Everything stays on your computer
Your music is never uploaded. There are no WavRead servers to upload it to, no account to create, and no telemetry. This page lists every request the app can make, so the claim can be checked rather than trusted.
No uploads
Audio, stems, documents and measurements stay in a folder on your machine.
No app account
The desktop app has no sign-in, licence server, email address, or tester identity.
No silent telemetry
No analytics, no usage counters, no identifier. Crash reports exist from 1.4.37 — off until you turn them on, and readable before they go.
No background activity
WavRead does nothing while you are not using it, beyond one daily version check you can switch off.
Every request the app can make
Four in every installation, plus the problem-report requests that exist only when you turn reports on. The four carry no identifier, no filenames and no measurements; the reports carry exactly what the section below lists.
| Update check | Once a day, one request to WavRead's public release page, asking only what the newest published version is. It has no body and no identifier, fails silently when you are offline, and is switched off for good in Settings if you would rather it never ran. |
|---|---|
| Installing an update | Only when you press Update now. It downloads that release's disk image from the public release page and checks it against the checksum published in the release notes. Nothing installs on its own. |
| Stem separation model | About 80 MB, fetched once from the model's publisher the first time you separate a mix into parts. Bring your own stems — or capture them from your DAW — and this never happens. |
| Lyric transcription model | About 460 MB, fetched once from its publisher the first time you transcribe lyrics, then cached. Skip lyrics and it is never downloaded. |
| Problem reports (off by default, from 1.4.37) | Only with reports turned on in Settings: a crash record or a report you wrote, sent to WavRead's report service. Contents are listed in full below; every record is kept on your machine and readable before and after sending. Turn reports off and this request never exists. |
| Linking a device (optional, from 1.4.37) | Only when you type a link code from your dashboard into Settings: one request that trades the code for a report token, so your reports show up on your own dashboard. The app never holds your email or a sign-in — only that token, revocable from either side. |
Both models are downloads of software, not uploads of your audio: the model comes to your machine and runs there. Everything else — measurement, structure, chords, melody, the whole Feedback Report — needs no connection at all, and the app runs normally with the network off.
Melody transcription needs no download: that model ships inside the app.
The capture plugin
WavRead Bridge talks to exactly one address — 127.0.0.1, your own
machine — and the app refuses any capture request that did not originate locally.
The audio it records is written straight into WavRead's library folder on the
drive you chose. Nothing about a session, its track names, or its audio goes
anywhere else.
Where your files are
One folder holds everything: analyses, documents, separated stems, captures and copies of the audio you analysed. Settings shows you the exact path, how large it is, and how much room is left on that drive — and moves the whole library somewhere else if you want, copying first and removing the original only once the copy is complete.
You can delete any part of it from inside the app, or in Finder. WavRead keeps no second copy anywhere, and nothing is retained after you delete it.
What is in a document
Track Documents contain measurements, structure, estimated chords and lyrics, and your own notes — no audio. If you paste one into an AI assistant, that is your decision and your assistant's privacy policy; WavRead never sends a document anywhere itself. Nothing in the app requires an AI at all.
Problem reports, in full
From 1.4.37, WavRead can report its own failures — a crash, an analysis that died, an update that would not install. Reporting is off until you turn it on in Settings, and three things stay true whichever way the switch points:
- Every record is written to your machine first, into the library folder where you can read it, and stays there whether or not it is ever sent. Settings shows each record and whether it went.
- A report is scrubbed before it exists. Your username
becomes
~, audio filenames become<audio>, and library paths are shortened to their role. A report never contains audio, track names, measurements, documents, or lyrics. - What is sent is exactly: the app version, macOS version and chip type, the kind of failure, the scrubbed error summary and stack trace, when it happened, and a random install ID that identifies the install — not you. With a linked device it also carries the report token, so the report appears on your dashboard.
A report you write yourself on the Report a Problem page additionally contains what you typed, and — only if you tick the box — a scrubbed excerpt of WavRead's own error log, shown to you in full before sending.
Optional accounts on this website
Early Build owners and registered testers may sign in to a separate area on this website. That account is not used by the desktop app and never receives audio, filenames, analyses, documents, or app activity. The account service stores a WavRead-owned account ID, account email, join date, status, future complimentary-release eligibility, purchases, entitlements, linked-device records, and the reports and feedback described above. Feedback may include the selected feedback type, title, description, optional reproduction steps, app version, operating-system name, and whether follow-up is allowed.
A $5 Early Build purchase is processed by Stripe on Stripe's own pages; WavRead never sees or stores card numbers. WavRead keeps the purchase record — your email, the amount, the date, and Stripe's checkout reference — because that record is what makes the purchase yours across devices and years. Stripe's own processing is governed by Stripe's privacy policy.
If you reached the purchase page from an advertisement, its link carries a
short campaign label — reels-a and the like. The label says which
advertisement was clicked, not who clicked it: it is read from the address you
arrived on, sent once with the purchase, and kept alongside the purchase record
so WavRead can tell which advertisements are worth paying for. It is not an
identifier, it is never combined with anything else, nothing is stored in your
browser to carry it, and arriving without one changes nothing about the
purchase or the price.
Access, ownership, and reports are protected by account ownership and database policies. Removing the sign-in-provider account disconnects access but does not erase the stable account record, its purchases, or its reports, because that history is what future eligibility is honored from. A deletion request can still be handled by WavRead directly. The public product website uses no analytics or advertising trackers.
Last checked against WavRead 1.4.39. The model download sizes are the actual sizes on disk after a first run: 80 MB for separation, 464 MB for lyric transcription.