Privacy Policy

Kazoo sends short voice messages between people who have deliberately added each other. To do that, we store your account, your chosen name, your friend list, and the voice clips in transit. We do not track you, we do not advertise, we do not sell or share anything with anyone, and we do not use your voice recordings to train anything.

What We Collect

Your account. When you sign in with Apple we receive an account identifier and an email address. If you chose Apple's "Hide My Email," we only ever see the relay address, never your real one. The email keeps your account attached to you — it is never shown to other users and cannot be used to find you.

Your display name. The name your friends see. You set it, and you can change it any time in Settings. It starts from the name Apple provides, if it provides one.

Your friends. The list of people you have connected with, and the invite codes used to make those connections. Codes are random six-character strings with no personal information in them.

Your voice clips. The audio you record, its length, and delivery information: when it was sent, whether it was delivered, and whether it was heard.

Live talk. When you talk live with a friend, your audio passes through our relay server straight to them as you speak. It is never recorded or stored, by us or anyone. We keep only a record that the call happened: who called whom, when, and how it ended (answered, declined, missed).

Voice filters. If you pick a filter such as Chipmunk or Robot, the effect is applied on your watch or iPhone before the clip is sent, and only the filtered version is uploaded; your unfiltered recording never leaves your device. Which filter you picked for each conversation is stored only on that device. Filters are for fun, not for hiding who you are: people who know you may still recognise your voice.

Knocks and quick replies. When you knock, or tap a ready-made reply such as "On my way," we store which one you sent, to whom and when, with the same delivery information as a clip. Quick replies, including the emoji ones, come from a fixed list; there is no free-text messaging in Kazoo. "You OK?" check-ins work the same way: the question and the two answers ("I'm OK", "Call me") are fixed words, stored like a quick reply, with a link from each answer to the question it answers.

Read it (iPhone). If you tap Read on a voice message, your iPhone turns it into text itself, using Apple's on-device speech recognition, and can translate it with Apple's on-device translation. The text is shown to you and never sent anywhere or stored by Kazoo.

Your name tag, if you record one. A three-second recording of your voice, like "Hi, it's Mom!", that your friends and people in your channels can choose to hear before your messages. It's kept until you delete it (Settings → Name tag) or delete your account. Nobody else can hear it.

Your sound choices. Which tune you picked for each friend. Only you can see these.

Kept messages. If you or the other person keep a voice message, we store that choice and keep the message until one of you unkeeps it or deletes your account, instead of deleting it after 24 hours.

Family, only if you use it. If a parent links a child's account, we store that link; the child's School and Sleep quiet-hours schedules (days, times and time zone); up to ten short replies the parent wrote for the child; and friend requests waiting for a parent's approval. The child and their linked parents can see these. Nobody else can, except that friends can see that quiet hours are on and when they end.

Your age range, from iPhone. On an iPhone with iOS 26 or later, Kazoo asks Apple which age range you're in: under 13, 13–15, 16–17, or 18 and over. Apple shows you the request and you choose whether to share. If you share, we store only that range and when we received it; we never receive or store your birthdate. Nobody else can see it, including your friends. We use it for one thing: an account in the under-13 range needs a parent to link it before it can add friends or talk. The watch doesn't have this feature, so it only uses a range already shared from an iPhone.

Your time zone, if you share it. So friends can see that it's 2 AM where you are before they chirp you, Kazoo stores your time zone (for example "America/Costa_Rica") and shows friends your local time. It's on unless you turn off Settings → Show my local time, which deletes it from our servers at once. Only people you've accepted can see it. It is a time zone, not a location: Kazoo never asks for or receives your location.

Your channels. Which channels you've made, joined or been invited to, and who else is in them. A channel's name comes from a fixed list; there are no custom names.

Your availability. Whether you are currently reachable, and if not, the general reason (for example, that a Focus mode is on). We receive only that you are in some Focus, never which one, and never anything else about it.

Your notification tokens. Identifiers Apple gives us so we can reach your watch or iPhone: one for chirps and notifications, one on each device for live calls (on the iPhone it rings you like a phone call), and one on the iPhone for walkie-talkie mode, which plays messages out loud as they arrive.

What We Don't Collect

How Long We Keep Things

Voice clips, knocks and quick replies are deleted 24 hours after they are heard or seen. A clip nobody has heard waits for up to 7 days, then is deleted anyway, so nothing sits in storage indefinitely. Deletion runs automatically every hour and removes the audio file itself, not merely a record of it.

The one exception is a clip attached to a report (see below), which is held until the report has been reviewed and then deleted under the normal rules.

Your account, name, and friend list remain until you delete your account.

Who Can See Your Messages

A message to a friend: only you and that friend. A message to a channel: you and the people who have joined that channel. This is enforced at the database level, not just in the app: every record carries a rule that permits access solely to its sender and its recipients.

Removing a friend, or leaving a channel, revokes access immediately. Voice messages are played through links that expire within a minute and are re-checked each time, so revoked access can't be used to fetch a message again later.

People in the same channel can see each other's name and whether they're available, even if they aren't friends, so everyone knows who is speaking. They cannot see anything else about you. Someone who has only been invited can see the names of the people in the channel before deciding whether to join. Nobody can hear a channel until they tap Join.

Our backend provider (Supabase) stores this data on our behalf and cannot use it for their own purposes. Our relay provider (Fly.io) carries live-talk audio between the two people in a call and stores none of it. Apple delivers the notifications. Nobody else receives your data.

Reports

Every friend's screen has a Report button. Reporting someone removes them as a friend immediately and blocks them, so they can't reach you through any channel either. They are not told who reported them.

When you report someone we store the report (who, the reason you picked, and when) and, unless you switch it off, the most recent voice clip that person sent you, so there is something to review. That clip cannot be deleted by the person who sent it while the report is open. Once the report is closed, the clip is released and deleted under the normal 24-hour rule.

Reports are reviewed by us, and are used only to decide whether someone should be removed from Kazoo. They are never shared with the person reported.

Children

Kazoo is rated 4+ and is designed to be safe for children by construction rather than by policy: there is no discovery, no public channels, no strangers, no text chat, and no way for anyone to contact a user who has not first accepted their code. We do not knowingly collect information from children beyond what is described above, which is the same minimum we collect from everyone.

If a child shares an under-13 age range from their iPhone (see Your age range above), their account can't add friends, join channels or send or receive anything until a parent links it with a family code. Teens are invited to link a parent but don't have to.

A parent can link their child's account (Family). A linked child's new friends wait until a parent approves, and a parent can set quiet hours for school and sleep. A parent sees their child's pending friend requests, not the child's messages.

If you are a parent who set up a watch for your child and you want their account and data removed, email us and we will delete it.

Your Choices and Rights

Depending on where you live you may have additional rights over your data, including access, correction, export, and deletion. Email us and we will honour them regardless of where you live.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest by our backend provider. Voice clips live in a private store that is not publicly reachable and issues only short-lived, single-purpose links. No system is perfect, and we would rather say that than claim otherwise.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects what we collect or who can see it, we will say so in the app before the change takes effect, not merely update this page.

Contact

Questions about this policy?

If this ever changes, the "last updated" date will change with it.

Kazoo is developed by OceanWithin Studio, LLC