Privacy Policy

Effective 19 October 2026

In short: Vocalizer works entirely on your Mac. It does not record, store or send your audio, it has no accounts, and it collects no personal data, analytics or tracking.

This policy covers the Vocalizer app for macOS ("the app") and this website ("the site"), both provided by the Vocalizer project ("we", "us"). Vocalizer is free and open source, so you can check everything described here in the source code.

Audio you play

To remove music, the app captures the sound your Mac plays, using macOS's System Audio Recording permission. macOS asks for this permission and you can withdraw it at any time in System Settings › Privacy & Security › Screen & System Audio Recording.
Captured audio is processed in memory on your Mac's Neural Engine, GPU and CPU, then played back to you. It is never written to disk, never kept after playback and never sent off your Mac.
The optional Mute swear words feature uses Apple's on-device speech recognition (macOS 26 or later) to find swear words. Recognition happens on your Mac; the words are not stored or sent anywhere by Vocalizer.

What the app connects to

The app makes no network requests while it processes audio. It only goes online for:

Update checks: every few hours it reads a small update list from this website (getvocalizer.com/appcast.xml). When there's a new version, Vocalizer tells you; it downloads from GitHub and installs only when you choose to (or automatically, if you turn that on in Settings).
Downloads: new versions when you install them, and the Best model (about 400 MB) when you click Download.

These requests contain no personal data from us. Like any web server, GitHub and Vercel receives your IP address and basic request information when they happen; see the GitHub Privacy Statement and the Vercel Privacy Policy.

Updates

Updates are checked against Vocalizer's private signature and Apple Developer ID before they install, and anything that fails is refused. An update keeps the one permission Vocalizer already has (System Audio Recording) and cannot gain new ones without macOS asking you. By default nothing installs without your OK; automatic installing is an option in Settings. Read more in the project README.

Settings stored on your Mac

Your choices (mode, output device, switches such as Fast only or Open at login) are saved in the app's preferences on your Mac. Downloaded models are kept in ~/Library/Application Support/Vocalizer. Deleting the app and that folder removes them.

This website

The site uses no cookies, no analytics and no tracking, and loads no third-party fonts or scripts.
It is hosted by Vercel, which keeps standard server logs (such as IP address and browser type) for security and operations. See the Vercel Privacy Policy.
Your browser asks GitHub for the latest version number to show it on the page, and the download itself comes from GitHub.

Children

Vocalizer collects no personal data from anyone, including children.

Changes

If this policy changes, we will update this page and its effective date. Significant changes will also be noted in the release notes on GitHub.

Contact

Questions about privacy: open an issue at our GitHub issues page.