Auto Captions – Privacy Policy

1. Your Videos Stay On Your Phone

Auto Captions turns the speech in a video into word-by-word captions, lets you style and edit them, and saves a new video with the captions burned in, or an .srt subtitle file. Every step runs on your phone:

• The video you pick or record is copied into the app’s private storage, which other apps cannot read.
• Its sound is turned into text by a speech model (OpenAI’s open Whisper model) that runs on your phone’s own processor.
• The captioned video is drawn and encoded on the phone and saved to your gallery (Photos on iPhone, the “Auto Captions” album on Android).

No video, audio, transcript or caption is sent to a RiekApps server or to anyone else. Captioning works with the network off once the speech model has been downloaded.

2. The Speech Model Download

After the first launch the app downloads the speech model (Whisper Small, about 190 MB) once, from Hugging Face, and keeps it in the app’s storage. Like any download, that request tells Hugging Face your IP address and that the file was requested; it contains nothing about you or your videos.

3. Analytics

To learn which features are used and where the app fails, Auto Captions uses Google Analytics for Firebase. It receives:

• Screens and steps — for example that onboarding was finished, the paywall was shown and from where, or a style was picked.
• Captioning and exports — the length of the video in seconds, the language chosen or detected, how long captioning took, whether an export or .srt file succeeded, and a short technical error message if it failed.
• Purchases — which plan was tried and whether the purchase finished, failed or was cancelled. Never your payment details.
• App and device facts that Google Analytics collects on its own — app opens and time in the app, the app version, operating system, device model, language, and the country or region worked out from your IP address — with a random identifier for this installation (the app instance ID).

The app turns off advertising ID collection: Google Analytics in Auto Captions never reads your phone’s advertising ID, and the data is not used for ads or shared with advertisers. None of the events contains your video, its sound, its words or its file name.

4. Our Other Apps

If you do not have Pro, the app may show other apps made by RiekApps: a “More from us” list in Settings, and now and then a card after you save a video. Which apps appear is decided by us and changes over time. The app loads that list from our server (api.hq.riekapps.com); the request carries only the app’s name, and the device’s country setting is used on the phone to show apps available there. When one of our apps is shown or tapped, the app tells our server which app and which spot, with the random installation identifier, so we can count views and taps. Tapping one opens its store page with a tag that tells us only which of our apps sent you there. No third-party ad network or advertising ID is used. Pro hides all of it.

5. Messages You Send Us

When you use Contact us or Request a feature in Settings, or tell us what went wrong after giving the app 1 to 3 stars, we receive what you type, the topics you tick, the number of stars (for rating feedback) and, if you attach one, the screenshot you choose. To help us fix problems, the message also carries the app version, your device model and operating system version, your language and country setting, whether you have Pro, and the random installation identifier, so we can tell that several messages came from the same person. If you give us an email address, we use it only to reply to you. Messages never include your videos or captions.

Messages are sent over an encrypted connection to our own server and stored in our support system, which only RiekApps staff can access. We do not sell or share them and do not use them for advertising. They are kept for up to 24 months, then deleted; you can ask us to delete yours earlier at riekapps@gmail.com. After you have written to us, the app checks our server for replies when you open it.

If you give the app 4 or 5 stars, we open the store’s own rating sheet, which is covered by Google’s or Apple’s privacy policy.

6. Subscriptions

Auto Captions Pro is an auto-renewing subscription billed by Google Play on Android and by the App Store on iPhone. The store handles payment; RiekApps never sees your card, billing address or store account. The app asks the store whether this device has an active subscription and keeps only the answer on the phone.

7. Permissions

• Photos and videos — to pick the video you want to caption. On Android the system picker gives the app only the video you choose. On iPhone the app asks for access to pick a video and to save the finished one to Photos.
• Camera and microphone — only when you choose Record video, to film the clip you want to caption.
• Notifications — to tell you when captions are ready if you leave the app while it is working. You can turn them off in your phone’s settings.
• Internet — for the speech model download, store billing, analytics, our other apps and messages you send us. Captioning and exporting work with the network off.

8. What Is Stored On Your Phone

• Your projects: a copy of each video you caption, its words and timings, and the style you chose.
• The speech model.
• Your settings, how many free videos have been used, and whether Pro is active.
• The random installation identifier used for analytics, our other apps and support messages.

Deleting a project removes its copy of the video and its captions. Uninstalling the app removes all of it. Videos you have saved to your gallery or shared are outside the app and are not removed. Your phone’s own backup may include the app’s data; that backup goes to your Google or Apple account, not to us.

9. What RiekApps Never Collects

• No video, audio, transcript or caption text, and nothing derived from what was said.
• No name, phone number, contacts or account. An email address only if you choose to give one in a message to us.
• No location.
• No advertising ID and no third-party advertising SDK.

10. Third Parties

• Hugging Face — serves the speech model file (section 2).
• Google — Google Analytics for Firebase (section 3). See Google’s Privacy Policy and how Google uses data from apps that use its services.
• Google Play and the App Store — app distribution, billing and ratings. See Google’s and Apple’s privacy policies.
• Apps you share to — when you share a video or .srt file, your phone’s share sheet hands it to the app you pick, whose own policy applies.

RiekApps does not sell personal data or share it for advertising.

11. Your Choices And Rights

There is no account, so RiekApps holds no profile with your name. Analytics data is kept by Google Analytics for at most 14 months and is linked only to the random installation identifier. Uninstalling the app removes that identifier and everything the app stored. If you have a question or a request under a privacy law that applies to you — for example the GDPR, the CCPA or the Indian Digital Personal Data Protection Act — write to riekapps@gmail.com and we will answer it, including deleting any support messages or analytics linked to your installation.

12. Children

Auto Captions is a general-audience video tool and is not directed at children under 13. It does not knowingly collect personal information from children.

13. Changes

If this policy changes, the revised version is published on this page with a new effective date. Videos and captions will not start leaving your phone without this page saying so first.

14. Contact

RiekApps — riekapps@gmail.com. See also the Terms of Use and the Support page.