Privacy Policy

What Hi-Fi Audio Sim, HiFi Player and HiFi Rack send, and what they do not.

Hi-Fi Audio Sim for Mac

What stays on your Mac

• Your recordings. Tapes are files in a folder you choose. They are never uploaded anywhere.
• Your music. Folders you add are read from disk to build a catalogue. The catalogue is stored on your Mac and is not sent anywhere.
• Your settings, including which stations you have saved and where your tapes live.

When it uses the network, and why

Hi-Fi Audio Sim connects to the internet only when you use a feature that needs it. There is no background activity.

Naming an audio CD

When you put an audio CD in the drive, the app works out an identifier from the disc's table of contents and asks the MusicBrainz database whether it recognises it. What is sent is that identifier and an identification header naming the app, its version and a link to this app's support page, as MusicBrainz asks of every client.

The header carries no email address and nothing about you. It is the same for every copy of the app, and the link is there so MusicBrainz can reach the developer rather than the listener. The identifier describes the disc, not you - it is worked out from the length and layout of the tracks, so the same pressing produces the same identifier on anybody's Mac. It carries no account, no name and nothing about your Mac.

What MusicBrainz can see is that a request arrived from your internet address asking about a particular disc, in the same way any website sees a visit. Nothing links that to you or to anything else you have played, and no record of it is kept by the app. If the disc is not recognised its tracks simply stay numbered.

Finding radio stations

Searching for a station sends your search terms to the community-run radio-browser.info service, which returns matching stations. With the country tick box on, the search also carries your country, so the service can return stations near you. That comes from your Mac's Region setting, not from your location: the app never asks for your location and could not get it without asking. Playing one then connects your Mac directly to that station's own server, exactly as any radio app or browser would. The station operator sees a connection from your address, as they would from any listener.

Naming a program from a shortcut

Hi-Fi Audio Sim can name the program playing on a tape by running a shortcut you choose in Settings. The app itself sends nothing. It asks Shortcuts to run your shortcut and reads the text that comes back; it never sees or transmits any audio.

The shortcut supplied with the app uses Apple's own music recognition, which listens and identifies the music through Apple's service. That is Apple's feature, running under Apple's privacy policy, and it runs only while the shortcut does, which is only when you ask for it. You may use a different shortcut, or none at all.

macOS asks your permission once before the app may run any shortcut, and you can withdraw it at any time in System Settings, under Privacy and Security, Automation. None of this is set up for you: until you install the shortcut and grant that permission, nothing here happens.

Music on your own network

If you use DLNA, the app looks for media servers on your local network and requests music from them. That traffic stays on your network and does not leave it. macOS will ask your permission for local network access the first time.

What is never collected

• No account, sign-in, name or email address is required or requested.
• No analytics, usage statistics, crash reporting or advertising identifiers.
• No record of what you play, record or listen to.
• No contents of your music library is transmitted, and the app transmits no audio. If you set up program identification, the shortcut you choose does its own recognition as described above.

Nothing is sold, rented or shared, because nothing is gathered to sell.

HiFi Player for iPhone

The player is a companion app that plays the tapes Hi-Fi Audio Sim makes. It is the simplest case there is: it has no network connection of any kind, so there is nothing for it to send and nowhere to send it.

What it reads

• The folder you choose, and nothing outside it. The player lists the tapes in that folder and reads their audio to play them.
• Its own folder on the phone, which holds the two demo tapes and anything you put there with Finder.

What it writes

• Your place in each tape, your winding speeds, your tape sound setting and your equaliser memories. All of it stays on the phone.
• Nothing at all to your tapes. The player only reads them. It cannot change, move or delete a tape, on the phone or in the cloud.

What it never does

• No account, sign-in, name or email address.
• No analytics, usage statistics, crash reporting or advertising identifiers.
• No microphone, camera, contacts, photos or location. The app asks for none of them and declares none of them.
• No record of what you play, because there is nowhere for one to go.

If the folder you choose is in iCloud Drive, your tapes travel between your Mac and your phone through your own iCloud account, under Apple's terms. We never see them. Choose a folder outside iCloud and they do not travel at all.

HiFi Rack for iPad

HiFi Rack draws the rack on an iPad and plays the recordings Hi-Fi Audio Sim makes. Unlike the iPhone player, it does go on the network, because it has the tuner: it plays internet radio and it can search for stations. That is the whole of it.

What it sends, and to whom

• To a radio station you choose, a connection to play it. The station's operator sees a connection from your address, as they would from any listener. We receive nothing.
• To radio-browser.info, when you search for a station: what you typed, and your country. The country comes from your Region setting in iPadOS, not from your location, and the app never asks for your location. The directory is a community service we query on your behalf; it does not report back to us.

What it reads

• The folder you choose, and nothing outside it. It lists the recordings in that folder and reads their audio to play them.
• Its own folder on the iPad, which holds the three demo recordings and anything you put there with Finder.

What it writes

• Your settings: the rack, the finish, which units are showing, the equaliser and its memories, the cassette sound and your place in each recording. All of it stays on the iPad.
• Nothing at all to your recordings. It only reads them. There is no recording, no editing and no renaming, so it cannot change, move or delete a recording, on the iPad or in the cloud.

What it never does

• No account, sign-in, name or email address.
• No analytics, usage statistics, crash reporting or advertising identifiers.
• No microphone, camera, contacts, photos or location. The app asks for none of them and declares none of them.
• No record of what you play or what you listen to, on any server of ours, because there is no server of ours.

If the folder you choose is in iCloud Drive, your recordings travel between your Mac and your iPad through your own iCloud account, under Apple's terms. We never see them. Choose a folder outside iCloud and they do not travel at all.

All three apps

Personal information

Neither app collects personal information from anyone, of any age.

Changes

If this policy ever changes, the updated version will appear on this page with a new date below. Any change that meant collecting something would be described here plainly before it happened.