Privacy
Cadre is a screen recorder that runs on your Mac. This page describes exactly what it does with your data, which is very little.
Your recordings never leave your Mac
Recordings, edits and exported videos are written to your own disk and are never uploaded anywhere. Cadre has no cloud storage, no sync and no account system for your content.
Captions are transcribed on your Mac
Caption generation runs a speech model locally on your machine. Your audio is not sent to us or to any third party for transcription. The on-device captioning guide explains the workflow and model boundary in detail.
AI assistants are a separate, optional system
Cadre's Agent API runs only on your Mac. If you connect an AI assistant, that client can request selected transcript, interaction or frame context to carry out your direction, and may send that context to its own model provider. The assistant's service, account settings and data policy apply to that transfer. Review them separately before connecting an assistant to sensitive material; Cadre's manual editor remains available without an AI connection.
Analytics
Cadre uses PostHog's EU Cloud to understand which website pages and product features are useful, where people stop, and where errors occur. Analytics are never used for advertising and we do not sell the data.
On this website, measurement starts anonymously and stays that way until you say otherwise. Anonymous mode sets no cookie, stores no identifier, creates no profile and records no session — it counts page views and a few named interactions, and nothing in it can be traced back to you. Nothing that could identify you is sent before you make an explicit choice.
A short notice at the bottom of the page tells you this is happening and offers three options: Allow full analytics, Anonymous only, or No analytics. It sits in the page, never over it, and you can ignore it. Full analytics is the only mode that can store an anonymous identifier and record a protected replay of website layout and interactions; even then, form inputs are masked, canvas capture is disabled, and URL query strings and fragments are removed before collection. Choosing No analytics stops collection and clears what was stored. The licence activation page is excluded completely, in every mode. Use Analytics choices in the footer to change your mind at any time.
In the Cadre app, product analytics and diagnostic reports are on unless you decline, and Cadre tells you so the first time you open it: “Cadre shares anonymous usage and crash data so we can fix what breaks and improve what you use. Never your recordings, never their content.” Collection starts when that notice first appears, and not before — nothing is sent while Cadre has not yet shown it to you. The notice lists every event that can be sent under See what's sent, and Don't share, next to OK, turns both off in one click and stops collection immediately. You are shown the notice once and Cadre does not ask again; product analytics and diagnostic reports have separate controls in Preferences → Advanced, where you can turn either off at any time with the same immediate effect.
Events are tied to a random install identifier generated on this Mac, not to you: it is not derived from your hardware, licence, email or projects, and it is deleted when you turn both controls off. We collect only named product actions, coarse durations, app and macOS versions, and non-sensitive error details. We never include recordings, frames, audio, project names or paths, transcripts, captions, prompts, agent arguments or results, email addresses, or licence keys.
When Cadre does use the network
The Cadre app makes outbound connections in these situations:
- Licence activation and periodic revalidation. Your licence key and the email address on the purchase are sent to our licence service and to Lemon Squeezy, our payment provider, to confirm the subscription is active. Cadre keeps working offline between checks.
- Downloading a caption model. If you choose to generate captions, the speech model is downloaded once from Hugging Face. No audio is sent — only the model comes down.
- Checking for updates. Cadre asks GitHub whether a newer version exists.
- Analytics and diagnostics. Unless you turn them off, Cadre sends the limited events described above to PostHog's EU Cloud, starting only once the first-run notice has been shown to you and stopping the moment you turn them off.
What we hold about you
If you buy a subscription, Lemon Squeezy processes the payment as merchant of record and holds your billing details under its own privacy policy. We receive your email address and licence status so we can support you and keep your subscription working. We do not receive or store your card details.
macOS permissions
Cadre asks macOS for Screen Recording, and optionally for Microphone, Camera, Accessibility and Input Monitoring. These are used solely to capture the recording you asked for, track cursor activity for automatic zoom, and retain privacy-safe shortcut combinations for optional keyboard overlays. Plain keystrokes are dropped during capture and never reach the project folder.
Your rights
You can ask what data we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, and object to how it is used. Write to us and we will respond.
Contact
Questions about privacy: jack@cadre.cam.