhone.

Children

Sparks does not knowingly collect any data, so there is nothing specific to children's privacy to worry about. The app is rated 4+ and contains no objectionable content.

Deleting your data

Open any spark and tap the trash icon to delete it. Deleting the app from your iPhone removes all stored notes and audio — there is no copy elsewhere.

Changes to this policy

If the data flow ever changes, this page will be updated with the date of the change and (where significant) a note in the app.

Contact

Privacy questions, concerns, or requests: soaringcyxu@gmail.com