Privacy

The short version

Hontoni turns speech into text on your phone using an internet speech service. There is an iPhone app and an Android app, and they work the same way. You can use it as a guest, with nothing tied to an email address, or sign in with Apple, with Google or with a code sent to your email address, and on this website also with an emailed link or with your email address and a password, so that your minutes and, if you choose, your conversations survive a new phone. The audio of a live conversation is not kept unless you turn on keeping it. Transcripts stay on your phone unless you are signed in and have chosen to keep conversations in your account. There is no advertising, we do not sell what we hold, and we share it only with the service providers described on this page. You can delete a conversation, or your whole account, from the app.

Speech and translation

While Hontoni listens, microphone audio is streamed over the internet to the specialist speech-recognition and translation provider Hontoni uses, and the recognised or translated text is returned to your phone. Hontoni does not process speech on the phone itself, and it does not claim that speech is end-to-end encrypted.

For shared live conversations, the owner decides which original captions, translated text and natural-voice languages viewers can use. Original transcript text needed for an additional language is sent to Google's Gemini service for translation, and the resulting text is sent to the same service to generate speech. Translations and reusable voice clips are kept privately with the owner's conversation and provided only to authorized viewers. Generated voice seconds are deducted once from the owner's natural-voice allowance for each language, regardless of how many viewers listen. An exhausted allowance or meeting voice cap stops new speech generation; captions and recording continue within their own allowance. Deleting the conversation or account removes the shared translation cache and queues the voice clips for deletion, normally about 5–20 minutes later when scheduled cleanup succeeds. Previously issued audio links expire within two minutes.

A recording to import can come from Files, from your photo library through the system's own picker, which gives Hontoni only the video you pick, from a video you record with the camera, which is not saved to your photo library, or from a web address you paste, which your phone downloads itself without sending the address to Hontoni. An imported audio or video file can be read in either of two ways, and you choose which each time. Reading it live plays the recording, from the point you choose, and sends its audio as it plays, exactly as a live session does; nothing is uploaded. "Read the whole file at once" uploads the recording to a private store of ours instead, and the speech recognition service is given a link to it that expires, so that it can read the whole recording in one go. The recording is deleted from that store the moment the transcript is ready, however the reading ended, and nothing of it is kept there. The transcript itself is never written to our database at all: it is passed straight to your phone, and the service that read it is told to forget it as soon as your phone has it, and in any case within a day. A guest may have a whole file read this way too; the text comes back to the phone and goes no further. Either way only the audio is sent to be read, and the video's images are never sent to the speech recognition service. The iPhone app keeps the video, without its sound, beside the conversation: on your phone, and in your account when conversations are kept there.

What is left of a reading is its record: the task, the languages, how many seconds were read, a code if it failed, and the times. Not the file's name, and not a word of what it said.

Before the first session Hontoni tells you this and asks for microphone access. The provider processes the streamed audio, and a recording sent to be read in one go, under its own terms and privacy policy and under our agreement with it. It does not use what it is sent to train or improve its models, and its logs hold only technical details, such as times, durations and error codes, never audio or text. Live audio, the text made from it, and the translations it reads aloud are processed as they arrive, and the provider does not store them. A recording read in one go, and its transcript, are kept by the provider only until Hontoni tells it to delete them, which Hontoni does once the text has been delivered and in any case within a day; anything still held that way is deleted by the provider itself after 30 days. The provider processes this audio and text in the United States. It uses its own subprocessors under its agreement with us; we will tell you who they are if you ask.

To open a live session the app needs a short-lived credential for that provider. The Hontoni service issues one for each session, limited to the minutes that session may use, and does not store it. A whole file is different: a credential of that kind can only open a live connection, so the Hontoni service asks for the reading itself.

Your account

Every install starts as a guest. On first launch the app creates an anonymous account with Supabase, the database and sign-in service Hontoni uses, so that the service can count your free minutes. A guest account has no email address, name or password. The service records the identifier your phone reports for the app, the app's version and build, the phone's model and system version, the language, region and time zone it is set to, the language the app is shown in, and how the app reached the phone, which is TestFlight or the App Store on an iPhone and Google Play on an Android phone, and, on an Android phone, whether it is one of Google's automated test devices, so that sessions can be tied to a device, free minutes are given once per phone, and a problem can be traced to a build.

Signing in links a permanent identity to an account, so that its minute balance, and its conversations when the library setting is on, survive a new phone. Your settings are stored with the account too, including whether the audio of live conversations is kept, so that they apply on every phone signed in to it. The iPhone app offers Apple, Google and a code sent to your email address; the Android app offers Google and a code sent to your email address, which is also how an account made with Apple on an iPhone is reached on an Android phone, since Apple's private relay forwards the mail; this website offers Apple, Google, a link sent to your email address, and your email address with a password. From Apple we receive a stable identifier for you, your email address or, if you choose to hide it, the private relay address Apple creates, and your name, once, if you share it. From Google we receive your Google account identifier, your email address, your name and the address of your profile picture. Hontoni asks Google for basic profile information only: it cannot see your Gmail, Drive, Contacts, Calendar or anything else in your Google account. When you sign in with an emailed code or link, we receive the address you typed and nothing else; Supabase makes the code or link and records that the address has been confirmed. When you create an account with your email address and a password, Supabase keeps the password only in a form that cannot be turned back into it, and the account can be used once you have confirmed the address from the email we send. We also keep the language of the page or app an account was created from, when it tells us, so that its emails can be written in that language.

You can choose a photo of your own instead. A photo you upload is re-encoded first, on your phone or in your browser, which removes what a camera writes into a file, including where the picture was taken. It is kept in your account until you remove it or delete your account, and it is shown only to you, in the app and on this website. If you do not upload one, a picture from Google is the one whose address Google sends us when you sign in; Apple and an emailed code or link send none.

We use this information to sign you in, to recover your balance and conversations on another phone, to send the emails described below, and to answer you when you write to us. We do not sell it, use it for advertising, or share it with anyone beyond the processors described on this page. Hontoni's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Sign-in details, and everything else the service keeps, are stored with Supabase in its Tokyo region (ap-northeast-1). Google sign-in runs through this website and Supabase: the site passes you to Google and back to the app, and never stores or logs the sign-in code. A code sent to your email address is typed into the app and passes through no web page.

Minutes, purchases and the ledger

Hontoni counts what you use in minutes. Each time the app starts a session, the service records the kind of session, the languages chosen, whether the translation was read or spoken, how many seconds were reserved, when it started and ended, and how many seconds were used. A recording read in one go is a session too, and is recorded in the same way. The service does not receive the audio or the text.

Purchases in the app are made through the store the app came from, and that store, not Hontoni, holds your card and payment details. On an iPhone or iPad that is Apple's App Store, and on an Android phone it is Google Play. Through RevenueCat, Hontoni receives the store's transaction information: the product, the purchase and expiry dates, the store's transaction identifier, whether the purchase was made in the store's test or production environment, and whether an introductory price applied. It also receives the store's notifications about renewals, cancellations, billing problems, refunds and revocations. Your balance is a ledger in Supabase: an append-only record of minutes granted, reserved for a session, used, returned and reversed. The app shows you your own balance.

For purchases, RevenueCat receives your Hontoni account identifier, product and transaction identifiers, purchase history, renewal and refund status, and technical app or browser information needed to process purchases. This links your plan across devices; it does not give RevenueCat your audio or transcripts. Apple handles App Store payments and Google handles Google Play payments. For web checkout, we send your email address to RevenueCat; RevenueCat and Stripe process your payment, billing address, tax information and your choice to start supply immediately. Hontoni does not receive full card numbers. We disable automatic campaign-parameter collection and optional analytics events in the web purchase SDK. Purchase notifications update your allowance ledger in Supabase, recording hours granted, used and reversed. Payment providers keep the records needed for billing, fraud prevention and legal obligations.

Not every hour is bought. A new account receives free minutes once per phone, an invitation can add minutes to both accounts, and the people who run Hontoni can add minutes to an account, for example when answering a request. From time to time Hontoni also runs offers: a gift of hours, more hours on the packs bought while an offer runs, or a discount on a plan for chosen people, such as those who tested Hontoni before its release. To decide who an offer is for, the service uses what it already holds: when the account was made, whether it is signed in, and whether Hontoni reached one of its phones through TestFlight or Google Play; or the people who run Hontoni choose accounts by their identifier or email address. Automated test devices and accounts being deleted are never included. Hours an offer adds are recorded in your ledger with the offer they came from, and the service notes when the app has shown you a gift, so that it is shown only once. A discount on the App Store is a single-use offer code from Apple, kept with the one account it is given to; on Google Play it is an offer the app shows only to the people it is for. None of this uses anything you said or recorded.

Conversations in your account

When you are signed in and "Keep conversations in your account" is on in Settings, each conversation is uploaded to your account: its title, when it started, the task and languages, the names and voices you gave speakers, and every caption, original and translated. The setting is on after sign-in, and the app says so next to the sign-in buttons and in Settings.

"Keep the audio of live conversations", which the app offers when you first set it up and in Settings, is off unless you turn it on. While it is off, nothing the microphone hears is kept once the words have come back. While it is on, the audio of each live conversation is saved on your phone with its transcript, so that you can play the conversation back, and it goes to your account with the conversation when conversations are kept there. When you turn it on, the app reminds you to let the people around you know that their voices are being kept. Turning it off again stops new conversations keeping their audio; audio already saved stays until you delete the conversation it belongs to.

If a conversation has a recording, which means a file you imported or the audio of a live conversation you chose to keep, a compressed copy of it (AAC audio in an m4a file) is uploaded once the conversation has ended. For a video you import, on this website or in the iPhone app, a compressed copy of its picture without its sound (H.264 video in MP4 files, no larger than 960 × 540) is kept with the conversation as well. Everything is stored in Supabase Storage and Postgres under your user identifier, in the Tokyo region, and the service's access rules let only your signed-in account read or change it; a guest session can reach none of it.

"Name conversations automatically", in Settings, is off unless you turn it on. While it is on, and only for a signed-in account that is keeping its conversations, the first part of a conversation's text is sent during the conversation and when it ends to Google's Gemini service, which suggests a short name for it. Google processes those words under its own terms and under our agreement with it in order to answer; we keep nothing of it, not the words, not the name that comes back, not a log of either. A guest's conversation is never sent, nor is one you have named yourself, and a name you write is never replaced.

Turning "Keep conversations in your account" off stops uploads; what is already in your account stays there until you delete it. Deleting a conversation in the app removes its recording and any video from your account at once and marks the conversation deleted, so that every phone signed in to the account removes its copy on its next refresh. The text of a deleted conversation is kept, marked deleted and shown nowhere, until your account is deleted.

Guests keep everything on the phone. Transcripts, the names you give speakers, your reading-language and interface preferences, the recordings you import (and, in the iPhone app, a video's picture without its sound), and the audio of a live conversation when you have chosen to keep it, are stored only on your phone. The one thing that leaves it is a recording sent to be read in one go, described above, which is deleted as soon as the transcript is ready. A web address you paste to import a file is fetched by the phone itself and is not sent to Hontoni. Reopening a saved conversation makes no request to any service, and deleting the app removes everything it stored on the phone.

We do not read your conversations. The people who run Hontoni have administrative access to the database and use it only to operate the service, for example to complete an account deletion or to investigate a fault you report.

For signed-in accounts keeping conversations, AI notes can update during the conversation and after it ends. Relevant transcript text and speaker names are sent to Google's Gemini service to generate notes, and may be sent to TypeSafe's Jev service to check supporting evidence. Notes for saved account conversations are kept with that conversation and deleted when it is deleted. Live suggestions are not saved. Saved people hold the names you enter and, only if you clone that person's voice, the voice sample described below; Hontoni does not use voices to recognise anyone, and deleting a saved person does not change names already written in conversations. While you listen with spoken translation, each translated sentence is sent to the speech recognition service, which reads it aloud in a natural voice; Hontoni keeps neither the text nor the audio it sends back. The phone's own voice, made on the phone, is used when you choose it or when the natural voice is unavailable. When you read a saved conversation in another language, its transcript and notes are sent to Google's Gemini service to be translated. The translations, and the language you last chose to read it in on this website, are kept with that conversation so that it is not translated again, and are deleted when it is deleted. On this website, and in each app from its next version, you can mark one speaker in a conversation as yourself ("This is me"). The mark is set by hand, never by recognising a voice; it is kept with that conversation, deleted with it, and used only to show which of its suggested action items are yours.

When notes are prepared, they also pick out up to five topics, saying what the conversation is about, and up to fifteen key terms: names of people, products and companies, and other specialist words, in the spelling they most likely have. Both are kept with the conversation's notes and deleted when it is deleted. The key terms are also gathered into a word list for your account, with how many conversations each appeared in, shown on this website in Settings › Words Hontoni should know, where you can correct a spelling, pin, hide or add words, or clear the whole list. The words in that list are sent to Google's Gemini service with the transcript when notes are prepared, so that the notes spell them the way you chose. When you are signed in and start listening, or reading a recording live, on this website and in each app from its next version, the words you pinned or wrote yourself, and the ones that recur in your conversations or, when you start listening from a group's page on this website, the key terms of that group's conversations, are sent to the speech recognition service with the audio, as context to help it recognise and spell them correctly. Hontoni may suggest that two spellings are the same word; they are merged only if you choose, and the spellings merged into a word go with it, so that the service writes the word the way you chose. A guest has no word list, and no words are sent when a guest listens. Deleting a conversation leaves the word list as it is; clearing the list or deleting your account removes it. On this website, the topics of your conversations, and nothing else from them, are also sent to Google's Gemini service, which sorts them into groups with short names so that you can browse your conversations by subject; the groups' names and the topics they were made from are kept with your account and brought up to date when you open your conversations here, so that a deleted conversation's topics leave them then, and deleting your account removes them. A group's page on this website also shows a short summary of where things stand, written by Google's Gemini service from the group's name and the notes of its conversations (their titles, dates, summaries, decisions and action items, not their transcripts); it is kept with your account and written again when those conversations or their notes change, and deleting one of those conversations, or your account, removes it. So that the People pages on this website can list the people in your conversations, the key terms of your conversations, and nothing else from them, are also sent to Google's Gemini service, which says which of them are people's names; the answer is kept with your account, you can correct it in Settings › Words Hontoni should know or on the person's page, and deleting your account removes it. People are the speakers you named and the names your notes mention: Hontoni does not recognise anyone by their voice. A person's page also shows a few points to keep in mind before you next talk to them, written by Google's Gemini service from their name and the notes of the conversations they spoke in or are mentioned in (their titles, dates, summaries, decisions and action items, not their transcripts); they are kept with your account and written again when those conversations or their notes change, and deleting one of those conversations, or your account, removes them.

In the iPhone and Android apps, a signed-in account can also have spoken translation read in a cloned voice: your own, from a short sample you record in Settings › My voice, or a speaker's, from that speaker's voice in a conversation, once you confirm that you have their permission. The sample is uploaded to private storage in your account and sent to the speech recognition service, which makes a synthetic voice from it and holds that voice for your account. A voice made from a speaker in a conversation is removed from the service when the listening session it was made in ends; your own, and one kept for a saved person, stay available until you delete your account. Deleting your account deletes the samples and asks the service to remove every voice made from them; to have a sample deleted sooner, write to us. A guest cannot record a sample, and nobody's voice is cloned unless you choose to clone it.

When you choose to prepare a public YouTube video, on this website or in the app, you need to be signed in. Its URL and selected time range are sent to Google's Gemini service to create a transcript and, if requested, a written translation. The transcript and YouTube video ID are kept with the conversation in your account, so that it opens on each of your devices; Hontoni does not save the video's audio or video. To show the video, the website and the app load YouTube's own player, and the app asks YouTube for the video's title; YouTube receives the video ID and your device's network address under its own privacy policy. Hontoni uses YouTube API Services to do this, and what Google does with what it receives is described in the Google Privacy Policy.

When you open a saved conversation that has a recording, on this website or in the iPhone app, Hontoni checks who said what against the whole recording, once, in the background. The recording kept in your account is sent to the speech recognition service again, through a link that expires, and the speakers it identifies across the whole recording replace the ones identified while listening; the names you gave speakers are kept. If the conversation is translated, the new captions are translated into its reading language by Google's Gemini service. In a conversation translated both ways, each caption is instead translated into the other of its two languages. A conversation whose lines you have already moved between speakers yourself keeps its speakers and its text: its recording is read again only to time each word, so that the words light up as they are said when you play it back. To place each word where it is heard, Hontoni's own server measures how loud the recording is from moment to moment; it reads the recording into a temporary folder for this and deletes it straight away, keeping nothing of the audio. Words may be timed again in this way when the timing improves. The captions from before a speaker check are kept with the conversation so that you can undo it, until you do, until the next speaker check or until the conversation is deleted. The speech recognition service is told to forget the recording once the captions or their timings have been rebuilt, and none of this uses your minutes.

When you ask to listen to a saved conversation in another language, on this website or in the iPhone or Android app, the translated text of each line is sent to Google's Gemini service, which reads it aloud with natural voices; the speakers' names, the original words and the recording are not sent. Lines not yet translated into that language are first translated by the same service, as when you choose to read in another language. The voices are synthetic, not the speakers' own. The audio they make is kept in your account with the conversation, in the same private storage as its recording, so that it plays at once the next time; it stays until you remove the voices, or delete the conversation or your account. When the conversation is deleted, that audio is removed shortly afterwards, normally within a quarter of an hour. Making the voices does not use your minutes.

To let you find conversations by what they mean, the text of each conversation kept in your account and its notes are sent to Google’s Gemini service to build a search index. Your search question is also sent to that service, together with candidate passages to check their relevance. The index is kept privately with your account, updated when the conversation changes, and deleted with the conversation. Quoted exact-word searches do not send a query to the AI service.

When you ask a question, the question and the passages of your conversations and notes that may answer it are sent to Google’s Gemini service to write the answer. Your questions and answers are kept privately with your account, seen only by you. You can remove questions individually. Deleting a conversation also deletes questions and answers that used it, including answers that used several conversations.

When you request suggested questions on this website, recent passages from that conversation, including their original text and translation, are sent to Google's Gemini service to prepare them. Hontoni keeps the suggestions only temporarily in your browser unless you add them to your notes. Questions you add follow the same saving, sharing and deletion rules as those notes.

If you turn on suggestions while listening, the recent passages and current suggestion are reviewed with your live notes until you turn suggestions off or end the conversation.

Sharing and following a conversation live

While you are signed in and keep conversations in your account, what is said in a live conversation, and its translation, is sent to Hontoni as it happens, together with the conversation's title and the speakers' names, and from this website its notes too, so that you can follow it on this website from your other devices. Each update also says whether it comes from an iPhone, an Android phone or a browser, and carries a random identifier that the app makes once on each installation, or that this website keeps in your browser, so that your other devices can tell where the conversation is live; the identifier is kept with the conversation's live copy, is never shown to the people you share it with, and is not taken from your device's hardware. This live copy is kept in your account like the conversation itself, and is removed when the conversation is deleted. Nobody else can see it unless you share it. You can let anyone with the link follow along; only people with a secret link, which you can replace so that the old one stops working; people who enter a passcode you set, which is kept with the conversation and checked by Hontoni's servers; or only people you invite by email, who must sign in to Hontoni with that address before they can open it. Inviting people sends each of them an email with the link, your name and the conversation's title, and replies to it come to your address; the addresses you invite, and a record of each invitation's delivery, are kept with the conversation until your account is deleted. You can turn sharing off at any time, and then only you can open it.

Email

Hontoni sends email through Resend, our email provider, from hello@hontoni.app: a welcome message when you create an account, occasional reminders, tips and offers about Hontoni, which you can turn off in Settings › Email, a sign-in code when you ask for one in the app, or a sign-in link when you ask for one on this website, a message to confirm your address when you create an account with a password, reset a password or change your address, a sign-in link to an address that already has an account when someone asks to create another account with it, a note when an invitation you sent or accepted adds minutes, a copy of a conversation when you ask the app to send one to you, an invitation to follow a conversation live when you invite someone to it, and a message when something changes with a purchase: a plan has started or ended, hours from a pack have been added, a payment on this website did not go through, or a refund has been made. Messages about purchases are sent even when reminders are off; they carry no price or card details, and the receipt itself comes from the store or, for a purchase on this website, from RevenueCat. A message is written in the language you chose in Settings › Email; until you choose one, in the language of the page or app the request came from, or the account was created from, or the language the app is shown in. The weekly recap is sent only if you turn it on in Settings › Email: on Monday mornings, an email with the names of your topic groups and the titles, some of the decisions and the open action items of the past week's conversations kept in your account, sent by the time zone your browser reported when you turned it on (kept with your email settings), or else your phone's, or else UTC, with a link in every one to turn it off without signing in. There are no marketing lists and no third-party newsletters. Resend processes the address and the content of each message in order to deliver it.

Messages you send us, through the contact form on this website, as a request for more minutes from your account on this website, or by email to contact@hontoni.app, are forwarded to the people who run Hontoni and kept with Supabase for 12 months so that we can answer them, then deleted. What is kept is the message as text, the name and address it came from and, from the contact form, the language of the page; attachments are not kept. If the address belongs to a Hontoni account, the people answering can see that account while they do, including how many minutes it has left. A reply may be drafted for us by Google's Gemini service from your message and a fixed set of answers we have written; a person reads every reply, and changes it where needed, before sending it, and nothing is sent automatically. If you ask to hear when pricing is set, we note that with your message and write to you before it starts. To have your messages deleted sooner, write to contact@hontoni.app. The people who run Hontoni also receive a weekly summary by email, through Resend, of how the service is being used: counts of accounts, minutes and sessions, and links to a few accounts that had trouble or are running low on minutes, each shown by the account's name or the model of its phone, never by its email address, and nothing said in a conversation.

This website

If you ask for launch updates, the email address you enter is forwarded to us as a single email message through Resend, and kept with the messages sent to contact@hontoni.app for 12 months, so that we can write to you when Hontoni launches and reply if you write back. It is not added to a marketing list and is not shared with anyone else. Reply to any message from us to have it deleted.

You can also create an account or sign in on this website, with Apple, with Google, with a link sent to your email address, or with your email address and a password, and read there what your account keeps: your minutes and purchases, your conversations with their captions and recordings, your settings, and the way to delete your account. Signing in sets cookies in your browser that hold your session and keep you signed in from one page to the next; nothing measures you with them, and signing out removes them. The pages behind the sign-in are not indexed by search engines.

When you buy a plan or a pack on this website, the payment form is RevenueCat's and Stripe's, loaded from them into the page; they may set their own cookies and read details of your browser and device to take the payment and prevent fraud, under their own privacy policies. To show prices in your currency, and to ask for your agreement where the law gives you a right to withdraw from a purchase, the pricing and checkout pages read the country your network address belongs to, as Vercel reports it, and the languages your browser prefers; neither is stored.

After signing in, you can start a live conversation in your browser. With your microphone permission, audio is streamed to the speech recognition service for transcription and written translation. The transcript is saved automatically to your account, and so is the conversation's audio: your browser records what the microphone hears while you listen and uploads the recording to your account once the conversation has ended, so that you can play it back. Until it has been uploaded, the recording waits in your browser's own storage, so that a closed tab or a lost connection does not lose it, and it is removed from there once it is in your account. Browser storage also keeps a device identifier and pending session-usage reports so that interrupted reports can be retried.

On this website you can also turn an audio or video file into a conversation. Your browser converts it on your own device and uploads only its audio, to a private store of ours, for the speech recognition service to read whole; that copy is deleted from the store once the transcript is ready, and the original file is never uploaded. Unless you turn off "Keep audio with this conversation" before you start, the converted audio and, for a video, a compressed copy of its picture without its sound are kept with the conversation in your account.

In Chrome or Edge on a computer, you can add meeting audio by selecting the meeting's browser tab and sharing its audio. Hontoni sends both that audio and your selected microphone to the speech recognition service for transcription and written translation. Both sources are included in the conversation recording saved to your account, as described above. Hontoni's generated translation audio is not deliberately added to that recording; speakers near a microphone can still be picked up, so headphones are recommended.

The site uses Vercel Web Analytics, which counts page views and visits in aggregate and sets no cookies to do it. Nothing you type into the form is included in analytics. The site also serves the page that returns you to the app after a sign-in with Google, which keeps no record of the visit.

The site also uses DataFast, to see which sites visitors arrive from and which public pages they read. It sets no cookies to do it either. It tells one visitor from another for a day at a time, using a code made on DataFast's servers from the visitor's IP address and browser with a key that changes every day, and it keeps a session identifier in the browser tab until the tab is closed. Your browser loads DataFast's script from DataFast, and its reports pass through Hontoni's own server first, which discards anything about the pages you see after signing in to your account. Neither service measures those pages.

A blog article shows a small icon beside each site it cites, and your browser fetches those icons from Google's favicon service. That request tells Google which cited site's icon is wanted and, as with any request, your IP address; it does not send the address of the page you are reading.

Analytics in the app

The app contains no third-party analytics or advertising software. The Hontoni service records a short event when a session is admitted or settled, when a session expires without being settled, when free minutes, invitation minutes or other hours given without payment are added, when a purchase is applied or revoked, when Apple sends a notification about a purchase, and when an account is deleted. On this website it also records one when you email yourself a conversation's notes. The app itself reports a short event to the Hontoni service when it is opened, when the welcome is finished and whether you continued as a guest or signed in, when the app suggests creating an account and whether you carried on as a guest instead, when a sign-in with Apple, with Google or by email starts, succeeds, is cancelled or fails, whether a sign-in created a new account, whether you allowed the microphone when the phone asked, when listening or a reading could not start or stopped because of an error, and the code for why, when you start importing a recording and whether it is audio or video, and when you open the purchase screen. From each app's next version, it also reports when you open a conversation's notes (in a saved conversation, a live one or one you follow) and when you copy, download, share or email the notes, the transcript or both, and when you add an action item from the notes to your calendar. From the same versions, it also reports when it asks the phone to show the prompt for rating the app, which it does only right after you end a conversation or take its notes or transcript out of the app; the phone decides whether the prompt appears, and the app is never told whether you rated it or what you wrote. From the same versions, it also reports how long a live conversation took to show its first words after you started listening, and how long the main steps on the way took, each as a range such as 1 to 1.5 seconds rather than an exact time, together with the region of the speech recognition service it used, whether it had to connect a second time, and whether you stopped before any words appeared. When a link opens the app, it also reports which kind of link it was (an invitation, a conversation or another page of the website), whether it was a hontoni.app address or the app's own link, and whether the app showed it itself or showed the website's page. Sent with them is what the install says about itself: the app's version and build, the phone's model and system version, its language, region and time zone, the language the app is shown in, and how the app arrived, which is TestFlight or the App Store on an iPhone and Google Play on an Android phone. On an Android phone it also says whether the phone is one of the automated test devices Google uses to check a new version before it is released. An event carries a name, a state change, durations and error codes, tied to your account identifier, and never transcript text, audio, file names or speaker names. We use these events to see whether the app and the service are working, to help when someone tells us something went wrong, and to count use in aggregate. No release build of the Android app reported any of this before this page said so; from this revision it reports the same list as the iPhone app.

Who handles your information

These companies do work for Hontoni, each only the part this page describes and under our agreement with it: Supabase, for the database, sign-in and file storage, in its Tokyo region; Vercel, which runs this website and the Hontoni service; the speech recognition service, for speech recognition, written translation while you listen, and natural and cloned voices; Google, through its Gemini service, for translating saved conversations and for notes, conversation names, spoken translations of saved and shared conversations, YouTube transcripts and drafts of our replies; TypeSafe, whose Jev service checks notes; RevenueCat, for purchases and plans; Stripe, for payments on this website; Resend, for email; and DataFast, for this website's visitor counts. Apple and Google also handle what you give them when you sign in with them or buy in their stores, and YouTube what its player receives, under their own terms. Apart from what Supabase keeps in Tokyo, these companies may process information in the United States and in other countries where they or their own providers work.

Retention and deletion

What the service holds is kept for as long as your account exists. Sessions, ledger entries and analytics events are kept for the life of the account because your balance is computed from them. Messages sent to contact@hontoni.app or through the forms on this website are kept for 12 months whether or not you have an account, as described under Email; deleting your account does not delete them sooner, but you can ask us to.

Delete account, in Settings › Account, removes everything in this order: first the recordings, videos, spoken-translation audio, voice samples and profile picture kept in your account, and the cloned voices the speech recognition service holds for it; then, in one database transaction, your profile and everything attached to it, which is your devices, sessions, remaining minutes and usage history, the hours offers gave you, the records of recordings read in one go, conversations and captions, and the analytics events tied to your account, while an App Store offer code given to you loses its link to you; then your sign-in with Supabase, so that your Apple, Google or email identity is no longer linked to anything at Hontoni. If that last step fails, the app asks you to try again; your data is already gone by then.

What is kept: the purchase records that refunds and fraud reviews need, cut down to transaction and product identifiers, dates, environment and refund state, with your account identifier and the rest of Apple's transaction details removed; and a dated record that an account was deleted. That record holds your identifier only until your sign-in has been removed, so that the same sign-in cannot create a new profile or a second free allowance in the meantime, and loses it once the deletion is complete. We also keep the identifier your phone reports for the app, no longer linked to your account, so that each phone receives the free guest minutes, the minutes for a new account and an invitation reward only once.

Apple and Google are not told. To stop Hontoni appearing in your Apple Account or Google Account sign-in settings, remove it there. Deleting your account does not delete the copies on your phone. It cancels the renewal of a plan bought on the website, through RevenueCat, so it is not charged again; it does not cancel a purchase or subscription made in the App Store or Google Play, which are managed with that store.

Children

Hontoni is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly create accounts for them. If you believe a child has given us personal information, write to us and we will delete it.

Changes to this notice

We update this page in the same change that alters how data is handled, and we change the date at the top. If a change matters to you, for example a new use of information about you, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.

Contact

Hontoni is made by TaoSquare Group Limited, 1104 Crawford House, 70 Queen's Road Central, Central, Hong Kong. Questions about this notice, or requests about your data: contact@hontoni.app.