Terms of Use

What Hontoni is

Hontoni is an app for iPhone and for Android that transcribes live speech, shows a written translation in a language you choose, and turns imported audio or video recordings into text. It is provided by TaoSquare Group Limited, 1104 Crawford House, 70 Queen's Road Central, Central, Hong Kong. These terms cover both apps, the Hontoni service they talk to, and this website. By using them you agree to these terms and to the privacy notice, which explains what Hontoni holds about you.

Your account

You can use Hontoni as a guest, or sign in so that your minutes and, if you choose, your conversations survive a new phone. 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; this website offers Apple, Google, a link sent to your email address, and your email address with a password. One account is for one person; keep the account, the email address or the password you sign in with secure, because anyone who can use it can use your Hontoni account. You must be at least 13 to create an account, or the age your country requires, and if you are under the age of majority where you live you need a parent's or guardian's permission to buy a plan or hours. We may suspend or close an account that is used to abuse the service or other people, or in a way these terms do not allow, and we will tell you why unless the law prevents it.

Minutes and purchases

Listening, translation and imported recordings use your available hours. The price, billing period and applicable taxes are shown before payment. Apple bills App Store purchases and Google bills Google Play purchases. For web purchases, TaoSquare Group Limited is the seller; RevenueCat and Stripe process billing. Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled in the store that bills you, or through Manage billing for a web purchase. An introductory price, where the store offers one, is for people who have not subscribed to Hontoni in that store before, applies only for the introductory period it states (for example the first month, the first three months or the first year), and is shown, together with the price it renews at, before you pay. Annual plans are charged annually and grant hours each month. Every plan has every feature; plans differ in their monthly listening hours, their natural-voice hours and how much video picture they keep in your account. Monthly hours expire at the end of their allowance window; purchased packs do not expire and are used after monthly hours. If a plan ends, or its video space is full, nothing already kept is deleted, but no more video pictures can be kept in your account until there is room; the words and sound of videos added after that are still kept. Plans follow your Hontoni account across devices. Deleting your account cancels the renewal of a plan bought on the website, so it is not charged again. It does not cancel a subscription billed by Apple or Google: cancel that in the App Store or Google Play. Refunds for App Store and Google Play purchases are decided by Apple and Google under their own policies: ask the store that billed you. Contact contact@hontoni.app about web billing or refund problems; statutory consumer rights are not affected. If you buy on this website from the European Union, the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you have a 14-day right to withdraw from the purchase; you are asked before paying to agree that the plan starts, or the hours are added, at once, and you lose that right once the plan has started or the hours have been added. When a purchase is refunded, the hours it added that you have not used are removed. Hours are not money and cannot be transferred or exchanged for cash.

Some hours are given without payment: the free minutes a new account receives, the minutes an invitation earns, gifts of hours, and the extra hours an offer adds to a pack. They do not expire, they are used after monthly hours, and they cannot be refunded or claimed again by making a new account. From time to time we also offer a reduced price: a sale on packs, or a discount on a plan for chosen people, given as an App Store offer code or as a Google Play offer only they are shown. We decide who an offer is for and when it ends; its terms are shown before you pay, an offer code is for the account it was given to and may not be sold or passed on, and ending an offer does not take back hours already added. We may refuse an offer or an invitation reward to an account made or used to collect it unfairly.

Your conversations

What you record and transcribe is yours. You are responsible for using Hontoni lawfully, including telling the people you record and obtaining any consent your country requires, and for the content of anything you import. When you are signed in and "Keep conversations in your account" is on, the app stores your conversations in your account so that you can reopen them on another phone; you grant us only the permission needed to store, transmit and show them back to you. We do not read them and we do not use them to train anything. You can turn the setting off, delete a conversation, or delete your whole account, at any time from the app. When you share a conversation live, the people you let follow it can read it and hear its voices, so share only what you are entitled to share. Clone a voice only if it is yours or its owner has agreed, and never use a cloned voice to pass yourself off as someone else or to mislead anyone. A YouTube video you open in Hontoni is played by YouTube's own player, and watching it is subject to the YouTube Terms of Service.

Email

If you sign in, Hontoni sends you a welcome message and, unless you turn them off in Settings › Email, occasional reminders. It sends a sign-in code when you ask for one in the app, and 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 if someone asks to create another account with your address; a note when an invitation adds minutes; and a message when a plan starts or ends, hours from a pack are added, a payment on this website fails or a refund is made, which is sent even when reminders are off. It can email you a copy of a conversation when you ask it to, and it sends an invitation to follow a conversation to the people you invite. Receipts come from the store you paid, or from RevenueCat for a purchase on this website. We send nothing else, and we never sell or rent your address.

Acceptable use

Do not use Hontoni to record people unlawfully, to harass, to infringe someone else's rights, or to interfere with the service, for example by reverse engineering it, probing it, overloading it, or sharing credentials it issues. Do not rely on Hontoni where an error in a transcript or translation could harm someone: it is a reading aid, not a certified interpreter, and speech recognition and translation make mistakes.

Availability and changes

Hontoni depends on internet services we do not control, including the speech-recognition provider described in the privacy notice, so it can be unavailable or slow, and a session can end early. We may change or withdraw features, and one app can have a feature before the other does. We may update these terms; when a change matters to you we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect, and the date at the top will change.

Warranties and liability

Hontoni is provided as it is and as it is available, without any warranty that it will be uninterrupted, error-free or fit for a particular purpose, to the extent the law allows. To the same extent, TaoSquare Group Limited is not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss caused by a mistaken transcript or translation, and its total liability to you is limited to the amount you paid for Hontoni in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law, or your statutory rights as a consumer.

Ending things

You can stop using Hontoni at any time, and delete your account from Settings › Account, which removes what the service holds about you as the privacy notice describes. We may close an account for the reasons above. A purchase remains governed by the terms of the store it was made in.

Governing law and contact

These terms are governed by the laws of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. If you use Hontoni as a consumer, you keep the protection of the mandatory consumer laws of the country where you live, and you may bring a claim in the courts there. Otherwise, the courts of Hong Kong have jurisdiction. Questions about these terms: contact@hontoni.app.