Privacy policy

In short

• Sonivora has no account with us, no ads, no analytics and no tracking. We do not store what you listen to.
• The app talks to your own server (Plex, Jellyfin or Audiobookshelf) and only to the services you use: Plex for signing in, your AI provider if you use your own key, the podcasts you subscribe to, and open databases for covers.
• Two things run through relays that we operate on Cloudflare: podcast search and trends, and Sonivora AI if you use it, whose requests go to Anthropic. Neither keeps logs or stores anything about what you listen to.
• Credentials are stored encrypted in your iPhone’s Keychain. Your data lives on your iPhone and, if you leave it on, in your private iCloud.
• Sonivora is currently a closed beta: you install the app through Apple’s TestFlight, and we see what Apple shows us about your participation.
• This website sets no cookies, does not count visits and loads nothing from other servers.

Who is responsible

The processing described here is the responsibility of Sonivora’s publisher: Michael Güttinger, Industriestrasse 26, 9300 Wittenbach, Switzerland. For any question about privacy, write to support@sonivora.app.

The app

This policy covers Sonivora on iPhone and Apple Watch. Before Sonivora comes to Google Play, we will extend it for Android.

No account, no analytics

You do not need an account with us to use Sonivora. The app contains no code for advertising, analytics or tracking, and it sends us no data about you, your library or your listening, except, with Sonivora AI, the requests that our relay passes on to Anthropic without storing them.

Your library: Plex, Jellyfin and Audiobookshelf

When you sign in with Plex, Sonivora opens Plex’s sign-in page in your browser, where you confirm a code. In return the app receives an access token and the list of your servers from Plex. Plex learns that the Sonivora app is signing in, together with a random identifier of this installation, the app version, the iOS version and the device type. Plex, Inc. (USA) is responsible for this sign-in under its own privacy policy. Instead, you can also enter your server’s address and token by hand.

After that, Sonivora talks directly to your server: on your home network or from elsewhere, whichever is reachable, and through Plex’s connection services if Plex sets it up that way. The app reads your library and writes back to your server what you expect to find there: audiobook progress, played tracks, ratings and playlists.

If you connect a Jellyfin server, your username and password go only to that server; afterwards the app keeps just the access token.

The same applies if you connect Audiobookshelf: your username and password go only to that server, and afterwards the app keeps just the sign-in. It tells the server how far you are in a book and which books you mark as played.

The AI

The AI features stay off until you connect them: with Sonivora AI or with your own key from Anthropic or OpenAI. Your own key takes priority. Depending on the feature, requests contain:

• what you write to the AI DJ and the conversation so far;
• when you talk with the AI about a podcast episode: the titles of the episode and the podcast, its transcript and your questions;
• information from your library that the AI needs for the task: tracks, artists, albums, audiobooks, authors, genres, podcasts and episodes;
• information about your listening: listening history, ratings, skipped and abandoned tracks, “Dislike” and the taste profile that Sonivora builds from them on your iPhone, and where you listen, without personal device names (such as “Car”, “Headphones” or the name of a Sonos room), with the volume.

For research, such as new releases or details about a book, the AI may search the web. Sonivora stores the answers on your iPhone (and in iCloud if syncing is on) so that each question is asked only once. Your Plex access, your server addresses and your tokens are never sent to the AI. In Settings you can stop your listening history from going to the AI and delete the memory, in iCloud as well.

With your own key, requests go from your iPhone straight to the provider you chose. We receive nothing from them. You have your own contract with the provider, who processes the data under its own terms and privacy policy (Anthropic, OpenAI). If you delete the key, Sonivora sends no more requests there.

With Sonivora AI, requests go to a relay that we operate on Cloudflare. The app sends along the Apple-signed transaction of your subscription: transaction numbers, product, purchase and expiry dates, App Store country and price. The relay uses Apple’s certificates to check that the subscription is valid, limits the request to what the app needs, and passes it on with our key to Anthropic, PBC (USA). Anthropic processes it on our behalf under its commercial terms and does not use it to train its models. The relay keeps no logs and stores neither requests nor answers. So that each subscription has its monthly allowance, it stores per subscription only a key that is computed from the transaction number and cannot be reversed, and what it has used this month: cost, number of requests and amount of processed text units (tokens). We see these figures only as an overview per key, to keep an eye on costs and abuse; we cannot tell from them who is behind a key. To prevent abuse, it counts requests per internet address for one minute at a time. If Apple refunds or revokes a subscription, Apple notifies the relay (App Store Server Notifications) and the allowance is blocked.

Podcasts

For search and trends, Sonivora asks the Podcast Index (Podcastindex.org, USA). So that no key sits inside the app, these requests go through a small relay that we run on Cloudflare. It receives your search term and, like any server, your internet address, adds the sign-in for the Podcast Index and passes the answer back. The Podcast Index only sees the relay, not your iPhone. To prevent abuse, the relay counts requests per internet address for one minute at a time; it keeps answers for up to ten minutes (search) or one hour (trends), without any link to you. It keeps no logs. If you add your own Podcast Index key in Settings, requests go straight from your iPhone to the Podcast Index.

Sonivora loads the feeds of the podcasts you subscribe to, their episodes, chapters, transcripts and images directly from each show’s servers, like any podcast app. These servers see your internet address. If the bell is on, the app checks for new episodes in the background; the notification is created on your iPhone, with no server in between.

Covers, authors and previews

For suggestions that are not in your library, Sonivora looks for covers in open databases: music at MusicBrainz with images from the Cover Art Archive, books at Open Library. Author portraits come from Audnexus (an open service with Audible’s author pages), Open Library, the author’s Wikipedia article or Wikidata. If none of these finds a picture and you use the AI, the app asks it what name the author is known by; this sends the author’s name and the titles of their audiobooks in your library to your AI provider. These requests contain only artists, titles or names and go from your iPhone to those services, which see your internet address. The app remembers images it has found so that each search runs only once.

If you tap the search for a sample on a suggestion, Sonivora opens a YouTube search with the title and artist. From then on, Google’s privacy policy applies.

Sonos

Sonivora finds Sonos speakers on your home network and controls them there. When you play on Sonos, the speaker receives the address of the track on your server, along with the necessary permission, and loads it directly from there. What Sonos itself does with data is governed by Sonos’s privacy policy.

Listen together

With “Listen together”, one iPhone shares its playback, for example in the car, and other iPhones nearby start music and episodes through it. The connection runs directly between the devices, over a Wi-Fi direct connection or a shared Wi-Fi network, never through our servers, and is encrypted with a key derived from the six-digit code that the sharing iPhone shows. Only the requested tracks are transferred (title, artist, album, duration and the track’s identifier on your own server), for podcast episodes the public address of the audio file, and the playback state; never credentials or server addresses. Nearby, the sharing iPhone appears as “Sonivora” with a random identifier, not with its device name.

Apple Watch and iCloud

Albums, playlists and episodes that you send to your Apple Watch go directly from your iPhone to your watch.

If “iCloud sync” is on (Settings › Data; it is at first), Sonivora stores the memory, audiobooks, podcasts, wish list, bookmarks, settings, experience points, cars you have marked, your choice of server without credentials, your listening position in audiobooks and episodes, and your chats with the AI DJ in your private iCloud space. Apple stores them under your Apple Account according to Apple’s privacy policy; we have no access to them. You can turn syncing off in Settings.

On your iPhone

Your listening history, stats, the AI’s memory, downloads, the playback state for the next launch and cached images are stored on your iPhone. Your Plex or Jellyfin access and your keys for the AI and the Podcast Index are stored encrypted in the Keychain. If you delete the app, iOS removes its data from your iPhone; what is in your iCloud stays there until you delete it in your iCloud settings.

Permissions

Sonivora asks for access to the local network to reach your server, your Sonos speakers and, for “Listen together”, iPhones nearby, and for notifications if you turn on the bell for new episodes. The app recognises that you are in the car from the audio connection: CarPlay, the name of the hands-free system, or a Bluetooth device you mark as a car yourself.

Crash reports

iOS reports crashes and hangs to the app. Sonivora stores them only on your iPhone, under Settings › About Sonivora, where you can share or delete them. If you have chosen in your iPhone’s settings to share analytics with app developers, Apple may also give us anonymous crash reports and usage figures, as Apple describes.

Purchases

Sonivora comes through Apple’s App Store, and that is also where you buy Sonivora AI. Apple handles payment, renewal and cancellation; we receive neither your name nor your Apple Account nor your payment details. Apple is responsible for this under its own privacy policy. Apple gives us sales and subscription figures without reference to individual people. You can cancel at any time in your Apple Account settings.

Closed beta with TestFlight

For now, Sonivora is available only as a closed beta. To get an invitation, write to support@sonivora.app; we use that address to invite you to TestFlight, Apple’s beta app. Apple then shows us your name and email address, whether you accepted the invitation, which version you installed, how often the app was opened and crashed, and the feedback you send yourself in TestFlight: your text and screenshot with technical details such as device type, iOS version and language, and after a crash the crash report. We use this only to run the beta and fix bugs, and we remove you from TestFlight as soon as you want to leave or the beta ends. Apple is responsible for TestFlight under its own privacy policy.

This website

sonivora.app is delivered by Cloudflare, Inc. (USA), which sends the pages to your browser and protects the website against attacks. For this, Cloudflare processes technical data such as your internet address, your browser and the page requested, and keeps it only as long as it needs to. We have turned the website’s logs off and do not receive this data. Cloudflare’s privacy policy also applies to this processing.

The website sets no cookies, does not count visits and loads no fonts, images or scripts from other servers. Its own scripts choose the language from your browser’s language on your first visit, move the images as you scroll and run the menus. They store nothing and send nothing.

Email

When you write to support@sonivora.app, we use your address and your message only to reply to you, and delete them once the matter is settled, at the latest two years after your last message, unless the law requires us to keep them longer. “Send feedback” and “Support” in the app’s Settings prepare such an email with the Sonivora version, the iOS version, the iPhone model and the language setting; you see everything in it and decide whether to send it. Mail to this address is forwarded to our mailbox through Cloudflare’s email routing; Cloudflare and our email provider process it for this purpose.

Please never send us your Plex access, an AI key or a password. We will never ask for them.

Data abroad

Cloudflare and the providers we use for email may process data in Switzerland, in member states of the European Union and in the USA. Cloudflare, Inc. is certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and its Swiss extension, which Switzerland and the European Union recognise as providing adequate protection; Cloudflare’s data processing terms also include the standard contractual clauses.

For Sonivora AI, we pass requests on to Anthropic, PBC in the USA. This is based on Anthropic’s data processing terms, which include the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.

Some of the services that the app contacts directly at your request are also based in the USA: Plex, Anthropic, OpenAI, the Podcast Index, MusicBrainz and the Cover Art Archive, Open Library, Wikipedia and Wikidata, Audnexus and Apple. Your iPhone opens these connections itself because you use the feature in question; the terms of each service apply.

Legal bases

Where the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation applies, our processing is based on our legitimate interest in delivering the website and the relays and protecting them against abuse (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR), for the beta and Sonivora AI on our contract with you (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR), and on replying to your message (Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR). Everything else the app does happens on your device or between your device and the services you choose yourself.

Your rights

You have the right to know what data we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to object to or restrict its processing, and to receive it in a common format. Outside the beta, we have no data from the app that could identify you: if you use Sonivora AI, we know only the key computed from the transaction number and this month’s usage. Your library and everything the app knows about your listening stay with you. About an email you sent us, write to support@sonivora.app. You can also contact the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) or the data protection authority of your country.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version appears on this page with its date.