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Privacy

What this site and ChirpKey collect, and who handles it.

Last updated .

The short version

No ads, no tracking cookies, no profiles. I count page views with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which uses no cookies. The site is hosted on Cloudflare.

ChirpKey, my Mac dictation app, turns speech into text on your Mac. Your text only goes somewhere else if you turn on AI Writing and pick where it goes.

Who runs this site

stratinator.com is run by René Meister. His postal address is in the Impressum. Questions about this page or your data go to support@stratinator.com.

Hosting

Cloudflare serves every page. With each request it receives your IP address, the page you asked for, your browser's user agent and the page you came from. It uses them to deliver the page and to keep abuse away from the site. Cloudflare keeps this request data, including IP addresses, for about 30 days, and I can see it in its dashboard. I look at totals and don't use it to follow anyone.

Analytics

I use Cloudflare Web Analytics on stratinator.com and on the ChirpKey website, chirpkey.stratinator.com, to see which pages get read, where readers come from and how fast pages load. Cloudflare adds a small script from static.cloudflareinsights.com that reports the page address, the referring page, your browser and device type, your country and the load timings. According to Cloudflare it sets no cookies, uses no local storage and does not fingerprint visitors. I see totals, not individual people.

If you block the script, the site works the same.

What your browser keeps

Your browser keeps three items for this site, and none of them is sent anywhere. Local storage holds your theme (stratinator-theme) and whether you paused the market ticker (stratinator-ticker). Session storage holds the ticker's current text (stratinator-ticker-items) until you close the tab, so it does not flicker between pages. Clearing this site's data removes all three.

Email

If you write to support@stratinator.com, I get your address and whatever you send. I use it to reply and for nothing else.

ChirpKey

ChirpKey is not released yet. This section describes the app as it stands before the first release, and I will update it if that changes.

Your voice

Speech recognition runs on your Mac. Audio is never uploaded. ChirpKey doesn't keep recordings or save what you dictate. It holds your last dictation in memory so you can copy it again, and that is gone when you quit. When nothing in focus can take text, ChirpKey puts it on the clipboard instead. In password fields it types and copies nothing. There is no ChirpKey account.

Corrections and snippets you add are saved as plain text on your Mac, in ~/.config/chirpkey. API keys are kept in your Mac's Keychain. Other settings, including your styles and your own server's address, are kept in the app's preferences on your Mac.

AI Writing

AI Writing is optional and off by default. It rewrites your text before ChirpKey types it. Where the text goes depends on what you pick:

  • Apple Intelligence: it stays on your Mac.
  • OpenAI, Anthropic or Google, with your own API key: the text and the style's instructions go to api.openai.com, api.anthropic.com or generativelanguage.googleapis.com. Audio never does.
  • Your own server: the text goes to the address you enter. That can be any web address, so ChirpKey names it even when it is localhost, because a local server can pass text on.

When you add a key or a server address, the settings ask that provider or server for its list of models. That request sends your API key, if there is one, and no text.

Requests go straight from your Mac to that provider, with no ChirpKey server in between, and their privacy terms apply. I never see them. A failed request is never sent on to another provider. Google's unpaid API tier may use your content to improve Google's products, and people at Google may read it, so use a paid key for anything private. The Test button sends a fixed sample sentence, nothing you dictated.

Downloads and update checks

Speech models download from Hugging Face. Apple Speech may download its files from Apple. The website is chirpkey.stratinator.com, and it counts visits with the same cookieless Web Analytics as this site. The app, its updates and the update feed come from dl.chirpkey.stratinator.com. Both run on Cloudflare.

On its second launch ChirpKey asks whether to check for updates automatically. You can also check by hand from the menu. Each check is an ordinary web request that sends no details about your Mac. Cloudflare logs it with your IP address and a user agent naming the app and its version, and keeps that for about 30 days. I look at the counts only.

Contact Support

Contact Support… in the menu opens an email to support@stratinator.com in your mail app, filled in with details that help me answer: the ChirpKey version, build and git commit, your macOS version, chip and memory, the speech model, whether Live text is on, your shortcut, the type of AI provider, the status of the three permissions, and any problem the menu is showing. It never includes what you dictated, your words or snippets, prompts, API keys, your server's address, model names or file paths. Nothing is sent until you press Send. If no mail app opens, ChirpKey copies the details to the clipboard instead.

Other sites

This page covers stratinator.com and the ChirpKey app. Sites I link to, such as X and TradingView, have their own privacy terms. Cloudflare's are at cloudflare.com/privacypolicy.

Legal basis and your rights

Hosting, analytics and ChirpKey's update checks rest on my legitimate interest in running a secure site and app and knowing what gets used (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). AI Writing only sends text when you turn it on and choose a provider. You can ask what I hold about you, have it corrected or deleted, object to the processing, and complain to a data protection authority. Write to support@stratinator.com.