Privacy Policy

SongFetch (“the app”) is an iPhone app developed by Tamas Bereczki (“we”, “us”, “our”) that identifies songs from screenshots, photos, the camera and the music playing around you. We operate no servers, we require no account, and we use no analytics, advertising or tracking SDKs. Your screenshots and photos are read on your device and are never uploaded, and no audio is ever recorded. This page explains exactly what is kept, where it is kept, and who is involved when you find a song or buy.

1. Your screenshots, photos and camera never leave your device

When you scan a screenshot or a photo, the image is read entirely on your iPhone using Apple’s on-device frameworks:

• Vision performs the text recognition.
• Apple Intelligence, where your device supports it, reads the same recognised text using the on-device system language model. It is an enhancement — if it is unavailable, the app falls back to its own heuristics.

Neither step involves a network request. The screenshot itself is never uploaded, transmitted, or stored anywhere outside your device, and we never receive a copy of it.

The same applies to the other ways an image reaches the app:

• The camera (with your permission) reads text live on your device using Apple’s VisionKit. Nothing is recorded, saved to your photo library, or uploaded. If you freeze a frame, that still image is held in memory only while you choose the lines to look up.
• Visual Intelligence: when you use Image Search on a screenshot, the frame iOS hands to SongFetch is read on your device in the same way.
• The “Scan Screenshot” control (Control Center, the Lock Screen or the Action Button) reads only the newest screenshot in your photo library, and only if it was taken in the last two minutes. It needs Photos access, which you can refuse; you can always pick a screenshot by hand instead.

2. Listening and shared videos

When you tap Listen or turn on Keep Listening, SongFetch uses the microphone (with your permission) only while that screen is listening. It uses Apple’s ShazamKit: the audio is turned into a signature (a compact digital fingerprint of the sound) on your device, and only that signature is sent to Apple’s Shazam service to find a match. No audio is recorded, stored or sent as audio, and the signature cannot be turned back into the original sound. Keep Listening repeats this continuously until you stop it.

When you share a video into the app, its soundtrack is turned into a signature on your device in the same way and matched by Apple’s Shazam service. The video file is held briefly in the app’s private container on your device and deleted once it has been read; it is never uploaded.

The song Shazam returns is then looked up in Apple’s catalog as described in §3. If you turn on Save Sound Finds to Shazam in Settings (it is off by default), each song found by sound is also added to your Shazam library, which Apple keeps under your Apple Account.

Apple’s privacy policy, which covers Shazam: apple.com/legal/privacy.

3. What is sent when we look up a song

Only the short text the app has read — a candidate song title and artist, a few words at most — or, for a song found by sound, its Apple Music identifier, is sent to Apple’s public iTunes Search API to find the matching track. No image, no full screenshot text, no identifier of you or your device accompanies that request. Matching always happens in Apple’s catalog, so the artwork, title, artist and preview you see come from Apple regardless of which service you open the track in.

Apple’s privacy policy: apple.com/legal/privacy.

If you choose Spotify as your “Open in” service in Settings, the song title and artist are included in a standard Spotify search-page link (open.spotify.com/search/…) that the app asks iOS to open, in the Spotify app if installed or your browser if not. This is a link open, not an API call from the app — no login, no account token, and nothing about you is stored or sent by us. Spotify’s own privacy policy governs what happens once that page opens: spotify.com/privacy.

4. Data stored on your device

The app stores the following, using Apple’s SwiftData and UserDefaults:

• Your scan history — for each song you keep: its title, artist, album, artwork and preview links, the text the app searched with, how you found it (heard, camera or screenshot), and the date. No screenshot, photo, camera image, audio or video is among them (see §1 and §2).
• Small app settings — whether you have seen the welcome screen, your chosen “Open in” service (Apple Music or Spotify), your chosen app language, whether “Save Sound Finds to Shazam” is on, and a count and date used to decide when to ask you for an App Store rating.
• Your free-finds count — new installs get three free finds before SongFetch Unlimited is required. This count is stored in your device’s Keychain, per device, so it survives a reinstall; it is not synced or tied to your Apple Account.
• Screenshots and videos shared into the app — held briefly in a private app group container until the app collects and reads them, then deleted.

Your history syncs through your own iCloud account. So that your finds follow you between your devices, scan history is stored in the private CloudKit database belonging to your Apple Account. That is Apple’s infrastructure and your storage — we have no access to it, it is not readable by us or by anyone else, and we operate no server that receives it. Turn it off for this app in Settings → Apple Account → iCloud, and history will stay on the device it was made on.

Everything here is removed when you delete the app, and you can clear your scan history at any time in Settings → Clear History. The rating counter and the shared-file container are per-device and do not sync.

5. Purchases and RevenueCat

SongFetch Unlimited is sold through Apple’s App Store as a monthly subscription or a lifetime one-time purchase. (A yearly subscription is no longer offered for new purchases but remains active for anyone who already bought it.) Purchases are processed by Apple; we never see your payment method, billing address, or Apple Account details.

We use RevenueCat, Inc. as a processor to validate those purchases and to tell the app whether your access is active. When you open the paywall, buy, or restore a purchase, the following is exchanged with RevenueCat:

• Purchase and subscription data — the App Store transaction receipt, the product identifier bought, purchase and expiry dates, and renewal status.
• An anonymous customer identifier generated by RevenueCat. We do not provide RevenueCat with a user account, email address, name, or any identifier of our own, because the app has no accounts.
• Basic technical context — app version, device platform and OS version, and App Store country, used to return the correct pricing and to validate the receipt.

This data is used solely to run purchases and entitlements, and for the sales figures we see in RevenueCat’s dashboard. It is not used for advertising, and it is not used to track you across other apps or websites. Data is encrypted in transit.

RevenueCat’s privacy policy: revenuecat.com/privacy. Their GDPR information: revenuecat.com/gdpr.

The paywall itself is part of the app, not RevenueCat’s; what it fetches from them when it opens is the offer — which plans exist, their order, their prices and any introductory offer you are still eligible for. The Customer Center, used to manage or cancel a subscription, is rendered by RevenueCat’s SDK.

6. App Store privacy label

In line with the above, SongFetch declares the collection of Purchase History for app functionality and analytics. It is not linked to your identity — the app uses anonymous identifiers only — and is not used for tracking. No other data type is collected.

7. What we do not do

• No advertising, attribution, or crash-reporting SDKs, and no use of the IDFA.
• No developer-operated servers.
• No audio recordings, and no camera images saved or uploaded.
• No accounts, sign-in, or user profiles.
• No access to your photo library beyond the images you explicitly pick or share into the app and, if you allow it, the newest screenshot when you use the “Scan Screenshot” control (see §1).
• No tracking across other apps or websites.
• No sale or sharing of personal data.

8. Children

SongFetch is intended for a general audience and does not knowingly collect personal data from anyone, including children.

9. Your rights

Your scans and history live on your device and in your own iCloud account, not on any system of ours, so there is nothing on our side to access, export or correct. You remain in control:

• Clear your scan history in the app’s Settings at any time.
• Delete the app to remove all of its local data from your device.
• Turn off iCloud for SongFetch in Settings → Apple Account → iCloud to stop history syncing between your devices.
• Turn microphone, camera or Photos access on or off at any time in Settings → Privacy & Security.
• Manage or cancel a subscription through the Customer Center in the app’s Settings, or in Settings → Apple Account → Subscriptions.

If you are in the EEA or UK, laws such as the GDPR and UK GDPR may grant you rights including access, rectification, erasure and portability. For the purchase data held by RevenueCat as our processor, contact us at the address below and we will action your request with them.

10. Changes

We may update this Privacy Policy as the app evolves. Material changes will be reflected by updating the effective date at the top of this page.

11. Governing law

This Privacy Policy is governed by the laws of Romania, without regard to conflict of law principles.

12. Contact

Questions, requests, or anything else: [email protected].