The rest of this page explains what that means in practice, and what the app does with the permissions it asks for.
Your voice
When you hold the key or tap the microphone, audio is captured and converted to text by a speech model running on your own device. The audio is never uploaded. It is not sent to us, to a transcription service, or to anyone else. It is held in memory only for as long as it takes to turn it into words, and then discarded.
The app works with no internet connection at all, apart from the one-time download of the speech model when you first install it.
Your words
Transcribed text is placed where you asked for it — at your cursor, or on your clipboard. On iPhone, recent transcriptions are kept in the app's History so you can copy them again. That history lives on your device and is deleted when you delete it or remove the app.
Your Words and Phrases
The words you add to your Words list, and the phrases you save as Phrases, are stored as plain text files on your device. They are not synced, not backed up to us, and not shared. The app ships with both lists empty — everything in them is yours and was put there by you.
The keyboard, and “Full Access”
iOS asks you to grant “Allow Full Access” before a custom keyboard can do much. It is a broad-sounding permission, so here is exactly what Verbatim uses it for:
- to let the keyboard talk to the Verbatim app on the same device, which is what holds the microphone and does the transcribing;
- to read your Words and Phrases so the keyboard can apply them.
It is not used to send anything anywhere. The keyboard does not log what you type, does not read what is already in the text field beyond what it needs to insert text correctly, and has no network code in it.
Android
On Android the speech model is downloaded once over an encrypted connection; that download sends nothing about you. Audio is kept in memory only while it is being transcribed and is never written to storage. The Verbatim keyboard types into the field you were dictating into, and never into a password field. Your Words, Phrases, settings and History stay in the app's private storage and are excluded from Android backups. History is encrypted on the phone, can be switched off so nothing is kept, and is deleted when you remove the app. Text Verbatim copies is marked sensitive, so Android hides it in clipboard previews.
Analytics, tracking, accounts
There are none. No analytics SDK, no crash reporting service, no advertising identifier, no account to create, no email address to hand over. We do not know how many people use the app or what they say to it.
Children
The app collects nothing from anyone, including children under 13.
Changes
If this ever changes — if a future version needs a server for something — this page will say so plainly and the change will be described before it ships, not after.
Contact
Questions about privacy in Verbatim can go to privacy@ciav.ca.
Verbatim by CIAV · Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.