Privacy Policy
Effective 26 October 2026.
This policy covers the DarkCast apps and the darkcast.app website. DarkCast is run by Tom Selmes, an independent developer in the UK (“we”, “us”), who is responsible for your data under data protection law. Contact us at hello at darkcast dot app.
Information we collect
DarkCast is designed to respect your privacy. You don’t need an account, and the app has no analytics or tracking code. Apple gives us aggregate App Store figures, such as downloads, and crash reports from people who’ve chosen to share them with developers. The app and website have no advertisements.
Your library. Your subscriptions, listening history, inbox and queue sync between your devices using your own iCloud account. Audio files you add yourself are stored in your iCloud Drive. We cannot see any of this data.
On-device features. Transcription, silence removal, voice enhancement, and music and ad detection run on your device using Apple’s frameworks.
Podcasts. DarkCast fetches podcasts directly from the services that host them, with no DarkCast server in between. Like any internet request, the receiving server sees your IP address and what was requested, and handles it under its own privacy policy. We aren’t responsible for those services’ content or practices. Searches and podcast details come from Apple’s podcast catalogue, and artwork for some shows from SoundCloud.
Shared Transcripts. If you turn this on, you share transcripts you make with other DarkCast users and receive theirs. It’s off by default. Nothing is shared from podcasts DarkCast recognises as private, paid or adult. A shared transcript includes its text and timings, the podcast and episode titles, the language, and details of the audio (a loudness outline, an audio fingerprint and ad-break times) used to match it to other people’s downloads. Your device also checks transcripts it receives against your download and reports ones that don’t match. All of this goes through our server, hosted by Cloudflare, and shared transcripts are stored in Apple’s iCloud public database, without your Apple ID. To stop misuse, Apple’s App Attest security check gives each installation a random code. The code isn’t linked to your identity, and we use it only to limit and block devices that share abusive content. Shared transcripts can be read by anyone who uses Shared Transcripts.
Website. We count page views on darkcast.app and the country they come from. We use no tracking or advertising cookies, so we don’t ask for cookie consent. Our host, Cloudflare, may set strictly necessary security cookies to protect the site from bots and abuse.
Notifications. Notifications are created on your device when a podcast feed updates or data syncs from another device. Sync alerts reach your device through Apple’s push service.
How we use information
We use information only to run DarkCast’s features, to answer support emails, and to protect the app and website from abuse. Under UK and EU data protection law, we rely on providing the service you’ve asked for, our legitimate interest in keeping it working and safe, and legal obligations. We don’t sell your data or use it for advertising.
We don’t share personal information with others except as this policy describes. We may share aggregate statistics, such as how many people use the app.
Our service providers handle basic technical information passing through their services and data stored with them:
Contacting support
Email us at hello at darkcast dot app. If you use Contact Support in the app, DarkCast opens a pre-filled email in your mail app, and nothing is sent until you press Send. The email can include a diagnostic log, which you can remove. Links, file paths and account tokens are removed from the log, but it includes your podcasts and episodes, and details of the app’s performance and crashes, so we can help you. We use support emails only to answer you and fix problems.
What we hold, and deleting it
Apart from support emails, we don’t hold anything that tells us who you are. We hold three kinds of data, none of it linked to your Apple ID:
- Support emails, which include your email address. We delete them when your issue is resolved, or after 12 months at most, or sooner if you ask.
- Shared Transcripts, stored with your installation’s random code. Remove what you’ve shared in Transcript settings and it’s deleted along with its link to your code. Records of checks your device made are deleted within 60 days. If a device is blocked from sharing transcripts, its code is kept to keep the block in place.
- Website statistics: counts with nothing that identifies a visitor.
We may remove shared transcripts and website statistics at any time.
Deleting the app removes its data from your device. You can delete DarkCast’s iCloud data in your device’s iCloud settings. Remove transcripts you’ve shared before you delete DarkCast’s iCloud data: after that, we can’t link them to you.
You can ask us to access, correct, delete or export data we hold about you, or object to how we use it. You can delete shared transcripts yourself in Transcript settings. If your device has been blocked from sharing transcripts, include the code shown there. You can also complain to your data protection authority, such as the ICO in the UK.
Security
Data on your device and in iCloud is protected by Apple’s encryption.
International transfers
Apple and Cloudflare may process data outside your country, including in the United States. They protect transfers from the UK and EU with safeguards such as standard contractual clauses, as described in their privacy policies.
Legal matters
We may disclose information to comply with the law, such as a court order. We may also disclose it to defend legal claims, or to prevent fraud, abuse or illegal activity. If DarkCast is ever sold, merged or transferred, the data we hold may be part of that transfer, and this policy will continue to apply to it.
California and Do Not Track
We don’t distribute personal information to others without your consent, except as this policy describes. We don’t track you, so Do Not Track signals don’t change how DarkCast works.
Children
DarkCast isn’t aimed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect data from them.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, we’ll post the new version here with a new effective date. Material changes will be noted in the app’s release notes.