Privacy Policy

LIQUIDWAVE listens to the source you choose (system audio, a single app, or the microphone in Listen Mode) and analyzes it on your Mac in real time to drive the visuals. The audio signal is processed in memory and discarded immediately after analysis.

Audio is never transmitted anywhere. It is written to disk only when you start a Scene Recording on the Mac: the sound you are listening to is then saved, together with the scene in the window, to a file you choose. Otherwise audio is never recorded or written to disk. There is no audio data for us to receive: nothing the app sends, to us or anyone else, carries sound or picture.

To read system audio or the microphone, macOS asks for your permission once, through the standard system prompt. You can revoke it at any time in System Settings → Privacy & Security. The app can animate with Ambient Auto without audio access.

Now Playing displays track information supplied by Spotify, Music, or supported browser tabs. macOS asks for Automation access when you connect a player. You can turn off the notch and sidebar displays in LIQUIDWAVE settings and revoke Automation access in System Settings.

Artwork is downloaded from the image URL supplied by the player. When needed, the artist and album or song title are sent to Apple’s iTunes Search API to find a cover. The image and search providers receive those requests and your IP address; their privacy policies govern their handling of the requests. We do not add an account or device identifier, operate a listening-history server, or upload audio.

Mix Shuffle, on Macs with Apple Intelligence, classifies the playing track’s title, artist and album with the Apple Intelligence model on your Mac and sends none of it off the Mac.

Your preferences (selected scene, favorites, playback options) are stored locally on your Mac using the standard macOS defaults system. Your scenes, favorites and playlists never leave your device; when you change one of a few options, such as the audio source or render quality, the usage measurement below notes the option and the choice.

The released apps (on the Mac App Store, the direct download from this site, and iPhone and iPad) send usage events to Appnics’ own server, api.admin.appnics.io. No third-party analytics or advertising SDK is involved.

Each event carries a random install ID the app creates on first launch. It is not the advertising identifier and is not linked to an account, a name or an email address; the server stores only a hash of it, never the ID itself. With it go the event, its time and session, the platform, the app and OS version, the language, the country the request comes from, and the plan type (free, one-time or yearly) with the product ID of the plan. An event is a screen or feature used, a step of the welcome tour or of a purchase (the unlock screen shown, a purchase started, completed or cancelled, a restore and its result), or an error shown.

Never sent: audio, video, what you listen to, track names, artists, the scenes you choose, playlist names, license keys, transaction IDs or amounts. Your IP address and user agent are not stored. The data shows us which features are used and where the purchase flow loses people; it is not used for advertising and is never shared or sold.

Purchases are processed by Apple through the App Store. We never see your payment details. Receipts are verified on-device.

The direct-download build sold on liquidwave.app is paid through Polar.sh (Polar Software Inc.), the merchant of record. Polar handles the card, the receipt, and the license key; its privacy policy applies to the checkout.

To activate and periodically re-check a license, the app sends Polar the license key, this Mac’s computer name (the activation’s label, so you can tell your Macs apart in the Polar customer portal) and the app version. No audio, no listening data, no hardware identifiers. The check runs at launch and about once a day; the app keeps working offline for 14 days between checks.

The license record is stored locally in ~/Library/Application Support/LIQUIDWAVE/license.json. Deactivate this Mac in Settings removes it and frees the activation.

Update checks fetch https://liquidwave.app/appcast.xml; the request carries the app version and your macOS version, and nothing about the listener.

liquidwave.app sets no cookies. It counts page views and clicks on the download and App Store buttons with Vercel Web Analytics, which stores no cookies and no personal data: each visit is counted from a hash of the request that expires within a day, so nothing follows you across sites or sessions.

The site also sends the same page views and button clicks to Appnics’ own server, api.admin.appnics.io. What is kept is the page path, the utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign parameters, the host name of the referring site (never the rest of its address), the country, and a visitor hash. The hash is made from your IP address and user agent with a random value that changes every day and is deleted after two days, so a visitor can’t be followed from one day to the next and the IP address can’t be recovered from it; the IP address and user agent themselves are not stored. There is no other tracking.

The Windows and Linux beta page asks for an email address and the platform you chose (Windows, Linux or both). They are used to send you a beta code and news about the beta, and for nothing else. The form sends them to the developer as a notification in Slack (Slack Technologies, as a processor); the website itself does not store them. They are never shared or sold, and are deleted on request: hello@liquidwave.app.

Addresses given to the earlier iPhone and iPad launch waitlist are kept in a private spreadsheet, used for one launch announcement, never shared or sold, and deleted on request: hello@liquidwave.app.

If this policy ever changes (for example, if a future version adds optional iCloud sync), the revision will be posted here with a new effective date before it takes effect.

LIQUIDWAVE is made by Appnics LLC, Tokyo, Japan. Questions about this policy: hello@liquidwave.app.