Privacy

This policy is written to meet Canada's privacy law (PIPEDA), the EU and UK GDPR, and applicable US state privacy laws. Wherever you live, we apply the same standard.

What stays on your device

Everything Iridescent makes or keeps: your shows and playlists, what you've played, transcripts, the speakers and music it finds, show-notes summaries, chapters and skipped ads, your settings and your History. Transcribing, telling speakers apart, finding music and writing summaries all happen on your device.

To tell speakers apart, Iridescent makes voice prints of the voices in the podcasts you listen to, and keeps them on your device. It never uses your microphone.

The Keychain. Logins for private feeds are saved in your Keychain; if you use iCloud Keychain, Apple keeps them in sync across your own devices, end-to-end encrypted. Your AI key, and the keys that pair a Mac, stay on this device only.

Deleting the app deletes everything it keeps. Feed logins saved to your Keychain stay there until you remove them in Settings › Passwords.

What your device sends, and to whom

• The podcasts' own hosts. To check for new episodes (also in the background, about hourly) and to play or download them, your device asks each show's own server — and, on Wi-Fi, reads the start of an episode's file for its chapters, so you can search them. As with any podcast app, the host, and any measurement service the show uses, sees an ordinary request: your IP address and that a podcast app is asking. A private feed gets the login you gave it, and no other feed does. Their privacy policies apply.
• Apple's podcast directory. Searching for shows, the charts, publisher pages, and a sharper copy of a show's artwork when its own is small come from Apple's public podcast directory, so what you type in that search goes to Apple. Apple's privacy policy applies.
• The AI company you choose — only if you add a key. Finding ads and chapters is optional, and does nothing until you add your own API key for Claude (Anthropic), OpenAI or Google. When it runs, it sends that company the episode's transcript, its show notes and chapters, and the show's public details (its name, publisher and hosts' names), with the voices marked as "Speaker 1", "Speaker 2". Nothing about you is added. It goes under your key and that company's terms.
• Claude's status page. To avoid retrying while the AI service is down, the app may read Anthropic's public status page. The request carries nothing about you.
• Hugging Face. The first time Iridescent tells speakers apart, it downloads the speaker model — a public file — from Hugging Face. Nothing about you is sent.

Iridescent for Mac (optional)

If you use Iridescent on a Mac, it can do the same work ahead of time and hand the results to your iPhone over your own Wi-Fi. The two find each other only on your local network, pair with a one-time code, and every transfer is encrypted; nothing goes through the internet or through us. On the Mac you can also choose to find ads and chapters through your own Claude plan instead of a key; the transcript then goes to Anthropic under your plan's terms.

Notifications and location

New-episode notifications are made on your device; no server sends them. Only if you choose Daytime Only does Iridescent ask for your approximate location, to know when the sun rises and sets. It's rounded to about 10 km, kept on your device, and never sent anywhere.

Crash reports and feedback

Iridescent has no crash reporting or analytics of its own. If you've turned on sharing with app developers in your device's settings, or you're testing a beta through TestFlight, Apple may share crash reports and usage figures with us, along with any feedback you choose to send — under Apple's privacy policy. We use them only to fix problems.

What we keep, and your rights

Nothing about you: there is no Iridescent server, and we hold no account, no listening history and no copy of your data. So there's nothing for us to give you, correct or delete — everything is on your device, under your control.

A question, request or complaint: open an issue on GitHub (it's public, so please leave out anything personal). You can also complain to your local authority: the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, your EU supervisory authority, or the ICO in the UK.

iCloud

Iridescent doesn't keep its data in iCloud today. If syncing between your devices is added, it will use your own iCloud account, and this policy will be updated before it ships.

Children

Iridescent collects nothing from anyone, at any age.

Changes

We'll update this page and its date, and mention any material change in the app's release notes.