Privacy Policy
Last updated: 2026-08-25
This policy explains what Tessen (the macOS application) and gettessen.com (this website) do with your data. It is written to match what the software and the site actually do, which is unusually little: there is no analytics library, no advertising pixel, and no third-party script anywhere on this site, and the application performs speech transcription entirely on your own Mac.
In one paragraph: transcription happens on your Mac and is never uploaded. The app keeps a local, plain-text log of what you dictated — only on your own disk, never sent to us or anyone else — and you can turn that off or delete it at any time. The only data that ever reaches a server we operate is an email address you choose to give us on this website. The only data that reaches anyone else is your payment details, handled entirely by Stripe, whom we never see your card number from.
1. Who controls this data
The data controller for this website and the Tessen application is Tessen Software, London, United Kingdom. For any privacy question, request, or complaint, contact [email protected]. We aim to respond within 30 days, and sooner wherever we can.
2. What the application does with your data
2.1 Transcription — on-device, always
Audio you dictate is captured, transcribed, and formatted entirely on your own Mac using models that run locally on Apple Silicon. It is never uploaded to us, to Apple, or to any third party, and it is not used to train anything. If you turn off your Wi‑Fi mid-dictation, nothing changes — there is no server on that path to lose.
2.2 The local dictation log — the one thing we want to be extremely direct about
Tessen writes a record of what you dictate to a file on your own Mac, at
~/Library/Application Support/Tessen/dictation_log.jsonl. This is
what powers the Hub's searchable History tab. Three facts matter here:
- It is written in plain text, not encrypted at rest, on the assumption that your own Mac's disk (and FileVault, if you have it enabled) is the security boundary — the same assumption every local Notes or Mail database on macOS makes.
- It is never transmitted anywhere. No part of Tessen uploads this file, and there is no server we operate that could receive it.
- You control it. Tessen provides controls, in the Hub's History tab, to turn dictation logging off entirely and to delete all existing history. Doing either is immediate and local — nothing to request from us, because we never had a copy to delete.
2.3 Your custom vocabulary and corrections
Words, names, and corrections you teach Tessen are stored in a dictionary file on your own Mac and are never uploaded. The built-in trade vocabulary packs (finance, legal, medical, software) ship inside the application and involve no network access to use.
2.4 Licence activation — offline
Activating a Tessen licence verifies a cryptographically signed token entirely on your own Mac. No licence check calls out to a server, and no usage data is reported back to us as a condition of the app working.
2.5 Telemetry and analytics
Tessen makes no analytics or telemetry calls of any kind. We do not know how often you dictate, what you dictated, which features you use, or whether the app crashed, unless you choose to email us about it yourself.
2.6 The two things that can reach the network
An update check. The application includes a "Check for Updates…"
menu item. Nothing is checked on launch, and nothing is checked in the
background, unless you switch on "Check for updates automatically" in the app's
update panel. That switch ships turned off, so out of the box the only thing that
contacts the network is you clicking the menu item. If you do turn it on, Tessen
makes the same request by itself, at most once a day. Either way it is a single
outbound request to an address we control (gettessen.com) to read a
public release manifest, and it carries the app's version number and no dictation
content, history, vocabulary, or other personal data. No third party is
contacted.
Apple's on-device speech model, once, on macOS 26 and later. On those versions of macOS, the first time you dictate in a given language the operating system may download Apple's on-device speech model if it is not already installed. That request is made by macOS to Apple under Apple's own privacy terms; it is not made by us, it does not reach any server of ours, and no audio, transcript, or other content of yours is attached to it. It happens once per language, and every dictation after it runs with no network access at all. On macOS 13 through 15 Tessen uses the speech recognition already present on your Mac and no such download occurs.
That is the complete list. If you leave automatic update checks off — which is how they ship — never click "Check for Updates…", and the speech model is already installed on your Mac, the application makes no network request at all.
3. What this website does with your data
3.1 The notify / early-access form
If you submit your email address through the "Get early access" form, it is stored in Cloudflare Workers KV (a key-value store operated by our hosting provider, Cloudflare, on our behalf) together with the date you submitted it. We do not store your IP address against your email — a separate, short-lived, hashed value is used only to rate-limit abuse of the form for one hour and is not linked to your address in storage. We use this address only to email you about downloads, launches, and product updates you asked to hear about. We do not sell it, rent it, or share it with anyone other than Cloudflare, who process it purely as storage infrastructure and do not use it for their own purposes.
3.2 Payment
Purchases are processed by Stripe, Inc., via a Stripe Payment Link. When you pay, your card details, billing address, and related payment data are collected and processed by Stripe directly — they never pass through our servers, and we cannot see your full card number. For this data, Stripe acts as an independent data controller, not our processor: your relationship with them for payment data is governed by Stripe's own privacy policy. We receive from Stripe only what is necessary to fulfil your order (confirmation that payment succeeded, the email address you paid with, and the amount/plan purchased).
3.3 Hosting and security
This website is hosted on Cloudflare Pages and protected by Cloudflare's edge network, which necessarily sees standard connection metadata (IP address, request headers) to serve the page at all, in the same way any web host does. We do not layer any analytics, session-replay, or advertising tooling on top of that. The site loads zero third-party scripts, fonts, or trackers — you can verify this yourself in your browser's network inspector.
3.4 Cookies
This site sets no cookies and uses no client-side storage to identify or track you across visits.
4. Processors we use
| Processor | What they handle | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare, Inc. | Website hosting, the notify-form mailing list (Workers KV) | Processor |
| Stripe, Inc. | Payment and billing data | Independent controller |
No other third party receives any data from this site or this application.
5. Your rights (GDPR / UK GDPR)
If you are in the UK or EEA, you have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you (in practice: the email address and submission date in our notify list, if any).
- Rectify inaccurate data.
- Erasure ("right to be forgotten") — request we delete your email from our records.
- Restrict or object to our processing of your data.
- Portability — receive the data you gave us in a portable format.
- Withdraw consent at any time, for processing based on consent (such as the notify list).
- Lodge a complaint with your local data protection supervisory authority (in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office) if you believe we have mishandled your data.
To exercise any of these rights, email [email protected]. Because your dictation history and vocabulary never leave your own Mac, there is nothing on our servers to access, correct, or delete beyond an email address you may have given us.
6. Your rights (California / CCPA)
California residents have the right to know what personal information we collect, to request deletion of it, to correct it, and to opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of personal information. We do not sell or share your personal information with third parties for their own advertising or marketing purposes — the only sharing that occurs is with the two processors named above, for the purposes described. You will not receive discriminatory treatment for exercising any of these rights. Requests can be made to [email protected].
7. Data retention
- Notify-list emails are retained until you ask us to delete them, or until the purpose (notifying you about launch/updates) has clearly passed, whichever is sooner.
- Payment records are retained by Stripe per their own retention obligations, including statutory tax and accounting record-keeping periods that can exceed the length of your subscription.
- Your local dictation log and vocabulary are retained on your own Mac for as long as you keep them — we hold no copy and set no retention period for something we never receive.
8. Children's privacy
This service is not directed at children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, contact us and we will delete it.
9. International data transfers
Cloudflare and Stripe operate global infrastructure and may process data outside your country of residence. Both maintain their own transfer safeguards (including Standard Contractual Clauses where applicable) — see their respective privacy policies for details specific to their processing.
10. Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the "Last updated" date at the top of this page will change, and material changes will be called out on this page. We will not retroactively expand what we do with data you already gave us under an earlier version of this policy without telling you.
11. Contact
Email [email protected] for any privacy question, request, or complaint. Governing law for this policy: the laws of England and Wales.