the privacy policy for zone, a dictation keyboard for iphone. effective 2026-11-05. the same text is inside the app under settings, privacy.
your words. your control.
We (and by we I mean me) don't collect any of your data. I don't want it. On iPhone, speech recognition is done locally using your hardware. Be underwater, or in a forest with no Wi-Fi. It still works.
the details
What Zone collects. Nothing. Zone has no account, no analytics, no crash reporting service and no servers of its own. The App Store privacy label is Data Not Collected.
Your voice. While dictation is on, the microphone stays open so the mic key answers at once, and iOS shows its microphone indicator; audio is used only while you dictate and is recognized on this iPhone by a speech model stored on the phone. Zone does not upload audio for recognition. If you export a backup containing meeting audio, it goes to the location you choose; iCloud Drive copies are handled by Apple. While you dictate, Zone saves a temporary recording on this iPhone for recovery. The text is handed to the keyboard through a private container shared only by Zone and its keyboard, and that handoff record is deleted once the text is inserted or dismissed.
Notes and backups. Notes and the running word count are stored on this iPhone. In Backup and export you can save notes, dictation history, meetings, speaker names and meeting audio to a folder you choose in Files, including iCloud Drive. Automatic folder backups are optional and run while Zone is running. iCloud Drive sync is handled by Apple. Zone does not send these copies to a server of its own. Deleting Zone deletes its private library; copies saved outside Zone's folder remain in Files until you delete them there.
Dictation history. Zone keeps the text of your dictations, never the audio, in a private container on this iPhone, excluded from automatic device backups. Explicit Zone backups can include this history in Files or iCloud Drive. Dictations are kept for 30 days by default; choose Off, 7 days, 30 days or Until I delete on the Dictation history screen. Recognized text is saved during a recording so an interruption can be recovered. With history Off, a normal finished dictation is discarded; a cut-off recovery stays until you use or delete it. Speech the model has not recognized yet may not be recoverable. You can delete one dictation or all of them.
Full Access. iOS asks you to allow Full Access for the keyboard. Zone uses it for the handoff between the keyboard and the app: the keyboard passes the app up to 64 characters of text just before the cursor, so the dictated words get the right spacing and capitalization and names already in the field are recognized, and it reads the dictated text back. Both go through the private container on this iPhone. The keyboard never contacts the network.
Autocorrect. When you keep a word that autocorrect changed, the keyboard remembers it (up to 1,000 words) so it stops correcting it. That list stays in the keyboard on this iPhone. The keyboard also learns where your taps land on each key, kept as averages with no text, and uses your contact names and text replacements from iOS without storing them.
Recording recovery. Temporary recordings stay in Zone’s private storage and are left out of backups. Once a nonempty transcript is safely saved, its temporary audio is deleted. A recording under eight seconds that recognized nothing is deleted right away. Longer failed recordings can be retried for seven days; after a crash, that week starts when Zone finds the interrupted recording. Expired audio is cleaned up when Zone next runs. Active recordings are not cut off by this expiry. Recovered text remains available if saving or delivering it failed. You can delete a recovery from Home. Audio not yet written when the app or phone stops may not be recoverable.
My words. Words you add in My words are shared locally between Zone and its keyboard to help recognize names and keep autocorrect from changing them. With Learn from corrections on, replacing a selected whole word using the Zone keyboard can add your correction to this list. You can turn learning off and edit or remove words in Settings. Zone does not upload this vocabulary or your corrections.
The speech model. Download the speech model once. The default on iPhone 15 Pro and newer is Fluid Mini, about 253 MB, from Hugging Face (huggingface.co); earlier iPhones use Moonshine Small, about 142 MB, from Moonshine (download.moonshine.ai). Optional models come from those hosts or Apple. Download requests carry ordinary connection information such as your IP address. After downloading the necessary models, iPhone recognition works in airplane mode.
Your controls. Turn the microphone off for Zone in Settings, Privacy & Security, Microphone. Turn off Full Access, or remove the keyboard, in Settings, Apps, Zone, Keyboards. Delete notes in the app, and delete the app to remove its private library. Delete exported copies separately in Files.
Watch and Messages. The Watch companion saves your text on the Watch and queues a transfer to your paired iPhone. It keeps that copy until the iPhone confirms a saved note. Watch text entry uses Apple's system input and follows your watchOS dictation settings. The iMessage extension reads a limited local copy of recent notes and dictations from Zone's App Group and inserts selected text into your draft. You decide when to send.
License. Zone’s code is under the MIT License. The repository is private during this beta; a public source release is planned.
Questions: zayd@zayd.wtf