Privacy Policy

Podzester is a podcast player that makes transcripts, chapters, quotes, mentions and song lists for the episodes you listen to. This page says what we keep about you, who can see it, and what could go wrong.

The main things to know

Your account lives on our servers, not just on your phone. We keep the email address you sign in with, your name, the shows you follow, which episodes you have played and where you stopped, your stars, your bookmarks (including any notes you type and the bit of transcript saved with them), your collections and folders, and your settings.

The people who run Podzester can see it. Anyone with administrator access to our systems can see your follows, listening history, bookmarks and the rest, together with the email address you sign in with.

We never see your password or your card. You sign in through Apple or Google; your password goes to them, not to us. Apple handles payment. We receive a record that you have a subscription, which plan it is, and when it renews or ends — nothing about your card or bank.

Podcasts are sent to other companies for processing. To make a transcript, episode audio is sent to transcription systems — a computer we own and operate, and outside cloud services. The transcript text is then sent to AI model companies to find chapters, quotes, mentions, songs and ad breaks. Some of those companies are in the United States and some are in other countries, including China. We have no say over what those companies keep or do with the information. Some of them may keep it and use it to train their own AI models. What is sent is the podcast. It does not include your name, your email, or the fact that you listen to that show.

If our systems were broken into, this is what could be exposed. Your email address, your name, and your podcast activity; if you have added a private feed, the private link for that feed; and, if you sign in with Apple, a sign-in credential Apple gives us, which we would cancel with Apple. Your password and payment details could not leak from us, because we never have them.

What we store, in full

• Account: email address, first and last name, an internal user ID, the identifier Apple or Google gives us for your sign-in, and when you were last active.
• Podcast activity: shows you follow, folders, playback position and whether an episode is finished, stars, collections, bookmarks with their notes and transcript snippets.
• Settings: playback speed, skip intervals, theme, per-show options such as Skip Ads.
• Subscription status: plan, status, renewal or end date, and Apple's transaction identifiers. We also keep a running total of processing hours used, because plans include a monthly allowance.
• Devices: a push-notification token for each device you sign in on, and a sign-in session record for each. Session keys, and the keys for any AI app you connect, are stored only as scrambled fingerprints that cannot be turned back into the key. One exception: if you sign in with Apple, Apple gives us a credential that lets us cancel the sign-in when you delete your account. We encrypt and store this credential.
• Private feeds: if you add a paid or private feed (Patreon, Substack and similar), we store its private link, and the links to its episodes, on our servers so we can fetch and play them. Those links work like a key to your paid feed, and they are stored as-is, not scrambled. If you are ever worried about it, the service that issued the link (Patreon, Substack) can give you a new one. Episodes from private feeds are transcribed and processed the same way as public ones, including being sent to the outside companies described above.
• Network address: our servers record your IP address on some requests to limit abuse.

What we do not store: what you type into search (recent searches stay on your phone), your location, your contacts, or any recording from your microphone — the app never uses it.

Crash reports

If the app crashes or freezes, it sends a report to Sentry, a crash-reporting company. The report describes what the app was doing and the kind of device. It is not attached to your account, and it does not include your email, screenshots, or what you were listening to.

Connecting an AI app

If you choose to connect an AI assistant to Podzester, that app can read and change parts of your library on your behalf. It can read transcripts, search, and see your follows, stars, collections, bookmarks with their notes, and listening history. It can add and remove stars, create bookmarks, create and delete collections, and add episodes. It only happens if you set it up, and you can disconnect it in Settings → Connect an AI → Connected apps. What that app's maker does with what it reads is covered by their privacy policy, not ours.

Companies involved

• Apple — sign-in, payment, push notifications, app distribution.
• Google — sign-in, if you choose it.
• Cloudflare — runs our servers and website; holds pieces of episode audio for up to about 30 days while and after they are transcribed.
• Neon — hosts the database that holds everything listed above, in the United States.
• Railway — runs the system that downloads and processes episodes.
• Transcription services — receive episode audio. Currently Modal and Groq, both in the United States.
• AI model companies — receive transcript text, through a routing service called OpenRouter. Currently Google (United States) and Alibaba (China); DeepSeek's models, hosted by StreamLake (China) and by DeepInfra and similar providers in the United States. These change as better models appear.
• Sentry — crash reports.
• Backblaze (United States) — backups of the database.
• Resend — sends our email, which today is only replies to support messages.

We do not sell your data, we do not show ads, and we do not track you across other apps or websites.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account in the app: Settings → Delete Account. That removes your account, your podcast activity, your devices and sessions, any connected AI apps, and your private-feed links from our live database, and cancels the Apple sign-in credential. Deleting your account does not cancel a subscription — that is done in your Apple account settings.

Deletion is not instant everywhere. Copies stay in our backups until they age out, which can take up to a year. The subscription notices Apple sends us are kept as financial records.

You can also ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, or to correct it.

Children

Podzester is not meant for children under 13, and we do not knowingly keep information about them. Podcasts can contain adult language and themes; the app does not filter them.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will change the date at the top and say so in the app's release notes.

Contact

For privacy questions, a copy of your data, or deletion: [email protected]