Pensées Privacy Policy

Effective date: October 3, 2026

Pensées keeps personal thoughts, voice recordings, photos, links, and saved passages, with optional source-backed questions and Topics.

Data We Process

Audio recordings you intentionally create in the app.

Transcripts, summaries, key points, and action items created from those recordings.

Writing, personal annotations, saved source passages, links, and their author attribution.

Photos you choose, plus text extracted from those images on your iPhone.

Questions and recent follow-ups you choose to send through Ask.

Local note metadata and app settings, including how many free transcription minutes you have used this month.

Purchase status provided by Apple StoreKit.

A cryptographic App Attest proof, public key, and request counter used to verify genuine app installations when enhanced processing is enabled.

Original recordings, photos, and saved entries are stored locally on your device. Image text extraction uses Apple Vision on the device; Ask and Topics do not upload original photos.

Transcription And Cloud Processing

Private transcription is the default and uses an open-source Whisper model on your iPhone. The speech model downloads once and remains in the app’s private storage.

If you explicitly choose Reliable transcription, Pensées creates bounded temporary audio chunks and sends them over an encrypted connection through the Pensées API proxy to OpenAI for transcription. The original recording remains stored on your iPhone. The proxy processes each temporary audio copy in memory and does not retain or log its contents after the request completes.

Enhanced summaries are a separate setting and are off by default. If you enable them, Pensées sends the completed transcript text through the proxy to OpenAI. OpenAI produces an improved summary and Topic organization together in one request.

A separate, off-by-default setting permits written and saved material, personal annotations, links, and image text to be included in enhanced summaries and Topics. Existing voice-processing consent does not enable this setting.

If Topic backlinks are enabled, that request may include transcript excerpts, note titles, recording dates, timestamps, Topic names, and Topic aliases. The app may also send bounded batches of linked excerpts through the proxy to OpenAI to create evidence-backed Topic Briefs. Audio is never sent for enhanced summaries, Topic classification, or Topic Brief generation.

Ask has its own consent. When you enable cloud questions, your question, up to six recent conversational messages, and a bounded selection of text excerpts are sent through the proxy to OpenAI. The selected excerpts can include writing, voice transcripts, saved passages, annotations, and image text. The proxy does not cache Ask questions or answers, and the provider request disables response storage. The current Ask conversation is held in app memory and clears when you leave Ask.

The proxy processes request content in memory and is designed not to log request bodies. To prevent duplicate paid requests, it may cache a successful generated response with a request hash for up to 10 minutes. This cache may contain a generated transcript or summary but never contains the uploaded audio. It stores App Attest public keys and counters plus short-lived rate-limit, challenge, quota, and idempotency records. Other operational records do not contain your recording or transcript.

OpenAI may process or retain submitted audio or text as permitted by the API terms that apply to the API project, including limited abuse monitoring. Summary and Topic requests disable provider-side response storage. The app does not use web search or persistent provider file uploads for Pensées.

If cloud processing is unavailable, the app can use supported on-device transcription and summary fallbacks.

Apple Speech prefers on-device recognition. On devices or languages where on-device recognition is unavailable, Apple may process speech using its speech service under Apple's terms.

Retention And Deletion

Saved entries and their original files remain on your device until you remove them. Removing an entry removes its text and original photo or audio from the active collection. Other entries in the same thought remain. A safety copy of the note database is retained on this iPhone during storage upgrades; it can contain earlier text and metadata but does not duplicate photo or audio files.

When Reliable transcription is selected, the proxy receives temporary audio chunks only while each transcription request is processed and does not retain them afterward. Cached generated transcripts and summaries expire automatically within 10 minutes. Topic Briefs are also cached on your iPhone and can be regenerated from their linked excerpts. App Attest public keys and counters remain while the cloud-processing service is active so the service can reject replayed requests. Rate-limit and one-time challenge records expire automatically.

Optional Folium Sync

If you connect your Folium account, completed entry text, metadata, source attribution, and Topic links can sync to your private Folium Markdown vault. Original photos and audio stay on this iPhone. Disconnecting stops future sync; removing a local entry does not silently delete your Folium copy or commentary.

Purchases

Pensées Plus subscriptions are processed by Apple. Pensées uses StoreKit to check whether a subscription is active and does not receive your payment details.

Accounts And Tracking

Pensées does not require an account. Pensées does not track you across apps or websites and does not sell personal data.

Contact

For privacy questions, email nicoamoretti@gmail.com or use the Pensées support page at https://lens-app-factory-api-proxy.vercel.app/support/unspool.