HarkNote — Privacy & Terms

Effective Date: May 18, 2026  ·  Last Updated: September 9, 2026  ·  Document Versions: iOS Privacy v8; Android Privacy v10; Terms v3; Consent v1

HarkNote ("the App") is developed and operated by CTK Advisors LLC ("we," "us," or "our"). This Privacy Policy describes how HarkNote handles recordings, transcripts, notes, settings, and related data. By using the App, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy.

1. Important: Recording Consent Notice

HarkNote is an audio recording and transcription tool. YOU are the data controller for any recordings you make. Recording laws vary significantly by jurisdiction:

  • United States: Federal law generally permits recording when one party to the conversation consents, but some states and circumstances require consent from every party. Calls or meetings involving people in different states may be subject to more than one law.
  • European Union / EEA: Recording individuals may require a lawful basis under the GDPR and may require specific notice to participants.
  • Canada: Criminal law and provincial privacy laws may both apply.
  • Other jurisdictions: Many countries have specific wiretapping, eavesdropping, or data protection laws that govern audio recording.

It is your sole responsibility to determine which recording-consent laws apply, obtain all required consents from all parties before recording, provide any required notices, and comply with all applicable local, state, national, and international laws regarding audio recording and surveillance.

We provide no legal advice and make no representations regarding the legality of any specific recording. We expressly disclaim any liability arising from your failure to comply with applicable recording laws. We recommend you inform all participants when a recording is active, obtain consent before recording, and consult a qualified attorney if uncertain.

2. Data We Collect

2.1 Audio Recordings

When you initiate a recording, the App captures audio via your device microphone. You may also record on the Apple Watch or Wear OS companion (see “Watch Companions” below). On either platform, you can import audio files from other apps through the system share sheet. On iOS, you can also choose iCloud Drive storage for audio sync. Android audio is stored locally in the App's private storage; Wear recordings transfer to the paired Android phone for local processing.

2.2 Transcripts

Audio is transcribed on your device. On iOS, you choose OpenAI Whisper through WhisperKit or NVIDIA Parakeet v3 through FluidAudio; transcripts are stored in the App database and may sync through Apple's private CloudKit service when iCloud is available for the App. On Android, you choose NVIDIA Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 (NVIDIA; models CC BY 4.0, converted by sherpa-onnx) by default, or OpenAI Whisper, both run through sherpa-onnx; transcripts are stored in the local App database. HarkNote does not send transcripts to a developer-operated server or cloud AI service for transcription.

2.3 Meeting Metadata

If you grant calendar access, the App reads upcoming calendar events to associate recordings with meetings. The App never creates, modifies, or deletes calendar events. On Android, if you separately enable Wear OS meeting reminders, the next eligible meeting title and start time are sent to your paired watch. That option is off by default; the reminder does not include the event location or attendee list.

2.4 App Preferences

We store your settings (e.g., selected transcription model, theme) in local platform preferences: UserDefaults on iOS and App preferences on Android. The Wear companion also receives settings and consent status needed for paired operation; the full legal acceptance ledger is not sent to us.

2.5 Optional Self Voice Profile (iOS)

If you choose to train Self voice tagging, the App records a short sample of your voice, converts it on-device into a speaker embedding, and deletes the temporary training audio before saving the embedding as a local voice profile named "Self." If deletion cannot be confirmed, enrollment fails and the profile is not saved. The voice profile is used only to label high-confidence speaker matches in future recordings. It is stored in the App database and may sync through Apple's private CloudKit service when iCloud is available for the App. It is not sent to CTK Advisors LLC, harknote.app, or any developer-operated server.

You can skip this step, use HarkNote without a Self voice profile, retrain it later, or delete it from Settings.

2.5.1 Optional Self Voice Profile (Android)

When you choose Self voice enrollment, HarkNote captures a short temporary voice sample in the App cache and analyzes it on-device. Before saving or updating a pinned speaker embedding in the local Self profile, HarkNote deletes the raw sample and verifies that its file is gone. If that check fails, enrollment reports a cleanup error and does not save the new embedding. The stored profile is a numerical representation of your voice, not the raw enrollment audio; it is used to match speaker labels locally and is not sent to our servers. Normal cancellation and failure paths attempt cleanup, but a process crash or device shutdown can prevent cleanup from completing immediately. You can use HarkNote without enrolling.

2.6 Legal Acceptance Records

When you accept the Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, and recording consent notice, the App stores an acceptance record containing the document versions accepted, acceptance timestamp, app version, build number, and document text hashes. This record is kept in the App's local preferences so the App can determine whether you need to review updated terms.

HarkNote does not send this acceptance record to CTK Advisors LLC or any developer-operated server.

2.7 Website Feedback

If you separately submit app feedback through harknote.app, CTK Advisors LLC receives the feedback type, message text, optional contact email if you provide one, and basic request context such as user agent and page URL. Feedback is routed to our internal project tracker so we can triage bugs and improvements. Do not include recording audio, transcripts, calendar details, or private meeting content in feedback. Feedback is not used for advertising, marketing, tracking, or profiling.

2.8 Data We Do NOT Collect

  • No analytics or telemetry
  • No feature usage, screen view, recording count, or behavioral event logs
  • No crash reports transmitted to us or any third party
  • No advertising identifiers
  • No audio, transcript text, meeting notes, questions, summaries, or calendar content transmitted by the App to our servers
  • No voice profiles, speaker embeddings, or Self voice samples transmitted by the App to our servers
  • No account identifiers, names, email addresses, Apple IDs, or Google account identifiers transmitted by the App to our servers
  • No legal acceptance records transmitted by the App to our servers
  • No tracking of any kind

3. On-Device Processing

Audio processing, transcription, speaker identification, optional Self voice matching, summarization, and Q&A run on your device. HarkNote does not upload your recordings, transcripts, meeting notes, questions, summaries, calendar content, voice profiles, or speaker embeddings to our servers or to a cloud AI service for processing. The App uses:

3.1 iOS

  • WhisperKit (Argmax, Inc.; MIT-licensed) to run OpenAI Whisper for on-device speech-to-text via Apple Core ML and the Apple Neural Engine.
  • FluidAudio (Apache-2.0 licensed) to run NVIDIA Parakeet v3 (models CC-BY-4.0) for on-device speech-to-text, and for on-device speaker labeling, speaker-embedding extraction, and optional Self voice matching, also via Apple Core ML.
  • On-device summarization and Q&A — on devices with Apple Intelligence available (iOS 26 and later), the App uses Apple's on-device Foundation Models system language model, which is part of iOS and is not downloaded by the App. On other devices, and whenever that model is unavailable or declines to answer, the App falls back to a built-in deterministic keyword/sentence heuristic. Neither path sends transcripts or audio to a cloud AI service for processing.

You choose which speech-recognition engine to use in Settings. HarkNote downloads that engine's model files from Hugging Face when you select or download a model in Settings, or when transcription first needs a model that is not yet on your device. You can remove downloaded models in Settings. Model download requests do not include your recordings, transcripts, meeting notes, questions, summaries, or calendar content.

3.2 Android

Speech recognition runs locally with NVIDIA Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 (NVIDIA; models CC BY 4.0, converted by sherpa-onnx) by default, or OpenAI Whisper through sherpa-onnx. Speaker identification, if you turn it on in Settings, uses pyannote segmentation 3.0 (MIT) and the WeSpeaker VoxCeleb ResNet34-LM embedding model (CC-BY-4.0), also run locally through sherpa-onnx; those two model files (about 28 MB) download from github.com the first time speaker identification runs. Summarization and Ask use an installed compatible Gemma 4 E2B or Qwen3.5-2B model through Google's LiteRT-LM runtime, with a built-in deterministic transcript heuristic when a compatible model is unavailable. These processing paths do not send your audio, transcripts, or questions to a cloud AI service.

Android speech and speaker model files are downloaded from github.com/k2-fsa/sherpa-onnx releases, and Gemma/Qwen language model files from huggingface.co. Downloads are verified against pinned hashes before installation. You can download and remove models in Settings; speech and speaker models may also download when first needed. Summarization and Ask do not automatically download a missing language model. The public hosts and their download/CDN redirects receive normal request metadata, such as the source IP address, but no recordings, transcripts, meeting notes, questions, summaries, or calendar content in model requests.

4. Watch Companions and User-Directed Sharing

4.1 Apple Watch (iOS)

If you install the Apple Watch companion, you can start a recording on your wrist. The watch captures and stores that audio on the watch itself and needs neither your iPhone nor an internet connection to do it.

When the finished recording is transferred, it goes directly to your paired iPhone over Apple's encrypted device-to-device connection between your own two devices. It is not sent to CTK Advisors LLC, harknote.app, or any developer-operated server, and it does not pass through a cloud service on the way. Transcription, speaker labeling, summarization, and Q&A then run on the iPhone exactly as they do for a recording you started there.

If you turn on live preview while recording, the watch also streams short audio chunks to your iPhone during the session so you can watch the transcript build. That stream travels over the same device-to-device connection, is used only to display the live preview, and stops when the setting is off or the session ends.

4.2 Wear OS (Android)

The Wear OS companion records and stores audio on the watch while offline, then transfers the recording to your paired Android phone for local transcription and other processing. The paired apps also exchange settings, consent status, recording controls, transfer acknowledgements, and optional meeting reminders.

Google Play services manages these transfers through the Wear OS Data Layer. Depending on connectivity, traffic can travel over Bluetooth or through a Google relay. Google documents cloud-relayed payloads as end-to-end encrypted between the devices, with access restricted by matching app packages and signatures. This is not a developer-readable content upload or cloud AI processing. See Google's Wear Data Layer security documentation.

4.3 Exports and Other User-Directed Handoffs

When you choose to share or copy content, you direct that content outside HarkNote. On either platform, the share sheet can send transcript and summary text or SRT captions to the app you choose. The destination app or recipient controls its own storage and transmission under its terms and privacy policy. Emailing feedback is also user-directed; include private content only if you intend the recipient to receive it. Deleting a session or uninstalling HarkNote does not recall copies you have exported.

5. Apple iCloud Storage (iOS)

HarkNote uses Apple's iCloud services in two ways. App database data, including recording metadata, transcripts, summaries, notes, speaker labels, optional voice profiles, speaker embeddings, and meeting bindings, may sync through Apple's private CloudKit database when iCloud is available for the App. Audio files use your iCloud Drive container only when you choose iCloud Drive storage for recordings. iCloud storage and sync are governed by Apple's iCloud Terms and Privacy Policy; data is encrypted in transit and at rest by Apple. We do not have access to your iCloud data.

6. Data Storage and Security

On iOS, local data is stored using sandboxed storage and Apple SwiftData. Audio files are stored in the App's documents directory or, if selected, your iCloud Drive container. We rely on iOS platform security, including hardware encryption and Data Protection.

On Android, audio, the App database, models, and processing artifacts are stored in the App's private local storage. HarkNote relies on Android sandboxing and file-based encryption rather than adding separate storage encryption. Both the phone and Wear apps disable Android app backup. Exported copies and paired-device transfers are distinct from this local App storage.

7. Data Retention and Deletion

HarkNote keeps original audio until you delete it by default. If you explicitly choose automatic deletion, the countdown begins only after the final transcript and on-device notes are safely finished. Processing, waiting, paused, cancelled, failed, interrupted, and notes-incomplete sessions remain protected. A per-session Keep Original Audio choice always overrides automatic deletion.

To recover processing after iOS suspends or closes the App, HarkNote stores a protected local job manifest and temporary transcript-section checkpoints in the App sandbox. These files remain on this iPhone, are excluded from device backup, are not placed in CloudKit or iCloud Drive, and content-bearing checkpoints are deleted after the transcript and notes are safely committed.

On iOS, HarkNote keeps a short-lived, content-free local diagnostic journal for up to 30 days. It contains operational stages, durations, section counts, device/OS class, and sanitized error codes; it does not contain audio, transcript or summary text, titles, speaker names, filenames, calendar details, questions, or stable identifiers. These diagnostics are not uploaded automatically. You can preview and explicitly copy a Private Support Report.

Android also uses local processing job manifests and temporary transcript-section checkpoints to recover interrupted processing. Content-bearing checkpoints are deleted after the transcript and notes are committed. Local operational diagnostics support recovery; HarkNote does not integrate an analytics or crash-upload service. Deletion on one device does not remove copies held by another device, destination app, or recipient.

Transcripts and notes persist until you delete the session within the App. Deleting a session removes its processing artifacts and audio before deleting transcript and metadata. Uninstalling the App removes local data from that device. iCloud-synced data may be deleted via iOS Settings. Website feedback is retained as a support and product-development record for as long as reasonably necessary to triage, resolve, and document the request. You may contact privacy@harknote.app about privacy rights requests; we may retain website-feedback records where legally permitted or required. We retain no server-side copies of your recordings, transcripts, notes, calendar content, questions, summaries, legal acceptance records, or voice profiles.

8. Third-Party Services

The App integrates no third-party analytics, advertising, or tracking services. iOS uses WhisperKit and FluidAudio; Android uses sherpa-onnx and LiteRT-LM for local processing as described above. Model hosts receive download requests and connection metadata, but recordings and transcripts are never uploaded to those hosts for processing. Google's Wear Data Layer handles paired Android/Wear transfers as described in section 4. Cloudflare Workers host the harknote.app website and website feedback relay; they receive website requests and any website feedback you voluntarily submit, not automatic uploads of App records or recording content. Future versions may offer optional cloud processing; any such feature will be opt-in, clearly disclosed, and will not activate without your explicit consent.

9. Children's Privacy

HarkNote is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

10. Your Rights

Because HarkNote sends no App data to us, you exercise access, deletion, restriction, and portability rights directly on your device and, when enabled, in your private iCloud storage. Recordings stored in your selected iCloud Drive container are standard .caf audio files accessible through Files; local-only recordings remain inside the App sandbox. Any recording can be deleted in the App without contacting us.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be presented in-app with a new consent prompt. Continued use after an update constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

12. Contact Us

CTK Advisors LLC
Email: privacy@harknote.app

13. Governing Law

This Privacy Policy is governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. Disputes shall be resolved in the courts of Travis County, Texas.

14. Terms and Conditions of Use

Document Version: Terms v3. By tapping "I Agree" or using HarkNote, you agree to these Terms and Conditions.

14.1 Lawful Use

You agree to use HarkNote only in compliance with applicable laws, including recording, wiretapping, privacy, employment, data-protection, and consent laws. You are responsible for deciding whether you may lawfully record, transcribe, store, or share any conversation.

14.2 User Content and Responsibility

You control the recordings, transcripts, notes, summaries, and questions you create in the App. You are responsible for the content you record and for obtaining any consent, notice, authorization, or legal basis required before recording others.

14.3 Transcription and Summary Accuracy

Transcripts, speaker labels, summaries, action items, decisions, and Q&A answers may be incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading. Do not rely on HarkNote output as the sole record for legal, medical, financial, employment, compliance, safety, or other high-stakes decisions. Review important recordings and transcripts yourself.

14.4 No Professional Advice

HarkNote does not provide legal, medical, financial, compliance, or professional advice. We do not determine whether a recording is lawful in your jurisdiction.

14.5 No Warranties

To the maximum extent permitted by law, HarkNote is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of accuracy, reliability, availability, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

14.6 Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, CTK Advisors LLC is not liable for damages arising from your recordings, failure to obtain required consent, reliance on transcripts or summaries, loss of data, device issues, or inability to use the App.

14.7 Updates to Terms

We may update these Terms and Conditions. Material changes will be presented in-app with a new consent prompt. The App records the version you accepted so future versions can require renewed acceptance.

14.8 Local Legal Record; No Behavioral Tracking

Your acceptance of these Terms is recorded locally as described in this Privacy Policy and Terms. CTK Advisors LLC does not receive app behavior analytics, legal acceptance records, or recording content from HarkNote.

By using HarkNote, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to this Privacy Policy, the Terms and Conditions of Use, and your obligation to comply with all applicable recording-consent laws.