What AirBubble reads, and when it stops reading.

1. Who this policy is from

In this policy, AirBubble, we and us mean the company that makes the AirBubble app for macOS and runs the online service it connects to. You means the person using the app.

The registered entity name, company number and registered office are not final, so they are left blank for now. Where data protection law calls for a controller, that entity will be the controller for everything described here.

2. The short version

The clauses below carry the full detail, and nothing in them contradicts this summary.

• We collect what is needed to answer the question you asked, plus the account details needed to know it is you.
• Screenshots and audio are used to produce your answer. Screenshots are not saved, and audio is not kept once it has been turned into text.
• Your content is sent to a small number of providers who run the AI model and the transcription. They are listed on the subprocessors page.
• We do not sell your personal data, and we do not train models on your content.
• You can ask for a copy of your data or ask us to delete it, and we will do it. See your rights.

3. What we collect, and when

The waitlist

If you put your address on the waitlist we store that address, the time it arrived, and which page the form was on. We keep nothing else. That means no IP address and no browser or device details, so there is nothing that would let us reconstruct your visit. We use the address only to email you when AirBubble is ready. We never sell or rent it, or pass it to anyone for their own use.

Ask us at any time and the address is deleted, before or after that mail goes out. You do not need an account to ask, and the address you are asking about is the only thing we need to find it.

Account details

Your email address, a display name if you set one, your licence or subscription status, and the timestamps of your sessions. This is what lets you sign in and lets us tell one account from another.

Your screen, when you hold the keys

When you hold fn ⌃ and let go, the app takes one screenshot of the display your pointer is on. With the Accessibility permission you grant in macOS, it also reads a description of the window in front of you, such as the names of its buttons, menus and fields. Both are sent over an encrypted connection to our servers, which pass them to our AI model provider to produce your answer.

The screenshot is used for that one question. Neither the app nor our servers save it as an image. What can be kept is a text record of your question, the answer that was spoken, and a short description of what he pointed at or the steps he showed you. That record is what lets a conversation carry on past one question.

Nothing is captured before you hold the keys, and nothing after that one screenshot. Nothing watches your screen in the background, and your screen is never recorded as video.

Audio, for transcription

While you hold the keys, the microphone is on. Your audio is streamed over an encrypted connection to our speech-to-text provider, which turns your words into text. The audio is not kept in your account history, and we cannot play it back.

Dictation with fn ⌥ works the same way, and the finished text is typed into the field you were already in.

Notetaker sessions

The Notetaker records only after you start it, with the one-tap card it offers or with ⌘⌥N, and it stops on its own after eight silent minutes. Its audio goes to the same transcription provider. Your typed Thoughts, the live Transcript and the Summary are kept apart, and an AI model never rewrites your Thoughts.

Sessions live in the library on your Mac. If a future release syncs them to your account, this policy will say so plainly before that release ships, and syncing will be something you turn on.

Agent runs

If you use the agent, we record that a run happened, the steps it was asked to perform, the buttons and fields it acted on, and whether each step succeeded. We keep that because anything done in another app on your behalf should be possible to check afterwards.

The agent does nothing in another app until you confirm that specific run. Switching Agent Mode off stops a run that is already under way.

Diagnostics

Crash reports and error events. These contain the app version, your macOS version, the hardware generation, the place in our code where something failed, and a request identifier so we can match the report to our server logs. Diagnostics never contain screenshots, audio, transcripts or notes.

4. Why we are allowed to process it

Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, these are the lawful bases we rely on. Where it does not, the same reasoning still describes why we hold what we hold.

• Performing our contract with you: account details, licence status, and the processing of a question into an answer. You asked for the answer; producing it is the service.
• Your consent: microphone access, screen recording permission, accessibility access, each agent run, and any marketing email. You grant these in macOS or in the app, and you can withdraw any of them without losing the rest of the product.
• Our legitimate interests: keeping the service up, finding and fixing defects, preventing abuse of our servers, and understanding aggregate usage. We use the least identifiable data that answers the question.
• Legal obligation: billing, tax and accounting records, where the law requires us to keep them.

5. How long we keep it

These periods are our intent. They are part of what the legal review will confirm or change.

• Screenshots: held in memory while your answer is produced, then discarded. Never saved to disk as images.
• Audio: held only until it has been turned into text, then discarded.
• Questions, answers and conversation records: kept with your account so a conversation can continue, and deleted when you delete the conversation or your account.
• Notetaker sessions: kept until you delete them, in the library on your Mac.
• Agent run records: 90 days, then deleted.
• Diagnostics: 90 days, then deleted.
• Account and billing records: for as long as you have an account, and afterwards only where tax or accounting law requires it.

Deleting your account removes your conversations and their records, agent records and account details from our systems within 30 days. The exceptions are records the law requires us to keep, and backups, which expire on their regular schedule.

6. Who else sees it

AirBubble is an online service. To answer you, it uses our own servers and a small number of outside providers. Each provider is under a written contract that limits it to processing data on our instructions.

• An AI model provider receives the screenshot, the description of the window in front of you, your question and the earlier messages in that conversation. It returns the answer and what to show on your screen.
• A speech-to-text provider receives the audio and returns the transcript.
• A hosting and database provider runs our servers and stores accounts and conversation history.
• An error-reporting provider receives crash reports and error events.
• A payments provider handles card details directly. We never receive or store your card number.

The current vendors are named, with their role and location, on the subprocessors page. We will update that page before a new vendor starts handling your data.

We may also disclose data if we are legally required to, and we will tell you when we are permitted to. If the business is ever sold or merged, your data moves with it and this policy continues to apply until you are told otherwise.

7. Where it goes

Our servers and our providers operate in more than one country, so data about you may be processed outside the country you are in. That includes the United States.

Where data leaves the UK or the European Economic Area, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, or an adequacy decision where one covers the destination. The regions each vendor runs in are listed on the subprocessors page. You can ask us for a copy of the safeguards that apply to a particular transfer.

8. What we do not do

These are commitments. We will not quietly change them.

• We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.
• We do not train models on your content. Your screenshots, audio, transcripts and notes are not used to train or fine-tune our models, and our vendor contracts require the same of them.
• We do not look at your conversations without a reason. Staff access to content is limited to investigating a fault you have reported or a specific abuse or security incident, and it is logged.
• We do not hide the app from your screen. AirBubble appears in your screen recordings and screen shares like any other app, and it never hides itself from the list of apps running on your Mac.
• We do not run advertising or third-party trackers in the app.

9. How it is protected

Traffic between the app, our servers and our providers is encrypted in transit. Stored data is encrypted at rest. Access to production systems is limited to the people who need it and is authenticated with multi-factor login.

If a breach ever affects your personal data, we will tell you and the relevant regulator within the deadline the law sets. Our security practices, and how to report a vulnerability, are on the security page.

10. Your rights, and how to use them

Depending on where you live, the law gives you some or all of these rights. We honour all of them for everyone, wherever you live.

• Access: get a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Correction: have inaccurate data fixed.
• Deletion: have your data erased, including by deleting your account.
• Portability: get your data in a machine-readable format, or have it sent somewhere else.
• Objection and restriction: object to processing based on our legitimate interests, or ask us to pause it while a dispute is resolved.
• Withdraw consent at any time, without affecting what was done before you withdrew it. If you turn off Screen Recording, Microphone or Accessibility for AirBubble in System Settings, the change takes effect straight away.

To exercise any of these, write to privacy@airbubble.io from the address on your account. We will respond within 30 days, and we will tell you if we need longer and why. We do not charge for this, and we will not treat you differently for asking.

If you are in the UK or the EEA and you think we have got this wrong, you can complain to your local supervisory authority. We would rather you told us first, but you do not have to.

11. Children

AirBubble is not directed at children and is not intended for anyone under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal data from a child. If you believe a child has given us their data, write to privacy@airbubble.io and we will delete it.

12. This website

This site sets the cookies it needs to work and nothing else. We do not run advertising trackers here. The detail is on the cookies page. If you give us your email for release notes, we use it for that and you can unsubscribe from any message we send.

13. Changes to this policy

When we change this policy we will change the date at the top. If a change materially affects what we collect or who we share it with, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect, and the earlier version will stay available so you can compare them.

14. How to reach us

Privacy questions, requests and complaints: privacy@airbubble.io. Anything else: hello@airbubble.io, or the support page.

A postal address, a named contact for data protection, and representatives in the EU and UK will be added here when the entity is registered.