Back to Project

ByeCut —

Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy for ByeCut

Effective date: 11 November 2026

Applies to: the ByeCut app for iPhone, iPad and Android, previously called AutoCut, TheoCut and TheoReel

Controller and developer: Thinkbyte SRL ("we", "us"), a company registered in Romania

Contact: info@thinkbyte.tech

This policy covers both versions of the app. Where the iPhone and iPad version (from the App Store) and the Android version (from Google Play) work differently, the difference is stated.

How ByeCut handles your content

Manual editing, on-device captions, effects and video exports run on your device. AI Edit is optional: after you agree in the app, audio-only copies go through our backend to Deepgram for transcription, and audio, some small video frames, transcripts, scripts and notes may go to OpenAI to understand your footage and plan and review your edit. Your full videos are never uploaded. Text and editing results are saved on our backend so interrupted AI Edits can recover, and the audio and frames of each AI Edit are kept for up to 30 days to complete it and fix problems with it. iPhone app versions released before 6 November 2026 send audio only. We do not sell or rent your personal data or display advertisements inside the app. We use product analytics and advertising measurement as explained below.

Projects, sync, permissions and sharing

Projects, imported videos and photos, camera recordings, recorded voiceovers, captions, edits and exports are stored locally. On-device face analysis, retouching, tracking, Auto Reframe and background removal process images locally, and we do not send the face measurements they produce to our AI or analytics providers. On Android, face detection uses Google's ML Kit on the device; ML Kit may send Google technical information such as device model, app version and performance metrics, but not your images. The small video frames AI Edit sends are ordinary pictures of your footage, so they can show the people in it. We do not use them to identify anyone, and we ask the AI not to.

Captions are made on your device. On iPhone and iPad they use Apple's on-device speech recognition, with an on-device Whisper speech model as a backup and to detect the spoken language. On Android they use an on-device Whisper model, with Android's on-device speech recognizer as a backup. The first time Whisper is needed, the app downloads the model file from Hugging Face; that download shares ordinary connection information such as your IP address with Hugging Face, but never your audio.

Sync and backups: on iPhone and iPad, if you enable project sync, Apple stores project files and media in your own iCloud Drive. On Android, if you turn on Google Drive sync, which is off by default, the app stores project files and media in a hidden app folder in your own Google Drive, using a permission that can only reach that folder. Portable project backups are saved wherever you choose. These copies are separate from our account backend, and we cannot read them. When you export or share, Photos, your gallery, the share sheet or your selected social app receives the content you choose. Apple's, Google's and the receiving service's policies apply to those copies. ByeCut never posts to social networks for you.

Permissions: the app asks for camera access to record in the app, microphone access for recordings and voiceovers, access to your photo library or the system media picker to import media and save exports, speech-recognition access for captions where needed on iPhone and iPad, and notification permission when you enable alerts. On Android, the app also runs foreground tasks so long exports, imports and sync can finish while you switch apps. You choose the media to import. You can change permissions in your device settings; features that need them may then be unavailable.

Account and sign-in information

The current app requires an authenticated account. Available sign-in options depend on your device:

  • Sign in with Apple (iPhone and iPad, and on Android when offered) supplies a provider identifier and, if provided, an email address, which may be an Apple private relay address. We request email, not your name, from Apple.
  • Google sign-in (Android, and on iPhone and iPad when enabled) uses Google's identity, email and profile scopes.
  • Email sign-in stores your email address and sends you a one-time sign-in code through our email provider, Resend.

Supabase processes sign-in information and authentication sessions. We use your account ID to maintain usage, recovery records, referrals and subscription access across devices. Older installations may have an anonymous session whose usage is merged when you sign in; fresh installs do not need a new anonymous account before sign-in.

To enforce the one-time free AI edit, we retain a salted, one-way hash of your sign-in identity and the free allowance already used. This is a pseudonymous abuse-prevention record: it has no email or name, but allows us to recognise a returning identity. Deleting and recreating an account does not reset eligibility.

AI processing and saved recovery data

What is sent and to whom

  • Deepgram: audio-only copies of source ranges submitted to AI Edit, together with transcription settings such as the spoken language, to produce word-timed transcripts. Our requests opt out of Deepgram's Model Improvement Program. Deepgram says opted-out audio and transcripts are kept only while processing the request; request metadata and usage logs remain subject to its retention rules. See Deepgram's data handling.
  • OpenAI: transcripts, any script, notes or editing instructions you supply, relevant timeline information, audio excerpts when listening review is used, and small video frames, to understand your footage and propose and review cuts. Frames are sent as a few contact sheets of low-resolution pictures taken from across the timeline (at most 288 frames per edit, each about 192 pixels); they are sent once per edit and never as a video. The online editing assistant (Timeline Assistant) sends your chat, a text description of the timeline including its text and any script, the names of imported media, and small thumbnails (at most 128 pixels) of up to 12 imported images; it does not send source video, audio or file paths. The app asks for your consent before the first assistant or AI Edit request. API requests disable response storage. OpenAI may briefly cache repeated parts of a request to process it faster; that cache is not shared with other organisations. OpenAI does not train on API content by default; abuse-monitoring logs may contain content and are normally retained for up to 30 days, unless a longer period is legally required. Turning off response storage does not remove this separate retention. See OpenAI's API data controls.
  • Supabase: our backend authenticates and meters requests. It saves run and project IDs, settings, scripts, notes, transcripts, AI responses, progress, checkpoints and final editing results linked to your account, allowing interrupted runs to resume and finished edits to be delivered. AI responses include the written description of your footage produced from the frames. Online assistant requests are not saved in the AI Edit recovery tables.
  • AI Edit audio, frames and Fly.io: to run an AI Edit, the app uploads one audio-only file of the edit's timeline and a file of small video frames to a private Supabase storage bucket, and our editing server, hosted by Fly.io in Frankfurt, Germany, processes them from there. Your full videos are never uploaded. We keep this audio and these frames for up to 30 days, only to complete the edit, recover interrupted runs, and investigate and fix problems with your edits, for example by replaying an edit that failed or went wrong to test a correction. Only the ByeCut team can access them; they are not used for advertising or to train AI models. They are deleted automatically 30 days after upload, or earlier when you delete your account.

The public apps use Deepgram and OpenAI. Development builds can offer other processing choices, including on-device Apple transcription and Anthropic for text reasoning; their consent screen identifies the providers for those choices.

Your AI consent

Before the first AI Edit, the app asks permission to send audio, some video frames and related text to the disclosed providers. If you agreed before AI Edit used frames, the app asks you again. You can decline and use manual editing. Withdraw this permission in Settings → AI Edit → Stop Sharing Audio with AI. A later AI Edit requires consent again. Withdrawal stops future consent-dependent sharing; it does not undo completed processing or delete saved recovery records. Use account deletion or contact us to request deletion of existing data.

Usage, purchases and onboarding

  • AI usage: Supabase stores source duration, run status, clip counts, language, provider/model settings, progress, retries, dates and allowance reservations/settlements to deliver the service, recover runs, enforce limits and investigate failures.
  • Purchases: Apple handles App Store billing on iPhone and iPad, and Google handles Google Play billing on Android. RevenueCat processes your ByeCut account ID, transaction, purchase-token and product identifiers, subscription status, trial/offer information and purchase history to provide, restore and verify access. RevenueCat sends entitlement updates to our backend. We do not receive your payment-card details from Apple or Google.
  • Onboarding answers: choices such as creator type, posting frequency and time spent editing, plus an estimated time-saving figure and app version, can be stored in Supabase against your account and included in product analytics to understand and improve the app.
  • Trials: if you turn off renewal during a trial, the app may ask once why, and may show a promotional offer from Apple or Google Play. The reason you pick and what you do next are recorded in product analytics.

Product analytics and advertising measurement

PostHog: we send feature and screen events, counts, durations, technical error codes, app/device information, onboarding choices and experiment/feature-flag assignments to PostHog's EU service. Events start with an installation identifier. After sign-in, PostHog identifies the profile with your Supabase account ID and can merge earlier anonymous events. The same account ID is used for RevenueCat, and run/project IDs can link analytics to backend records. These records are pseudonymous, not necessarily anonymous. They include how much of an AI Edit result you played, word counts and spoken duration of the footage you submitted to AI Edit, your AI Edit ratings with the reasons you pick, and the reason you pick when you cancel a trial. Product analytics events do not include your video, audio, transcripts, captions, project names, scripts, prompts or feedback comments.

Apple Ads (iPhone and iPad): Apple's AdServices attribution can identify the advertising campaign, ad group or keyword that led to an install. Attribution information is used in PostHog and RevenueCat to measure campaign and subscription performance.

Google Play install referrer (Android): when you install ByeCut from an invite link, the app reads the Google Play install referrer to find the invite code, so you do not have to type it.

Meta App Events: the App Store and Google Play versions are configured to measure installs, sessions and selected conversions, including sign-in, onboarding, project creation, AI Edit completion, export, paywall views and usage-limit events. Subscription or trial events can include value and currency. We do not attach project content, transcripts, scripts, prompts, names or email addresses to these conversion events. Meta's SDK also processes technical device/network information needed to deliver its service. Other builds, such as test or sideloaded copies, do not report to Meta. See Meta's privacy policy.

  • iPhone and iPad: the app does not request App Tracking Transparency permission, so it does not obtain access to the advertising identifier (IDFA) without that permission. Apple's SKAdNetwork can provide aggregated attribution.
  • Android: Meta's SDK can read your device's Android advertising ID to match installs with ads. You can reset or delete the advertising ID in your Android settings (Settings → Privacy → Ads, or Settings → Google → Ads, depending on the device).

Turn off Settings → Privacy → Share Usage Data to opt out of PostHog product analytics and the app's Meta usage/conversion events, including automatic app-event logging. This does not delete earlier events, cancel purchases, disable essential operational diagnostics or turn off all Apple- or Google-provided attribution. Contact us about deletion of existing records.

Diagnostics and support

On iPhone and iPad, release builds automatically upload available crash reports and AI Edit failure diagnostics to Supabase to investigate reliability problems. On Android, crash reports stay on the device unless you attach one to Report a Problem. These can include crash/error text, report/run/project identifiers, failure stage, settings, source duration and clip counts, language, progress, app/build/OS version and device model. Crash or error text can contain incidental context. This operational reporting is separate from the optional product-analytics toggle; it does not upload your source video or audio.

When you submit feedback or report a problem, we process your subject, description, reproduction steps, optional contact email, app/device details, and any crash text or AI Edit diagnostic context attached to the report. Avoid including information you do not want us to receive. We use it to investigate and reply when you provide contact details. If you choose to rate ByeCut in the store, Apple or Google handles that rating under its own terms.

Rating an AI Edit and sharing its audio

After an AI Edit, you can rate the result with a thumbs up or down, pick reasons and add an optional comment. Supabase stores the rating, reasons, comment, run and project IDs, the source and result durations, the spoken language and the app version against your account, so we can improve AI Edit.

Sharing a recording is a separate, optional choice that is off by default. Only if you turn on "Share this recording's audio" do we upload an audio-only, reduced-quality copy (mono, about 48 kbps) of the recordings that AI Edit used, together with the AI's edit plan and transcript for that run, to a private Supabase storage bucket. Video frames are never uploaded. Only the ByeCut team can access these files, only to reproduce and fix AI Edit problems; they are not sent to other AI providers, used for advertising or used to train AI models. Shared audio is deleted 30 days after upload, or earlier when you delete your account. Ask us at info@thinkbyte.tech to delete it sooner.

Referrals and notifications

If you use Invite Friends, Supabase records invite codes, the relationship between inviter and invitee, eligibility checks, bonus allowance, qualifying subscription/renewal status and reward/offer-code issuance or redemption. Invite links on byecut.com carry the invite code into the app. The inviter sees numbered entries such as "Friend 1", rather than your name or email. Entering an invite code can reveal your joining, trial, paid subscription, cancellation, payment issue, lapse, refund or account-departure status to the inviter through that entry and friend updates. A person who gave you a code may still infer which entry is yours. No address-book access is needed.

Referral identity hashes and reward records can survive account deletion to prevent repeated invitations or reuse of rewards; deleted account references are removed. These are distinct from the free-edit allowance ledger described below.

If you enable remote notifications, we store your installation ID, push token, delivery environment and notification preferences in Supabase. We deliver alerts through Apple's Push Notification service on iPhone and iPad and through Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging on Android. Remote notifications include project updates, friend updates and, during a free trial, reminders before the trial ends, which our server schedules from your trial status. Friend-notification history and read state are also stored. Local reminders and completion alerts are scheduled on your device. Manage Project Updates, Reminders and Friend Updates in the app's notification settings, and system permission in your device settings. Turning off push alerts does not erase the referral relationship or in-app history.

Purposes and legal bases (EEA/UK)

  • Providing the service and performing our contract: accounts, AI requests/recovery, usage metering, subscription access, sync you turn on, requested referrals, notifications and support.
  • Consent where required: sharing audio, video frames and text with AI providers, optional device permissions, and analytics or advertising measurement where the applicable rules require consent. You can withdraw the relevant permission or choice.
  • Legitimate interests where permitted: service reliability, proportionate product measurement and fraud prevention, including identity hashes that prevent repeated free edits or referral abuse. You may object to processing based on legitimate interests.
  • Legal obligations: records or disclosures required by applicable law.

Retention and account deletion

  • Local projects remain until you remove them. Deleting the app can remove local app data; files saved to Photos, your gallery, Files, iCloud, Google Drive or other apps must be managed separately.
  • AI Edit audio and frames are deleted 30 days after upload, or when you delete your account if that is sooner.
  • Audio you share with an AI Edit rating, and the plan and transcript sent with it, are deleted 30 days after upload, or when you delete your account if that is sooner. The rating, reasons and comment stay with the account like other feedback.
  • Account-linked AI recovery content, usage, onboarding answers, feedback and diagnostic records are retained to provide the service and investigate issues while the account remains in use, and are removed from our active account tables when the account is deleted. The scheduled 24-month inactivity cleanup applies to legacy anonymous accounts, not all signed-in accounts.
  • The free-edit identity hash and used-allowance record survive account deletion and are scheduled for removal after 24 months without an update. Referral identity hashes and reward/anti-abuse records are retained as needed to enforce one-time referral eligibility and prevent reward reuse; they do not have that same 24-month automatic purge.
  • Analytics and advertising providers retain events according to their configured retention and applicable policies; we use them for performance measurement and improvement and handle requests to delete identifiable records. AI-provider content retention is described above.
  • Purchase, reward and legal records may be retained where needed for accounting, fraud prevention or legal obligations. Deleting a ByeCut account does not automatically erase records Apple, Google or other providers must maintain independently. Backup copies, where applicable, expire through the relevant provider's backup cycle.

Use Settings → Account → Delete Account to delete your ByeCut account, remaining allowance and account-linked server content. Projects on your device, in iCloud or in Google Drive are not deleted by this action. Sign-out ends the app session but does not delete server records. Account deletion or uninstalling the app does not cancel a subscription: on iPhone and iPad, manage it in iOS Settings → your name → Subscriptions; on Android, in the Google Play Store app → your profile → Payments & subscriptions → Subscriptions. If Apple sign-in authorization cannot be revoked automatically during deletion, the app provides instructions to revoke it with Apple.

Service providers, transfers and security

We use Supabase, Fly.io, Deepgram, OpenAI, RevenueCat, PostHog, Meta, Resend, Apple and Google for the purposes above. Google's role includes Google sign-in, Google Play billing and install referrer, Firebase Cloud Messaging, Google Drive sync when you turn it on, and ML Kit on Android. Hugging Face hosts the on-device caption model the app may download. These providers may process data outside your country, including in the United States. The app's PostHog endpoint is in the EU; this does not mean all app data stays in the EU. Where legally required, international transfers need an adequacy decision or appropriate safeguards such as Standard Contractual Clauses. Contact us for information about safeguards relevant to your data.

We may disclose information when legally required or to protect users and the service. We use authenticated connections and access controls to protect backend records; no storage or transmission system is completely secure.

Your choices and rights

Depending on applicable law, you may request access, correction, deletion or a portable copy of your personal data, restrict or object to processing, and withdraw consent. Contact info@thinkbyte.tech; include your Support ID from Settings → About if available so we can locate relevant records. We may need to verify the request. You may complain to your local data protection authority; in Romania, this is the National Supervisory Authority for Personal Data Processing (ANSPDCP). Exercising these rights does not remove mandatory consumer rights.

Children, websites and policy changes

ByeCut is not directed at children under 13, or under 16 in the EEA, and we do not knowingly collect their personal data. Contact us if you believe a child has provided it.

This policy describes the mobile apps. Website cookies and browser measurement are separate; see the ByeCut website Cookie Policy for browser controls. Visiting a policy page does not grant the app permission to upload your media.

We will update this policy when our processing changes and show the effective date above. If the scope of AI sharing changes, the app can ask for renewed consent before that sharing.