Effective date: 10 August 2026 Last updated: 12 August 2026
This Privacy Policy explains how Dictate Keyboard (the "App", application ID
net.devemperor.dictate) handles your information. The App is developed and
maintained by Jannis Zahn, trading as DevEmperor (the "Developer", "we",
"us"), Talstraße 84, 35625 Hüttenberg, Germany — the data controller for the
limited purposes described below.
If you have any questions about this policy, contact us at contact@devemperor.net.
Dictate Keyboard turns your speech into text. There are two ways to set that up, and they differ completely in what happens to your data:
By default, we are not involved at all. You bring your own API key for a provider you choose, or you use on-device recognition. Your audio goes from your phone straight to that provider, or never leaves the phone. We operate no server in that path, receive nothing, and store nothing about you.
Dictate Cloud is optional. If — and only if — you deliberately buy credit through Google Play, your recordings pass through a server we operate. That is the only situation in which any of your data reaches us, and it is described separately in section 4.
Nothing about the first way changed when the second was added. If you never buy credit, this policy applies to you exactly as it did before Dictate Cloud existed: we have no server in your path and no data about you.
- Unless you choose Dictate Cloud, we do not receive any of your data. No backend in your path, no database about you, no analytics.
- Dictate Keyboard is a voice-to-text keyboard. To turn your speech into text it sends the audio you record to an AI provider that you choose and configure (for example OpenAI, Groq, or a self-hosted server). That transfer happens directly from your device to that provider — it never passes through us.
- On-device recognition is available and needs no network connection and no provider at all.
- Dictate Cloud is the one exception, it is entirely optional, it is never switched on without a purchase you make yourself, and section 4 says exactly what it does.
- Your API keys, prompts, and settings are stored only on your device.
- The App contains no advertising, no tracking, no telemetry, and no crash-reporting SDKs.
- As a keyboard, the App does not log your keystrokes or collect what you type in other apps. It only processes audio that you explicitly record by pressing the dictation button.
- All of this can be checked. The App and the Dictate Cloud server are open source and readable in full — see section 8.
When you start a dictation, the App records audio using your device microphone. The recording is written to a temporary, app-private cache file on your device and is deleted automatically once the transcription completes. To produce a transcript, this audio is uploaded to the transcription provider you have selected — or processed entirely on your device if you use on-device recognition.
If you enable the "resend / retry" convenience feature, the most recent recording may be kept temporarily so it can be sent again; it is deleted when you start a new dictation, when you clear it, or when the App removes it.
The transcribed text — and, if you use the rewording / AI-formatting feature, the text you ask the App to rephrase — is sent to the AI provider you have configured so the requested result can be returned. The provider returns the text to your device, where it is inserted into the field you are typing in.
The App keeps a history of your dictations on your device so you can re-insert, review or re-transcribe them. It is on by default and holds the most recent entries (50 unless you change it), which you can search, pin and delete individually or all at once in the App's settings.
- Transcripts are stored in an app-private database on your device.
- The source audio is not kept unless you switch that on separately; it is off by default. Failed transcriptions are an exception: their audio is kept so the attempt can be repeated, and is removed with the entry.
- Nothing is recorded in password fields or in incognito mode.
- None of this is uploaded anywhere. It exists only on your device and is deleted when you clear the history or uninstall the App.
To use a provider, you enter your own API key (or, for a local/self-hosted server such as Ollama, a base URL). These credentials and provider settings are stored locally on your device in the App's private storage. They are sent only to the corresponding provider's API to authenticate your own requests, and are never transmitted to the Developer.
Custom rewording prompts, style settings, language preferences, and other configuration are stored locally on your device (in an app-private settings store and a local SQLite database). They are not uploaded anywhere except as part of a request to your chosen provider when relevant (e.g. a prompt you send for rewording).
To perform transcription and rewording, the App acts as a client to an OpenAI-compatible API that you select and authenticate with your own account. When you use such a feature, your audio and/or text is processed by that provider under their privacy policy and terms — they act as independent data controllers, not on our behalf. We have no access to, and no control over, the data you send them or what they do with it.
Built-in providers the App can be configured to use include:
| Provider | Privacy policy |
|---|---|
| OpenAI | https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy |
| Groq | https://groq.com/privacy-policy/ |
| OpenRouter | https://openrouter.ai/privacy |
| Together AI | https://www.together.ai/privacy |
| DeepInfra | https://deepinfra.com/privacy |
| Mistral AI | https://mistral.ai/terms/#privacy-policy |
| xAI (Grok) | https://x.ai/legal/privacy-policy |
| DeepSeek | https://cdn.deepseek.com/policies/en-US/deepseek-privacy-policy.html |
| Anthropic | https://www.anthropic.com/legal/privacy |
| Deepgram | https://deepgram.com/privacy |
| AssemblyAI | https://www.assemblyai.com/legal/privacy-policy |
| ElevenLabs | https://elevenlabs.io/privacy |
| Soniox | https://soniox.com/privacy |
| Ollama (local) | Runs on your own device/server — no third party involved |
| On-device recognition | Runs entirely on your phone — no third party involved |
You may also configure a custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint. If you do, your data is sent to whichever server you specify, and you are responsible for that server's data handling.
Please review the privacy policy of any provider before you use it. Because the data is sent with your own API key, the provider may retain or process it according to your account terms with them (for example, to deliver the service or for abuse monitoring).
If you use the GIF panel, the search terms you type there are sent to KLIPY (https://klipy.com/privacy-policy) to fetch results, using an API key you supply yourself. The feature is unavailable until you configure that key, and nothing is sent to KLIPY unless you open the panel and search.
Purchases of Dictate Cloud credit are processed by Google, who is the seller and an independent controller for the payment. We never see your payment details. See https://policies.google.com/privacy.
This section applies only if you buy credit. If you use your own API key or on-device recognition, none of it applies to you and nothing here changes what is described above.
Dictate Cloud exists for people who do not want to create an account with an AI provider. You buy dictation minutes through Google Play, and your recordings are sent to a server we operate, which passes them to OpenAI and returns the text.
Recordings and text. Your recording is sent to our server, not stored there, and passed straight on to OpenAI for transcription. The same applies to text you have reworded. We keep none of it — no audio, no transcript, no prompt.
OpenAI states that it retains API inputs and outputs for up to 30 days to detect misuse, and deletes them afterwards. OpenAI states that API data is not used to train its models.
Your credit account. We store a random identifier, your balance, a hash of your recovery code and hashes of your access keys. There is no account in the usual sense: we hold no name, no email address and no Google account.
Device name. So you can see in the settings which devices use your credit, a label such as "SM-A556B · Android 15 · 5.4.0" is stored.
Purchases. For each purchase we store the order number, the pack, the amounts Google reports, the currency and the billing country. These records are subject to statutory retention (see 4.4).
Usage log. For each request we store the time, the kind (dictation or rewording), the seconds billed, token counts, cost, a status code and the duration — numbers only, never content. These individual rows are deleted after 90 days; what remains are daily totals with no link to any account.
A hash of your previous credit account. When you buy while a credit account already exists on your device, the App attaches that account's random identifier to the purchase and Google returns it to us with the order. We store only a SHA-256 hash of it. It is not a Google identifier and says nothing about your Play account, your name or your email address; it exists solely to recognise repeated refunds after full consumption. A first purchase, or one made after you have deleted your credit account, carries nothing at all.
| Purpose | Basis |
|---|---|
| Providing the service, credit, handling purchases | Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (contract) |
| Detecting abuse, operational security, alerting | Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interests) |
| Retaining purchase records | Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR with § 147 AO |
- OpenAI Ireland Ltd., Ireland — transcription and rewording, as our processor under a data processing agreement dated 10 August 2026. As our counterparty is in the EEA, that transfer takes place within the EU. Where OpenAI Ireland passes data to affiliates outside the EEA — the United States in particular — clause 4.1 of that agreement requires the European Commission's standard contractual clauses or an adequacy decision under Art. 45 GDPR. The sub-processors in use are listed at https://platform.openai.com/subprocessors.
- Cloudflare, Inc., USA — operating the server and database, as our processor under Cloudflare's data processing addendum, which forms part of its terms. That transfer relies on the standard contractual clauses.
Database and balances are held in the European Union (Western Europe). That does not mean nobody outside the EU can reach them: Cloudflare and OpenAI are groups with companies in the United States, and access from there is itself a transfer under data protection law. The standard contractual clauses above cover exactly that.
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Recordings, transcripts, prompts | not at all with us; up to 30 days at OpenAI |
| Usage log (individual rows) | 90 days |
| Daily totals | indefinitely, with no link to an account |
| Credit account, access keys | until you delete it |
| Purchase records | 10 years (§ 147 AO) |
You can delete it in the App under Settings → Dictate Cloud, or in a browser at https://api.dictatekeyboard.com/delete if you no longer have the App installed. Deleting removes your account, your recovery code, every signed-in device and your usage log.
Any remaining credit is forfeited. It is not refunded. If you want your money back, contact Google Play before deleting.
Your purchase records remain for the retention period above; they hold an order number and an amount, and once the account is gone there is nothing in them that leads back to you. Because those records refer to the account, the account's own entry is emptied rather than dropped: what is left is the random identifier, the dates it was created and deleted, and the minute totals. No recovery code, no device, nothing that can be signed in to.
One exception, and we would rather name it than bury it. The one-way hash described in section 4.1 is kept for 24 months after deletion, and then erased. It exists solely to recognise repeated refunds after full consumption: without it, deleting the account would reset that count and make deletion the last step of a refund cycle rather than an end to the relationship. It is a random identifier of ours, and cannot be turned back into an account, an email address or a name. The basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interest in preventing payment abuse.
Because we deliberately store no name, no email address and no account, we cannot identify you. If you ask us for access to or erasure of your data, we therefore need your recovery code or the account identifier shown in the App. Without one of those we cannot connect a request to any data, and Art. 11 GDPR does not require us to collect more information just to be able to (Art. 12(2)).
| Permission | Purpose |
|---|---|
RECORD_AUDIO |
To capture your voice when you press the dictation button. |
INTERNET |
To send audio/text to the AI provider you configured and receive the result. |
MODIFY_AUDIO_SETTINGS / BLUETOOTH |
To route recording correctly, including through Bluetooth headsets. |
VIBRATE |
Optional haptic feedback. |
POST_NOTIFICATIONS |
To show status notifications (e.g. transcription progress) on Android 13+. |
The App requests the microphone permission only for dictation and uses it only while you are actively recording. The App does not request access to your contacts.
You can teach the App a contact's name so it stops autocorrecting it, and that works without giving it your address book: you either pick a single contact in the system's own contact picker — which hands over that one contact and nothing else — or select a contacts file you exported yourself. Only the name is taken from it, never numbers, addresses or anything else, and it is stored in your personal dictionary on the device, exactly like any other word you add there. You can see and delete these names in the App's dictionary settings.
- On your device: API keys, settings, prompts and your dictation history remain on your device until you delete them in the App or uninstall it. Temporary audio recordings are deleted automatically after transcription.
- With your chosen provider: any retention of audio or text is governed by that provider's policy, not by us.
- With the Developer: nothing — unless you use Dictate Cloud, where section 4.4 applies.
To erase all locally stored data, clear the App's keys, history and settings in its settings screens, or uninstall the App.
Although Dictate Keyboard is an input method (a keyboard), it does not record, log, store, or transmit your general typing. Only audio you deliberately record for dictation is processed, and only for the purpose of returning a transcript. Password fields and incognito mode are excluded from the dictation history entirely.
The App is open source, and so is the server behind Dictate Cloud. Both live in the same public repository:
https://github.com/DevEmperor/DictateKeyboard — the App under app/ and
lib/, the Dictate Cloud server under cloud/.
You can read every line, including the parts this policy describes: what is sent to a provider and when, that recordings are streamed through the server without ever being written to a disk, how a credit account is deleted, and what is kept afterwards. The App is licensed under the Apache License 2.0; you are free to build it yourself rather than install ours.
Two honest limits, because a promise of transparency that overstates itself is worth less than none:
- Published source is not proof of what runs. Reading
cloud/tells you what the server is built from, not that the deployment matches it byte for byte. Nobody can verify that from outside — here or anywhere else. - Two things are deliberately not in the repository. Credentials, which live in Cloudflare's secret store and are never committed, and one configuration file holding an alert address and the thresholds our abuse detection trips on. Publishing those would mean publishing exactly what someone would tune against. No behaviour described in this policy depends on them.
Data sent to AI providers, and to Dictate Cloud, is transmitted over encrypted HTTPS connections. Your credentials and settings are kept in the App's private, sandboxed storage, which on Android is not accessible to other apps. On the Dictate Cloud server, recovery codes and access keys are stored only as SHA-256 hashes, so possession of the database does not allow anyone to sign in. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure.
The App is not directed at children under the age of 13 (or the equivalent minimum age in your jurisdiction), and we do not knowingly process data from children. Note that the third-party AI providers may impose their own age requirements.
The AI providers you choose may operate servers in other countries (for example the United States). When you send audio or text to a provider, that data may be processed in the country where the provider operates, under that provider's policies.
For Dictate Cloud, the transfer arrangements are set out in section 4.3.
- You decide whether to use any AI provider and which one — or none, using on-device recognition.
- You can change or delete your API keys at any time in the App's settings.
- You can delete your dictation history, your custom prompts and reset settings in the App.
- You can delete your Dictate Cloud account (section 4.5).
- You can uninstall the App to remove all locally stored data.
- Under the GDPR you have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, data portability and objection (Art. 15–21), and the right to complain to a supervisory authority. For Dictate Cloud, please read section 4.6 first: we can only act on a request we can connect to an account.
- For data already processed by a third-party provider, please exercise your rights directly with that provider, who is the controller for that data.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by updating the "Last updated" date above and publishing the new version at this location. Continued use of the App after an update constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.
If you have questions or requests regarding this Privacy Policy, contact:
Jannis Zahn (DevEmperor) — contact@devemperor.net Talstraße 84, 35625 Hüttenberg, Germany
Project repository: https://github.com/DevEmperor/DictateKeyboard