Privacy policy
What Tapelark and tapelark.com collect, why, and what they never do. No account, no telemetry, nothing uploaded.
Last updated: 8 October 2026
Tapelark is made by Victor Antofica, Albisstrasse 29, 8800 Thalwil, Switzerland ("we", "us"), who is responsible for the processing of personal data described here. This policy covers the Tapelark app for Mac, the website tapelark.com, buying a licence and writing to support. In short: Tapelark has no account, sends no usage data and never uploads your recordings. We collect only what we need to sell you a licence and answer your email.
Questions or requests: support@tapelark.com.
The app
Your recordings stay on your Mac. Recordings, your library, playlists, tags, settings and the files Tapelark makes stay on your Mac, in your library folder (~/Music/Tapelark unless you choose another) and in ~/Library/Application Support/Tapelark. Tapelark never uploads, shares or streams them, and has no way to send them to anyone. We never see them.
No telemetry, no tracking. Tapelark sends no usage data, analytics or crash reports to us. Settings > Advanced > Collect diagnostics with MetricKit is off unless you turn it on; macOS then hands Tapelark daily performance and crash reports, which Tapelark saves in a folder on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded.
No account, no passwords. Tapelark never asks for the passwords of other services, never signs in to them for you and never reads browser data, cookies or another app's memory.
Your licence is checked on your Mac, without the internet, and kept in your Keychain. A licence key contains the name or email address it was issued to, the product and the date; it is signed so Tapelark can check it offline.
macOS permissions. Tapelark asks macOS for permission to record the audio of other apps, and optionally to read track details from the Music app and to record a window's picture (window video). Tapelark explains each permission before macOS asks and uses it only for what you start. You can withdraw any permission at any time in System Settings > Privacy & Security.
Services Tapelark contacts, and only when you use the feature. When you use one of these features, Tapelark connects to the service named, which then receives your IP address and the request (for example your search words) under its own privacy policy. Tapelark sends nothing else, and never your recordings.
- Radio: a public radio directory, to search stations, and the stations you play or record.
- Podcasts: Apple's public podcast directory, to search, and the feeds and episode files of the shows you subscribe to.
- Covers: the iTunes Search API, to find artwork.
- Look Up Online: MusicBrainz and the Cover Art Archive, only after you entered a contact address in Settings (MusicBrainz asks every app to send one).
- Track identification: Apple's Shazam service, only when you turned Identify tracks > With Shazam on. Tapelark then sends a short acoustic fingerprint of an untitled track, never the audio itself.
- Updates: the list of versions on
downloads.tapelark.com, when Tapelark checks for updates (you choose whether it checks automatically), and the update itself when you choose to install it. A check sends Tapelark's version, as every update check does, and no profile of your Mac.
This website
tapelark.com sets no cookies and runs no analytics, advertising or tracking scripts, and loads nothing from other sites.
The site is delivered through Cloudflare from our server at Hetzner in Finland. Our server keeps no log of your visits. Cloudflare processes technical data (IP address, time, the page requested, your browser's user agent) to deliver the site and protect it from attacks, under its own policy, and we use none of it to track you.
Buying a licence
Tapelark is sold through Link, Stripe's checkout, which acts as the seller of record. When you buy, Link and Stripe process your payment details, billing address and email address under their own privacy policies (Link, Stripe), and apply the VAT or sales tax of your country. We never see your card or bank details.
We receive from Stripe your name, email address, country, what you bought, the amount and the order number. We use them to issue and send your licence key, to issue upgrades you are entitled to, to answer support questions and to handle refunds, and we keep a record of the keys we issued. We keep these records for as long as your licence is in use and as long as the law requires us to keep business records (in Switzerland, ten years), then delete them.
When you write to support@tapelark.com, we receive your email address and what you write, and use them to answer you. Our email is hosted by Google Workspace. We keep the conversation as long as needed to help you, and for licence questions as long as the licence record above.
Who receives your data
Only the services named above, each for its purpose: Cloudflare and Hetzner (website), Stripe and Link (payment), Google (email). Some of them process data outside Switzerland and the EU, for example in the USA, under the safeguards the law requires (such as the Swiss-US and EU-US Data Privacy Frameworks or standard contractual clauses). We never sell your data and never share it for advertising.
Your rights
Under the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection and, where it applies, the EU General Data Protection Regulation, you can ask what data we hold about you, have it corrected, deleted or handed over, and object to or restrict its use. Write to support@tapelark.com; we answer within 30 days. We process purchase data to fulfil our contract with you and to meet legal duties, and technical website data for our legitimate interest in a working, secure site. You can also complain to a data protection authority: in Switzerland the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC), in the EU the authority of your country.
Tapelark is not directed at children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their data.
Changes
If we change this policy, we update this page and the date at the top. If a change affects how the app handles your data, we also say so in the release notes.