No account, no server
Yap has no account and no Novarynix server. There is no sign-up, no login, and no Novarynix-operated backend that receives your recordings, transcripts, or notes. Novarynix cannot read your notes because there is nowhere for Novarynix to read them from.
What Yap can and cannot see
- Novarynix receives no note content. Recording, transcription, speaker labelling, AI Notes, search, and export all run on your iPhone.
- There is no analytics or advertising SDK in Yap. No usage events, no crash-reporting service, no attribution or measurement framework.
- Yap does not ask for your contacts, photos, or location.
What is stored, and where
Everything below is on your iPhone unless a row says otherwise.
| What | Where | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Recordings (audio) | App container, Application Support | Never sent to Novarynix. Excluded from Yap's iCloud sync. |
| Transcripts, AI Notes, speakers, markers, folders | App container (SwiftData) | Synced only if iCloud sync is on — see below. |
| Search indexes (lexical, semantic passages) | App container, rebuildable cache | Derived from your notes; excluded from backup. |
| Widget snapshot | App Group container group.ai.novarynix.yap |
Note titles and counts, so the Home Screen widget can render. Written by the app, read by the widget. |
| Spotlight index entries | The system Spotlight index on your device | Note title plus up to 160 characters of note text, so system search can find a note. Protected notes are excluded. Removed when a note is deleted. |
| Settings, learned vocabulary, entitlement state | App container | Learned vocabulary never includes text from a protected note. |
Optional iCloud sync
If you turn on iCloud sync, Yap uses your own private iCloud database (container iCloud.ai.novarynix.yap) to sync transcripts, AI Notes, and note metadata between your devices. This is Apple's CloudKit private database: it is governed by your Apple Account and your iCloud settings, and Novarynix has no access to it and no ability to grant itself access.
Original audio is excluded from Yap's iCloud sync. Recordings stay on the device that made them.
Apple device backup
Recordings and note data in the app container are included in your Apple device backup (iCloud Backup or a local encrypted backup) unless you turn off Back Up Recordings in Settings. That control exists so you can decide; turning it off means a lost, replaced, or reset iPhone will not restore your recordings, and Yap states that at the moment you make the choice.
Apple device backup is Apple's service, not Yap's, and is covered by Apple's terms and privacy policy.
Network connections Yap can make
Yap's own code contains no URLSession and makes no request to any Novarynix-operated host. Four system or third-party paths can carry traffic:
- Unlocking the bundled AI models, once per install. The neural models that separate speakers, find meaning in your notes, and detect speech ship inside the app in encrypted form. The first time each one is used, Apple's system service contacts Apple to obtain its decryption key, and iOS stores the key on your device so later launches work offline. No recording, transcript, note, or search text is sent with that request — Yap is not involved in it and never sees it. If the request cannot be made, that model stays locked and Yap falls back to its non-neural path rather than failing: search falls back to keyword matching, and speech detection to its energy-based detector.
- Speech model download (only when you tap it). Transcription in languages Apple's on-device transcriber does not cover uses a downloadable speech model. Tapping Download Speech Model fetches model files from Hugging Face through the WhisperKit and FluidAudio open-source packages. Hugging Face and its CDN will see your IP address and the files requested, as any download does. No recording, transcript, or note content is included in that request. Yap never starts this download on its own.
- iCloud sync, if you turn it on — Apple, as described above.
- Purchases — Apple, as described below.
None of these four carries anything you recorded or wrote. Recording, transcription, speaker labelling, AI Notes, search, and export still happen entirely on your iPhone.
Payments
Yap Pro is sold through Apple's In-App Purchase. Apple processes the payment and tells the app whether an entitlement is active. Novarynix never receives your payment card, billing address, or Apple Account credentials. Apple's App Store privacy terms govern the transaction, and Apple provides Novarynix only aggregated sales and payout reporting.
Microphone, Speech, and Face ID
- Microphone is used only while you are recording, and only after you grant access. Audio is written to your device and transcribed on your device.
- Speech recognition runs on-device. Yap requests the speech-recognition permission because the system transcription API requires it.
- Face ID is used only to confirm it is you before showing or changing a protected note. Yap receives a yes or no from the system and never receives biometric data.
Sharing you initiate
Yap shares nothing on its own. When you use Share Card, export, or the share sheet, the content goes where you send it, and the destination app's own privacy terms apply from that point.
Share Cards default to Hide Personal Details, which replaces names, phone numbers, email addresses, postal addresses, and account-shaped digit runs that Yap recognizes in both the image and the accompanying text. Detection runs on your device using Apple's NSDataDetector and NLTagger. It is a review aid and is not complete — the preview you approve is the artifact that leaves.
Deleting your data
- Deleting a note moves it to Recently Deleted for 30 days with its audio, transcript, and AI Note intact, then removes it permanently. You can delete it immediately from that screen.
- Deleting the app removes the app container, and with it every recording, transcript, and note stored on that device.
- If iCloud sync is on, note data also lives in your private iCloud database. Turning sync off, or deleting the app's iCloud data from Settings → your name → iCloud, removes it there. That is your Apple Account, so you control it directly and do not need to ask Novarynix.
- Export All Notes writes your whole library as Markdown or plain text before you go, so leaving does not cost you the archive.
Novarynix stores no copy of your data and therefore cannot delete, restore, or produce one on request.
Children
Yap is not directed to children and does not knowingly collect information from children. It has no account system, no social features, no user-to-user messaging, and no advertising.
This website
The public website may generate standard server logs for security and operations. Those logs are not linked to anything in the app, and are not used for advertising or tracking.
If you email support, Novarynix receives the email address, message, and attachments you choose to send. That information is used to answer you and is not linked to your notes, which Novarynix cannot see.
Changes
If this policy changes, the effective date above changes with it, and the current version is always the one published at novarynix.com/yap/privacy.
Contact
Questions about this policy: [email protected]. A human — the developer — reads every message.