Privacy

The short version

You choose how recognition works. Smart is the recommended default for Pro and sends only the audio recorded while you hold the key to Holdkey’s transcription service, which uses Groq as a processor. You can switch to Local at any time to keep recognition on your PC. Local also remains the automatic fallback whenever Smart is unavailable.

The app

• Audio in Local. Recorded while you hold the key and processed on your PC. If “keep recordings” is on, the files stay in a folder on your PC that you control.
• Audio in Smart. Sent over HTTPS to Holdkey only after you enable Smart. Holdkey forwards it to Groq for transcription, returns the text, and does not intentionally store the recording. Standard short-lived infrastructure logs may contain request metadata, never the dictated audio or transcript.
• Text. Your dictations and the local history live in your Windows profile folder. Delete them from Settings at any time.
• Models and service calls. Setup downloads local speech and language models. Smart makes a network request for each dictation. Local does not.
• Licence check. If you buy Founder Pro, the app sends your licence key and a machine identifier to Polar (our payment provider) to activate and, occasionally, to re-validate. Nothing about what you dictate is included.
• Service metrics. When you use Smart, Holdkey records request success or failure, provider timing, recording byte size, model name and a one-way hash of the licence key. It does not send or record the dictated audio or transcript in analytics.
• Nothing else. No dictated audio or transcript is used for advertising. No screenshots are taken.

This website

• Launch list. If you leave your email, it is stored with Resend (our email provider) and used only to tell you when Holdkey ships. Reply “stop” to any email and it is removed.
• Contact form. Your message and email are sent to the founder by email and not stored anywhere else.
• Purchases. Payment is handled by Polar as merchant of record. We never see your card. Polar shares your email and licence details with us so we can support you.
• Light, cookieless analytics. We count page views and a handful of clicks (download, pricing, checkout) so we know whether the site works. No cookies, no advertising, nothing that follows you across sites, and no identifier that survives closing the tab. Our host, Vercel, keeps standard server logs for a short time.

Your rights

Email hello@holdkey.app to see, correct or delete anything we hold about you. Because almost everything lives on your own PC, the answer is usually that we hold your email address and nothing more.

Who we are

Holdkey is made by an independent developer in Canada. Questions: hello@holdkey.app.