TalkKeep Privacy Policy

Effective October 1, 2026

TalkKeep is a local-first meeting recorder for macOS, iPhone, and iPad. It does not require an account, collect in-app usage analytics, serve advertising, or track people across apps or websites.

Data processing

Meeting audio, transcripts, speaker labels, and mixed playback files are processed and stored on the device that recorded the meeting: your Mac, or an iPhone or iPad recording a meeting in the room with its microphone. TalkKeep does not upload meeting content to the developer, Apple, or a transcription service. If you turn on iCloud sync (below), your meetings are stored in your own iCloud account as well, encrypted so that neither the developer nor Apple can read them. Apple's SpeechAnalyzer used for provisional live captions runs on device.

When you give a speaker a name, TalkKeep can remember that person's voice so it can put their name on their speech in later meetings. It keeps a voice signature — a list of numbers summarizing how the voice sounds, not audio and not something that can be turned back into speech — for each named speaker, on the device where you named them, and with iCloud sync on, encrypted on your other devices too. In the version from the website, a name the meeting app clearly showed for a speaker counts as named too (see below). The same person known under two names is kept once. Voices no one named are never remembered. You can see who is remembered and forget anyone, or everyone, in Settings → Speakers (Settings → Remembered People on iPhone and iPad); deleting a meeting also forgets any voice learned from it. Each meeting also keeps its own voices' signatures in its folder, so that naming someone later can teach their voice; they are deleted with the meeting.

To name a new meeting, TalkKeep checks on your Mac which conferencing app (for example Zoom or Microsoft Teams) is using the microphone. When the app is a web browser, TalkKeep asks that browser — only after macOS has asked for your permission, once per browser — for its open meeting tabs, such as Google Meet or Teams on the web. The browser picks those tabs out itself, so the addresses and titles of your other tabs never reach TalkKeep. Only the resulting title, such as "Zoom meeting" or a Google Meet event's name, and which service the meeting used are saved with the meeting; nothing about other apps or tabs is stored or sent anywhere. You can withdraw the permission in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation. Titles can also list the people in a meeting, using the speaker names you gave or TalkKeep recognized.

To offer to record a meeting when it starts, and to stop once it ends, TalkKeep watches on your Mac which conferencing apps and browsers use the microphone or play sound. This is what the microphone indicator in the menu bar shows; TalkKeep never gets the audio itself.

When a browser starts using the microphone, TalkKeep asks it for its meeting tab, to show the meeting's name. It does this only if you have already allowed it to ask that browser (see above); it never asks for that permission then.

None of this is stored unless you record. You can turn these offers off in Settings → General.

In the version of TalkKeep downloaded from its website, you can choose to identify speakers by voice and meeting app. TalkKeep then reads, through macOS Accessibility, only the meeting window of the app holding the microphone — a Slack huddle, a Google Meet page, or Zoom's or Tencent Meeting's meeting window — for the names of the people in the meeting and who the app shows speaking. When it offers to record a meeting, it reads the same part of that window for the names of the people there, to show them in the offer. To find a Google Meet page, it checks the address of the page showing in each window of the browser holding the microphone; nothing else about those pages is read or kept. With the Meet tab out of view, it looks for the picture-in-picture window Meet opens instead — a blank page of its own, read only once its layout shows it is Meet's. It also reads the microphone button of the app holding the microphone — in other meeting apps too, such as Teams, FaceTime, or Feishu — to tell whether you are muted; to find that button it reads the labels of the app's buttons and nothing else, and keeps none of them. What you say while muted is left out of the recording and its transcript (you can turn this off in Settings → Speakers), and TalkKeep keeps when you were muted with the meeting. It keeps the other people's names and when each person was shown speaking with the meeting on your Mac (deleted with it), and uses them to name the transcript's speakers. When the app showed a person speaking clearly and at length, TalkKeep also remembers their voice signature, as if you had named them, so they are recognized in later meetings — you can forget anyone in Settings → Speakers. Nothing is sent anywhere, except to your own devices, encrypted, when you turn on iCloud sync. This needs Accessibility access, which you grant and can withdraw in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility; the Mac App Store version cannot do this.

TalkKeep connects to model-hosting services only to download the local Whisper and speaker-identification models. Once downloaded, the models are loaded from the device and transcription works without a network connection. Those requests do not contain meeting audio or transcript text. Like other internet requests, they provide the model host with network and request metadata, including an IP address and information about the request and device. The host may retain and use that information to deliver, secure, monitor, analyze, and improve its service. TalkKeep currently downloads models from Hugging Face; its policy is available at https://huggingface.co/privacy.

TalkKeep does not create an account, serve advertising, track people across apps or websites, or send product-usage analytics to the developer.

iCloud sync (optional)

iCloud sync is off until you turn it on in Settings → iCloud. It keeps your meetings on every device signed in to your iCloud account — another Mac, or the TalkKeep app on iPhone and iPad — so you can read, search, and play them there.

• What syncs: meeting titles and details, transcripts, speaker names, what the meeting app showed about who spoke, voice signatures of the people you named, and the recordings: the playback mix and the original tracks. A device downloads a recording only when it needs it.
• How it is protected: before anything leaves your device, TalkKeep encrypts it with a key that only your devices hold. iCloud Keychain carries the key between them; a recovery key shown once when you turn sync on opens it on a device iCloud Keychain hasn't reached. This holds whether or not Advanced Data Protection is on for your account. Neither the developer nor Apple can read your synced meetings, and TalkKeep runs no server of its own.
• What Apple can see: that encrypted items exist, how many there are, their sizes, and when they changed, together with the standard information Apple keeps about using iCloud. Apple's iCloud terms and privacy policy apply to your iCloud account.
• Storage: synced meetings count toward your iCloud storage, about 215 MB per hour of meetings.
• If you lose every device and the recovery key, the copy in iCloud can't be decrypted by anyone; meetings still on a Mac are unaffected.
• On iPhone and iPad: meetings recorded there are kept there, included in the device's backups as voice memos are, together with the remembered voices, and with iCloud sync on, go to iCloud once transcribed. The copy of meetings from your other devices is left out of backups, and a recording from elsewhere that you play stays on the device encrypted, decrypted only in memory while it plays. Renaming a meeting or a speaker, or deleting a meeting, syncs to your other devices.

Retention and deletion

Meetings remain on your Mac until you delete them. Deleting a meeting in TalkKeep deletes that meeting's transcript, recorded audio, and voice signatures, and forgets any remembered voice learned from it. With iCloud sync on, a deleted meeting first stays in Recently Deleted on all your devices for 30 days, then is removed from them and from iCloud. Turning sync off on a Mac stops it syncing and deletes nothing; turning it off on an iPhone or iPad removes the meetings from your other devices from it, keeps the ones it recorded, and changes nothing elsewhere. To remove TalkKeep's data from iCloud, use your Apple Account's iCloud storage settings, which leaves the meetings on your devices in place. Remembered voices remain until you forget them in Settings → Speakers. Downloaded model files remain in the app's local data until that data is removed. Removing the app does not automatically remove meetings or downloaded models. Retention of standard request metadata by the model host is governed by its privacy policy.

Contact

For questions about this policy or about TalkKeep, email support@talkkeep.app.