Who makes Sayso
Sayso is a dictation keyboard and meeting-notes app for iPhone, iPad and Mac, built by Josh Huffman (“I”, “me”). This policy explains what Sayso does with your voice, your text and your meetings.
On your device or in the cloud
Sayso can turn speech into text and clean it up in two ways, and you choose which in Settings:
- On your device. Apple’s on-device speech recognition and Apple Intelligence. Your audio and text don’t leave your device.
- In the cloud. ElevenLabs turns audio into text, and Anthropic’s Claude cleans up and rewrites text. These are more accurate, and they mean your audio or text is sent to those companies to be processed.
When a cloud service is available, Sayso uses it for dictation by default. If a cloud request fails, Sayso falls back to your device.
If you entered your own API key for a service, requests go to that service under your account with them. Otherwise they go under my account. Either way, I don’t receive or store the content.
What is sent to cloud services
ElevenLabs receives audio, never your typed text:
- Dictation audio while you dictate with a cloud engine, plus your custom vocabulary to improve accuracy
- Meeting recordings after a meeting, when “Identify speakers” is on, to produce a transcript with speakers
- Short voice clips of people Sayso has learned, when “Remember voices” is on, so it can recognize them in a new meeting
Anthropic receives text, never audio:
- Dictation transcripts for cleanup, with your style settings, vocabulary, custom instructions and, on Mac, the name of the app you are typing into
- On iPhone, the paragraph or selection you are fixing when you tap ✨ on the Sayso keyboard
- On Mac, the selected text and your spoken instruction in Command Mode
- Meeting transcripts with speaker names and calendar attendee names, to write notes, follow-ups, briefs and answers to questions you ask about your meetings
Attendee email addresses are never sent. Both companies process this data under their own policies and may keep it for a limited time: ElevenLabs privacy policy, Anthropic privacy policy.
Audio
- Dictation audio is held in memory only while it is transcribed, then discarded. It is never saved to a file.
- Meeting recordings are saved in the meeting’s folder on your device, and in your iCloud Drive if sync is on, until you delete the meeting.
- Voice clips of people you’ve named (about 12 seconds each, up to two per person, including your own voice) are saved so Sayso can recognize them later. Turn off “Remember voices,” or use Forget and Forget all voices, to remove them.
Recording laws differ by place, and some require everyone on a call to agree to be recorded. Please tell people when you are recording a meeting.
The Sayso keyboard
The keyboard asks for Full Access. It needs it to call Claude when you tap ✨, to share settings and dictation results with the Sayso app, and to check whether you just copied a verification code. It reads the clipboard only when you tap “Paste code.” The keyboard doesn’t record audio; the Sayso app does.
Text you type is not sent anywhere unless you tap ✨. To improve suggestions, the keyboard learns words and word pairs you use and saves them on your device only. Clear them in Settings › Clear learned words.
The “My Details” you save for one-tap fill (name, email, phone, address) are stored on your device only and are not synced.
Calendar and Reminders
If you allow it, Sayso reads the title, attendee names and attendee emails of calendar events happening now or in the next 36 hours, to name meetings and speakers and to prepare briefs. Sayso adds to-dos to Reminders only when you ask it to.
On Mac
The Mac app asks for Accessibility access so it can listen for your dictation key, type and paste text, and read the selected text for Command Mode. To record calls, it asks to capture system audio so the transcript includes the other people on the call.
The Mac app checks for updates from a server once an hour. That request includes your IP address and the app version, and nothing else.
iCloud sync
If you are signed in to iCloud and sync is on, Sayso keeps your meetings (including recordings), voice clips, dictation history, usage totals and some settings in your own iCloud Drive so your iPhone and Mac match. Apple stores this under your Apple Account. I can’t see it. Turn sync off in Settings.
Asana and Notion
If you connect Asana or Notion with your own key, Sayso sends meeting to-dos to Asana, or notes and the full transcript to Notion, only when you tap to do so. Those keys are stored in your device’s Keychain.
What stays on your device
Dictation history (the last 200 dictations: what you said, the cleaned text, and which app), usage and cost totals, settings, vocabulary and your API keys are stored on your device, and some of them in your iCloud as described above. Crash diagnostics from Apple are kept on your device and shown in Settings; they are not uploaded.
What Sayso doesn’t do
- No accounts or sign-in
- No ads and no advertising identifier
- No analytics or crash-reporting services
- No selling or sharing of your information
- No tracking across other companies’ apps or websites
Deleting your information
Everything Sayso keeps is on your devices or in your iCloud, and you can delete it in the app: delete a single dictation or clear history, delete a meeting and its recording, forget voices, clear learned words, reset usage, remove API keys, and disconnect Asana or Notion. Deleting the app removes what is on that device; iCloud data can be removed in your iCloud settings.
Data already sent to ElevenLabs or Anthropic is handled under their retention policies, linked above.
Children
Sayso is not directed to children under 13, and I don’t knowingly collect information from them.
Changes
If this policy changes, I’ll update the date at the top and post the new version here. If a change affects what leaves your device, I’ll say so in the release notes too.
Contact
Questions or requests about Sayso: josh@joshhuffman.dev. I read every email and reply myself.