Privacy Policy

Short version: Microcast has no servers of its own. There is no account, no analytics and no telemetry, and the developer receives nothing — not your clips, not your transcripts, not your keys, not a count of launches. Everything the app knows lives on your own Mac.

This policy covers Microcast, a macOS app made by Team Humble / humbleha.us ("we", "us"). It records short webcam clips on your Mac and helps you post them to your own micro.blog.

What stays on your Mac

• Video and audio. Clips are recorded, encoded and played back locally. A clip leaves this Mac only when you press SEND, and then only to your own micro.blog.
• Speech recognition. Transcription runs on-device only (requiresOnDeviceRecognition = true). Clip audio is never sent to Apple's servers or to us.
• Your credentials. Your micro.blog app token and OpenRouter API key are stored in the macOS Keychain. They are never written to preferences, logs or files, and are sent only to micro.blog and OpenRouter respectively.
• Queued clips and the debug log. On a new install they live in ~/Library/Containers/app.clipcast.tray/Data/Library/Application Support/Clipcast/ — the app is sandboxed, so its files live in its own container.

If you upgraded from a build made before Microcast was sandboxed, those files may still be at the older location, ~/Library/Application Support/Clipcast/: macOS moves an app's old files into its container at first launch, and that move does not always happen. Both are on your own Mac and nothing reads them but Microcast; if you want to be sure which one you have, Settings ▸ Diagnostics ▸ Reveal log in Finder opens the one in use. The log redacts secrets and goes nowhere unless you attach it to something yourself. A temporary hard link made for the speech engine is deleted automatically a few minutes after use.

What leaves your Mac, and when

1. When you press ✨ (draft the post). The words the on-device recognizer wrote down, or the note you typed, are sent to openrouter.ai under your own API key, and OpenRouter passes them to a model. Microcast asks OpenRouter to route only to providers that do not retain prompts (provider: {"data_collection": "deny"}). Free models (:free) are the exception: free endpoints are the ones that log, so that restriction is not sent for them. Your own OpenRouter privacy settings apply too — openrouter.ai/settings/privacy.

2. When you press ✨ on a clip with no speech, and only if you turned on "Describe silent clips" (off by default) and agreed to the separate notice. Three still frames (512 px JPEG) sampled from the clip are sent to openrouter.ai under your own key so a model can describe it. They may show your face and your room. The video, the audio and your keys are never sent.

Silent clips are offered to free vision models first, and free endpoints are the ones that keep prompts, so the non-retention request above is not sent on those attempts. Type a specific paid model into Settings → OpenRouter to have stills routed away from providers that retain them.

3. When you press SEND. The encoded video and the post text are uploaded to your own micro.blog account with your app token. By default the post is created as a draft for you to publish yourself.

4. Health checks. Microcast asks micro.blog and OpenRouter whether your saved credentials still work, and asks OpenRouter for its public model price list. Neither carries any clip content.

What the developer collects

Nothing. No analytics, no telemetry, no crash-reporting service, no accounts, no servers. We never receive your clips, transcripts, notes, credentials or usage. Microcast contains no analytics, telemetry or crash reporting, and the App Store privacy label is "Data Not Collected" (the bundled PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy declares no tracking and no collected data types).

Third parties

OpenRouter and micro.blog are your accounts under your credentials, and what they do with what you send is governed by their policies: openrouter.ai/privacy and micro.blog/about/privacy.

Your controls

• "Describe silent clips" (Settings → OpenRouter) is off by default; leave it off and stills can never be sent.
• "Ask again before the next AI upload" (Settings → Privacy) withdraws your consent; the notice returns before anything is sent again. "Review the data-sharing notice…" (Settings → OpenRouter) shows the same words on demand, and declining there withdraws consent too.
• Clear either key (Settings → micro.blog / OpenRouter → Clear) to stop that destination entirely.
• Camera, microphone and speech access are macOS permissions you can revoke in System Settings → Privacy & Security at any time.

Children

Microcast is not directed at children and collects nothing from anyone.

Changes and contact

Material changes are published here with a new date above. Questions: teamhumble@tuta.io