Privacy Policy

Jarq listens to your voice and reads the text you select. Here is exactly what happens to both.

Effective 2 October 2026

Who is responsible

IP Abishev Birzhan Orynbasarovich (ИП Абишев Биржан Орынбасарович), IIN (Kazakhstan individual identification number) 930110351006, a sole proprietorship registered in Astana, Republic of Kazakhstan on 22 September 2019, is the data controller for the processing described here. Questions, requests and deletions: [email protected].

What the app sends, and what happens to it

Your voice

When you press the dictation hotkey, Jarq records audio to a temporary file on your Mac and sends it over HTTPS to our endpoint at jarq.app. There a speech recognition model turns it into text, and the text comes back to your Mac. We don't write the audio to any database or storage bucket — it exists only in memory for the moment it takes to transcribe, then it's gone. The temporary file on your Mac is deleted after the request.

Recognition on your Mac, if you choose it

Since build 28 you can switch dictation to a speech model that runs on your own machine. Download it once — 632 MB, free on every plan, chosen in onboarding or in Settings — and your voice stops leaving the Mac altogether: no request, no server, nothing for us to store or discard, and dictation that works with the network off. Translating between languages still needs the connection, because that runs on a language model we host; when Jarq is asked to speak one language and type another, the recognised text makes the trip even in offline mode.

The text you select

When you translate a selection, that text is sent the same way and translated by a language model. It is also not stored by us.

Requests you give Jarq

When you ask Jarq to write or change something — by voice, starting with “Hey Jarq”, in the follow-up field under an answer, or with an action on selected text — the request and any selected text are sent the same way and answered by a language model. We don't store them.

Your history

Dictations and translations are saved only on your Mac, up to the 500 most recent entries. You can switch history off entirely, delete single entries, or clear all of it, in the app's settings. This file is never uploaded to us.

Your email address, if you give it

If you join the beta list, we store your email address together with the date, which page you signed up from, the country your IP resolves to, and your browser's user-agent string. It is stored on our infrastructure and mirrored to the service we use to send the beta emails. We use it to tell you when Jarq is ready and when something important changes. Every email has an unsubscribe link, and you can ask us to delete the address at any time.

Feedback you send from the app

When you send a bug report or an idea, we receive the message text, the category you picked, your email if you filled it in, the app version, your macOS version, your app language and the country your IP resolves to. We keep it so we can reproduce the problem and reply to you.

Your licence and this Mac

The first time Jarq runs, it registers this installation with our backend and receives a random identifier and a token, which it stores in your Mac's Keychain. We keep that identifier, the computer name macOS reports, the day the trial started and the time we last heard from the app. This is what makes the trial last fourteen days rather than fourteen days per deleted settings file, and what lets one licence cover two Macs — the computer name is there so you can tell them apart when you move a licence. The identifier is tied to no name or address of yours until you buy a licence, and it goes to nobody else.

If you use the friends offer, we also keep whose code was entered where: the six-character code made for your installation, the installation whose code you entered, if you entered one, and when you entered it, and when a friend's installation first counted. That is what decides the month or year of full access the offer gives. Nobody's installation is shown to anyone else — you see how many of your friends counted and, for each one who has not yet, on how many of the three days they have used Jarq, never who they are. If you send an invitation to yourself from an invitation page, the address is used to send that one email, and only a one-way hash of it is kept, for a day, so the same letter does not go to the same address twice; the address itself goes on no list.

We also count how many dictations and translations each licence makes per month, against the fair-use ceiling described on the pricing page.

Which steps you reach in the app

Jarq counts how far you get through the setup screens and the getting-started list — that you reached the fifth screen, that you opened the list, that you finished it — and sends that tally with the identifier described above, in a batch a few minutes later rather than as it happens. The names it can send are a fixed list, written into the app and checked again by our backend, so no text you dictate, select or type can travel this way even by accident. The order is not kept, so it cannot be turned back into a record of your afternoon. It exists to answer one question — whether the first hour of Jarq works — and you can switch it off in Settings, which stops the counting and discards whatever was waiting to be sent.

Abuse prevention

To stop strangers from burning through the service, our backend keeps short-lived counters against network addresses. They hold no more than is needed to count requests, and they expire within 24 hours.

Purchases

Payments are processed by Paddle, our merchant of record. We never receive your card details. From Paddle we receive the order record: your email address, country, the product bought, and the order identifier. We use it to issue and honour your licence and to handle refunds.

Why we're allowed to process this

• To provide the service you asked for — transcription, translation, licence checks. Without this processing the app cannot work.
• Our legitimate interest — keeping the service from being abused, fixing bugs from your reports.
• Your consent — the beta list and any other email we send you. Withdraw it at any time.
• Legal obligation — tax and accounting records for purchases, which Paddle keeps as merchant of record.

Who else touches the data

• Cloudflare — hosts this site and our backend, and runs AI models that do transcription and translation.
• Groq (Groq, Inc.) — runs AI models that do transcription and translation. Each request is handled by one of the two; if one of them is unavailable, the other takes over.
• Paddle (Paddle.com Market Ltd) — payments, invoicing, tax and refunds as merchant of record.
• Plunk — sends our email to the beta list and forwards your feedback to us.

We don't sell your data, we don't share it with advertisers, and we don't use your voice or your text to train any model.

How long we keep things

• Audio and selected text — not retained; processed in memory and discarded.
• Email on the beta list — until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete it.
• Feedback messages — up to 24 months, so we can track long-running issues.
• Installation record — identifier, computer name and last-seen time: while the app is installed, and up to 24 months after we last hear from it.
• Monthly usage counts — up to 24 months.
• Which steps you reached — up to 24 months, and deleted with the installation record.
• Abuse-prevention counters — up to 24 hours.
• Purchase and licence records — for as long as the licence is valid, plus the period tax law requires.

Where the data goes

Cloudflare processes requests on its global network, so your request may be handled in a data centre outside your country. Groq runs its models in its own data centres, which may also be outside your country. Paddle and Plunk operate internationally as well. Where transfers out of the EEA or the UK are involved, our providers rely on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

Your rights

You can ask us to show you the data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, hand it over in a portable form, or stop processing it. Write to [email protected] and we'll respond within 30 days. If you're in the EEA or the UK and you think we've handled your data badly, you can complain to your national data protection authority.

You can delete most of it yourself: clear your history in the app's settings, and unsubscribe from any email we've sent you.

Children

Jarq isn't directed at children and we don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.

Permissions Jarq asks for on your Mac

• Microphone — to record what you dictate. Nothing is recorded until you press the hotkey.
• Accessibility — to type the result at your cursor and to read the text you've selected in another app. This is what lets Jarq work everywhere instead of in its own window.

Both are granted by you in System Settings and can be revoked there at any time.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version appears here with a new effective date. If the change is significant, we'll email everyone on our list before it takes effect.

Contact

IP Abishev Birzhan Orynbasarovich (ИП Абишев Биржан Орынбасарович)
IIN 930110351006 · Astana, Republic of Kazakhstan
[email protected]