Voice Album Home

Privacy Policy

Effective August 12, 2026 · Last updated August 13, 2026

Analysis and voiceprints stay on the device; family sharing uses Apple's iCloud only

This English text is a convenience translation, provided so that families outside Japan can read it in their own language. The Japanese version at voice-album.com/privacy is the controlling version; if the two ever differ, the Japanese text governs. This mirrors the language article in our Terms of Use.

This Privacy Policy explains how information is handled in the iOS app “Voice Album” (the “app”) and on this website. In this policy, “we,” “us,” and “our” mean the operator of the app, named under “Operator” at the end of this page.

In short (a summary of this policy)

Voice Album looks through your family's home videos for your child's voice and builds a voice album from what it finds. Searching, telling voices apart, and saving all happen inside your iPhone. There is no server of ours. There is no account to create. So there is no way for us to receive your child's voice, to listen to it, or to gather it.

Data leaves your device only when you move it yourself: when you tap the share button, when you export a Copy, and when you share with your family through a Family Group (and for that, the only path is Apple's iCloud). We receive nothing from any of these. Separately, if you buy PLUS, Apple handles the payment. What follows explains each of those pieces, one at a time.

The short version

The most important thing

Audio, video, and voice-feature data are never sent to us for finding or saving voices. Detection, saving, and analysis happen only inside your device, and we never have access to your voice or your child's. Only when you choose a Family Group is the shared material sent, through Apple's iCloud, to the family members who joined (details below).

What we don't collect

There is no account to register. As a function of the app, we do not collect names, contact details, or location. We use no advertising identifiers. We run no analytics and no behavioural tracking. We do not build a voiceprint database that gathers voices in order to identify who someone is. The voice-feature data used to tell voices apart is not shared even when you use a Family Group, and never leaves your device.

The app does not “collect data” in the sense used by the App Store's App Privacy labels. In App Store Connect we have declared “Data Not Collected.”

Sharing with third parties

The app contains no third-party SDKs whatsoever for analytics, advertising, or crash reporting. There is no personal data that we pass to third parties. There are only three routes by which data leaves your device, and every one of them starts with something you do:

For the last two, Apple's handling of the data follows Apple's own privacy policy. We receive nothing from any of these routes.

We have confirmed that the providers who could have access to user data (Apple, and the email service provider named under “Information we receive when you contact us,” below) give that data protection equal to or stronger than what this policy and the App Store Review Guidelines require.

What is stored on your device

Here is what the app stores on your device, in and around the voices themselves. All of it is placed in iOS's protected storage (encryption that cannot be read while the device is locked), and it is deliberately excluded from device backups.

Alongside this, display preferences such as the theme, the on/off state of each feature, and the date of your last Copy are stored in the standard iOS settings area. Your child's name and birthday are never put there.

Keeping saved voices out of device backups is a design choice made to protect them. The flip side is that if data is lost — through a device reset, loss, damage, or by deleting the app — nobody, including us, can bring it back, because we hold no copy. Please use “Make a Copy” now and then to export the voices that matter most. (If you are in a Family Group, voices that already reached a family member's device stay with them.)

Voice-feature data (the information that amounts to a voiceprint)

The “voice-feature data” created in order to tell voices apart is sensitive information: it may qualify as a personal identification code (voiceprint) under Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information (個人情報保護法), and as biometric data under the EU General Data Protection Regulation. That is exactly why the app is designed never to let it off the device.

This information is created inside your device and stored in protected storage that never leaves it. It contains no original audio — only averaged voice features. It is never sent to us, it is not among the things a Family Group shares, and it is not included in a Copy. Because we never obtain it, no voiceprint of your child is ever held on our side.

Your device is the only place this information exists. Since we never receive it, there is no disclosure or deletion request you need to make to us. You can delete it yourself at any time with “Delete registered and unregistered voice profiles” inside the app.

Your photo library

The app reads video only when you select a video, or when you explicitly start a batch search. Temporary copies made for analysis are deleted promptly once the analysis is done, and if one is left behind — after a force quit, for example — it is cleaned up automatically the next time the app starts. The app never modifies or deletes your original photos and videos.

There is a setting (off by default) that fetches originals that have been offloaded to iCloud. Turning it on has iOS bring your own videos down from your own iCloud to your device. That is a download, not an upload: no analysis results and no voices go out.

The voice inbox (when you send material from a share menu)

When you send a video or audio file to Voice Album from another app's share menu, that material is placed in a protected inbox. What is placed there is only the material itself, its original filename, a rough type, its size, and the time it arrived. No captions, no transcripts, no voice-feature data, and no assignment to a child are placed there. The material is not analysed; nothing happens until you open the app and start a search.

Material in the inbox is deleted automatically 30 days after it arrives (up to 2 GB per item, and up to 100 items in total). You can delete it by hand at any time before that. The inbox is separate from the Family Group, and material sitting in the inbox is never sent to iCloud.

Permissions the app asks for

The text in quotation marks below is exactly what appears in the iOS permission dialogue.

Beyond these, the app asks for iOS notification permission only the first time you turn on Memory notes. Every permission is requested only when you use the feature it belongs to, and declining one leaves the rest of the app usable.

Sharing

A voice or a digest video leaves your device only when you press the share button, or when you choose to share with your family through a Family Group. Once shared, the material is handled under the rules of the receiving app or of Apple. A copy that has gone out is no longer something you can control from your device.

Copies (the exported backup)

The ZIP that “Make a Copy” exports contains the voices you saved (M4A), voice covers (still-image JPEG and a few seconds of silent MOV video), records such as names, tags, dates, and save times, the contents of your Story Books, your child's name and birthday, and an index used to verify integrity. Voice-feature data (voiceprints) is not included. You choose where the Copy goes; it never reaches us.

A voice cover may show your child's face. A Copy is an ordinary ZIP file that can be handed straight to AirDrop or email. Please look through it before you pass it to anyone.

Family Group (sharing with your family)

Joining a Family Group lets your family grow the same album together. It is optional and off by default. Sharing uses only Apple's iCloud (CloudKit); nothing goes to a server of ours.

What is shared: the voices you saved (the audio itself), names, automatically suggested names, tags, dates, save times, the code for which child it is, the shared album name, and a random per-device contributor code. Of these, names, suggested names, tags, and the child code are encrypted field by field in iCloud. What is not shared: your original photos and videos, voice covers (the still photo and the short video), material waiting in the inbox, unsaved candidates and temporary analysis data, voice-feature data (voiceprints), full transcripts and the temporary captions shown during playback, Favorites and Story Books, and children's profiles and birthdays.

The shared album name is the one item that is not encrypted. The same text also goes into the mechanism iOS uses to show an album name on the invitation screen (the CKShare title), which cannot be encrypted field by field. We recommend not putting your child's real name in the album name. Something like “Our family's voice album” is plenty.

There is no shared field dedicated to your child's name — but if you write a name into the name of a voice, that text is shared (encrypted) like any other name. Shared data uses the iCloud storage of whoever created the group (the owner). Members can both add voices and delete them, so please pass the invitation link or QR code only to family you trust.

To stop: if the owner chooses “Stop sharing,” the entire shared zone in iCloud is deleted; if a member chooses “Leave group,” that device is detached from the shared zone and syncs no further. Either action can only be performed from the same Apple ID that started the sharing. Voices that already reached a family member's device, and any Copy they exported, stay with them.

Notifications

Memory notes are local notifications created entirely inside your device (optional, off by default). No data is sent anywhere for them, and the notification text never contains your child's name or anything about the content of a voice.

If you are in a Family Group, you may get a local notification when a family member adds a voice. It appears only on devices that have already allowed notifications; the Family Group never asks for notification permission of its own. The text never includes a child's name, a title, a contributor's name, or captions. Note that joining a Family Group does register your device with Apple's push notification system, so that updates from your family can reach you.

Purchase information

Subscription purchases and restores are handled through Apple's StoreKit. We never receive payment details such as card numbers. All we receive from Apple is aggregate sales figures that cannot identify an individual.

Reviews you post on the App Store are published on Apple's site, where we can also read them. If we reply to a review, our reply is published on the App Store as well.

How your device keeps this safe

Children's privacy

The app is for parents and guardians, who are adults. It is not designed to be used by children themselves, and it is not an app in Apple's Kids category. Detecting, matching, and saving a child's voice all happen entirely inside your device. We cannot access your child's voice, their voice-feature data, or their name and birthday. We never gather children's voices to use as training data, and we never build a voiceprint database that identifies who someone is.

Whether to save, and whether to share, is a parent's decision every time. Home videos often contain other children's voices — siblings, friends. Before you save or share, please give thought to what those children's parents would want. And when your child is old enough to have a view about how their own voice is handled, please respect it. Deleting is always available inside the app.

Turning on the setting that makes your child's name usable from Siri / Shortcuts (off by default) passes that name to iOS system features. It does not pass it to us. No audio and no voice-feature data is passed to Siri.

Retention

Because we hold no data, there is no retention period on our side. Data on your device stays on your device until you delete it or delete the app; nothing expires on its own. There are two exceptions: temporary copies made for analysis are deleted immediately after the analysis, and material that arrived in the voice inbox is deleted automatically once 30 days pass without it being imported.

Managing your data and withdrawing consent

The app creates no account, so there is no account to delete. Every permission can be revoked at any time from iOS Settings.

Because we hold no copy of your data, there is no deletion request for you to send us. For the same reason, we cannot recover data that has been lost.

Information we receive when you contact us

What we receive: your email address, your name (if you give it), the content of your enquiry, and your device model and iOS and app versions.

Why we use it: to answer your enquiry, to investigate and fix problems, and to improve the app. We use it for nothing else.

Third parties: we do not provide it to third parties, except where required by law. We never use it for advertising or marketing, and never add it to a mailing list.

How long we keep it: as a rule, deleted within one year of your enquiry being resolved.

Processors and handling outside Japan: to send and receive support email we use Apple Inc.’s iCloud Mail (country: United States). That company maintains arrangements meeting the standards prescribed by the rules of Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission (個人情報保護委員会). We will tell you about those arrangements on request.

Security measures we take: only the operator personally can handle the information you send us. It is handled only from an account with two-factor authentication enabled, on a device with a screen lock and full-disk encryption. It is deleted, as a rule, within one year of your enquiry being resolved. We will describe our other measures on request.

Where to send requests and complaints: please use the contact address under “Operator” below (the email address on the Contact page, in Japanese). We respond to requests to be notified of the purpose of use of retained personal data, and to disclose, correct, add to, delete, suspend the use of, erase, or stop the third-party provision of that data.

How to make such a request: write to the address above with what you are requesting (notification of purpose of use / disclosure / correction, addition, or deletion / suspension of use or erasure / cessation of third-party provision) and with information confirming your identity (send from the same email address you used to contact us, and tell us the date and subject line of that enquiry). As a rule we reply to the same email address within two weeks. There is no fee. If you are acting as an agent, please attach a power of attorney.

If there is a data breach: in the unlikely event that information you sent us is leaked or otherwise compromised, we will report it to Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission as the law requires, and notify you.

Please don't attach your child's voice or videos to a support enquiry. It is to avoid a precious voice leaving your device unintentionally. A description of what happened is quite enough.

If the business is transferred

If we transfer the business relating to this app to a third party, information you sent us through a support enquiry may be passed to the transferee. Even then, it will not be handled beyond the purposes set out in this policy. Voices stored on your device are not part of any such transfer, because we do not hold them.

About this website

This website uses no cookies, no analytics, and no advertising. Fonts and images are embedded in the page itself, so displaying it requires no request to any third-party server. There is no contact form here either.

The site itself is served from a hosting provider (Vercel Inc., United States), so connection records (IP addresses and the like) may be logged there temporarily as a side effect of your visit. We never use those records to identify individuals or for advertising.

Changes to this policy

This policy may be revised as the app is updated or the law changes. When we revise it, we will update the last-updated date on this page, and where the change warrants it, tell you inside the app as well.

Contact

For privacy questions and for requests about your information, please write to hello@voice-album.com. You can also reach us from the Contact page (in Japanese) or through “App Support” on the App Store. For the terms of use, see the Terms of Use.

Operator

〔operator name (individual or company)〕

Our address and telephone number (including the name of the representative, in the case of a company) will be provided on request without delay — as a rule within three business days — by email or in writing. Please send requests to the email address on the Contact page (in Japanese).