Privacy Policy

Falae listens to your microphone and can read the text around your cursor. That only works if you can trust where that data goes, so this page describes everything that leaves your Mac, and everything that stays on it.

Who is responsible

Falae is published by Emanuel Braz, the controller of the data processed under Brazil's General Data Protection Law (LGPD, Law 13,709/2018). Privacy contact: help@manolus.com.

What never leaves your Mac

• Microphone audio. Captured only while you hold the shortcut, or between the tap that starts and the tap that stops. Speech is transcribed on your Mac and the audio stays in memory only: it is never written to disk, not even in Vocabulary training.
• The recognized text. Stays in memory until it is inserted at the cursor. Falae writes it straight into the field through macOS Accessibility. When that is not possible, it puts the text on the clipboard, simulates ⌘V and puts your previous clipboard back right after.
• The text around the cursor. On by default; turn it off in Settings › Vocabulary › Context (“Use the text around the cursor”). At the start of each dictation, Falae reads up to 500 characters before and 100 after the cursor, the app name and the window title, to spell the terms already on screen correctly. It never reads password fields, and it drops this text in password managers (1Password, Bitwarden, LastPass, Keychain Access and Passwords). The text stays in memory only.
• The screen. Only in profiles with “Use what is on screen” turned on. That option is off by default, but the “Professional email” and “Slack message” profile templates come with it on. With the Screen Recording permission, after you stop speaking Falae captures the frontmost window, extracts its text on your Mac (up to 2,000 characters) and hands it to the rewriting model. The image is not saved. Without that permission, it uses only the app name and the window title.
• Rewriting and translation. Profiles that clean up, rewrite or translate use Apple Intelligence through the Foundation Models framework, which Apple documents as running on-device. Falae sends that text to no other service.
• Claude Code history. Off by default (“Learn my terms from Claude Code”). When on, Falae reads the messages you typed in ~/.claude/projects only to count how many sessions mention each term in your vocabulary. Only those counts are kept, in memory. Nothing is written or sent.
• The keyboard. For the global shortcut to work in any app, Falae watches key presses. It only reacts to your shortcut and does not record what you type.

What the app sends over the internet

There are only two destinations. Neither receives audio, text, screen content or an identifier of yours.

Speech model downloads: Hugging Face

Recognition models are downloaded from huggingface.co (Hugging Face, Inc., United States) the first time they are used and when you change language, mode or model. At launch the app may contact Hugging Face to confirm the chosen model. These requests expose your IP address and technical connection data, like any download. If you have a Hugging Face token set up on your Mac (the HF_TOKEN variable or the Hugging Face CLI token file), the download libraries may send it to authenticate the request.

Updates: our download host

Falae uses Sparkle to check for a new version at falae-downloads.manolus.com, hosted on Cloudflare. It asks before turning on automatic checks, and you can check at any time from the app. That request exposes your IP address, the app version and technical connection data. Every update is verified against a cryptographic signature before it is installed.

What is stored on your Mac

• Your settings: shortcuts, profiles and their instructions, vocabulary (terms, aliases and notes), the chosen language and model, in the macOS preferences.
• Speech models: in ~/Library/Application Support/Falae/Models and ~/Library/Application Support/FluidAudio/Models.
• Vocabulary training, only if you use it: in ~/Library/Application Support/Falae/Training, your progress, with the sentence read and what recognition heard in each take. The audio of a take is not kept: it is used right away and discarded.

Falae writes neither what you dictate nor your vocabulary to the system logs.

To remove everything, delete Falae and the folders above.

macOS permissions

• Microphone, to hear you.
• Accessibility, for the global shortcut, to read the text around the cursor and to type at the cursor.
• Screen Recording, optional, only for profiles that use what is on screen.

You can revoke any of them in System Settings › Privacy & Security.

This site

This site, falae.manolus.com, uses no cookies, local storage, analytics or third-party scripts, and it serves its own fonts. That is why there is no cookie banner. The site and the app download (falae-downloads.manolus.com) are on Cloudflare, which, as with any website, receives your IP address and the technical data of each request.

Legal bases

We do not process your personal data on servers of our own. The only data that passes through third parties (IP address and connection data for downloads, updates and visits to this site) is processed to deliver the app and keep it secure and up to date, on the basis of performing the service you request and of legitimate interest (LGPD, article 7, items V and IX).

Sharing and international transfer

We do not sell, rent or share your data. Hugging Face and Cloudflare receive the connection data of the requests your Mac makes to them and process it under their own privacy policies. Because they are abroad, those requests involve an international data transfer, which happens to carry out what you asked for (LGPD, article 33).

Retention

• We keep no data of yours.
• Connection logs at Hugging Face and Cloudflare: under each provider's retention.
• Data on your Mac: until you delete it.

Your rights

The LGPD gives you the right to confirm whether we process your data, to access, correct and delete it, to portability, to information about sharing, and to withdraw consent (article 18). The GDPR and the CCPA give similar rights. Because we keep no data of yours, in practice the answer to these requests is a confirmation that we hold nothing. Write to help@manolus.com: we answer within 15 days. You can also complain to Brazil's National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) or to your local authority.

Children

Falae is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect data from them.

Changes to this Policy

When this Policy changes, the date at the top of the page changes with it. Material changes, such as a new kind of data or a new internet destination, will also be announced in the app's release notes. Use of the app is also subject to the Terms of Use.

Contact

Any privacy question: help@manolus.com.