Privacy Policy

Last updated: May 12, 2026

GrailVinyl is built to do the heavy work on your phone, not on a server. This policy describes exactly what data the app uses, where it goes, and what it doesn't do — written plainly, not legalese.

Short version

What the app accesses on your device

Microphone

Used when you tap the audio identification button (matches songs playing near you) or start a Crate mode session (transcribes records you speak out loud). Audio is processed on-device by Apple's Shazam framework and Apple's on-device speech recognition. Recordings are not stored after the match is made.

Camera and photo library

Used only when you tap photo identification. Images are read by Apple's on-device Vision framework to extract label text. The image itself doesn't leave your phone — only the parsed text fields (artist, title, catalog number) are sent to Discogs as a search query, if you proceed with a lookup.

Speech recognition

Used only in Crate mode. Apple's speech recognition runs entirely on-device (we set requiresOnDeviceRecognition = true). Your voice is never sent to Apple's servers and never leaves the device.

Local storage

The app stores the following locally and only locally:

Uninstalling the app removes all of this.

Third-party services we contact

When you use a feature that needs live data, the app makes a direct request from your device to one of these services. We don't proxy or log the request. Each service has its own privacy policy linked below.

Analytics

The app uses Firebase Analytics (Google Analytics for Firebase) to understand which features are used and how the app performs. We send shape data only: event names like search_performed, counts, latency, and tier (free or paid). We never send raw search queries, photos, audio, transcripts, release IDs, or anything that identifies you personally. You can opt out via iOS Settings → GrailVinyl → toggle off "Analytics" (when we add the toggle in a future version; until then, no analytics events are sent that could identify you anyway).

Firebase data is governed by Google's privacy policy. Google Privacy Policy

iCloud sync (optional)

If we enable cross-device sync in a future version, the app would use Apple's CloudKit private database to sync your trial quota and Crate sessions across devices signed into the same Apple ID. Apple cannot read private-database content. This is opt-in and currently disabled. Apple Privacy Policy

Children

GrailVinyl isn't directed at children under 13. We don't knowingly collect personal information from anyone.

Affiliate links

Some "Buy" links on the Reissues tab include affiliate tags from programs like Amazon Associates, Music Direct, and Acoustic Sounds. When you make a purchase after tapping one, GrailVinyl may earn a small commission at no cost to you. The vendor sees only that the click came from us — they don't receive any data about you from GrailVinyl directly.

Selling and sharing

We don't sell, rent, or trade your data. We don't have data to sell. We don't share data with third parties for advertising purposes.

Your choices

Changes to this policy

If we change anything in this policy we'll update the "Last updated" date at the top. Material changes will also be announced inside the app.

Contact

Questions about privacy? contact@grailvinyl.app