LEDE PRIVACY POLICY
Effective date: 22 August 2026
Lede turns a YouTube link into a readable transcript and, when you ask for one, an AI-written summary. This policy explains what data the app handles, where it goes, and how long it is kept. It is written to be read, not skimmed past.
THE SHORT VERSION
No account, no sign-in, no email address, no name. We do not know who you are.
No analytics, no advertising, no tracking of any kind, and nothing is sold.
Transcripts are fetched by your phone directly from YouTube and stay on your phone.
Transcript text is sent to our server only when you request a summary or translation, and only then is it passed to an AI provider to generate the result.
Payments are handled entirely by Apple. We never see your payment details.
DATA THAT STAYS ON YOUR DEVICE
Your transcript library, saved summaries, settings and cached credit balance are stored only on your phone. Deleting the app deletes them.
DATA THAT REACHES OUR SERVER, AND WHY
Our server runs on Cloudflare Workers. It receives data only in these cases:
When the app first runs, it registers for an anonymous account token: a random identifier generated by the server. The token is not derived from you or your device and cannot be traced back to either. It exists so your credit balance has something to attach to. It is stored in your device's keychain and, when you have iCloud Keychain enabled, synced by Apple between your own devices so your credits follow you. We never see your Apple ID; the syncing happens entirely inside Apple's keychain. Because the keychain outlives the app, the token survives deleting the app; removing it entirely means deleting the app's keychain entry, or contacting us to retire the account server-side.
When you request a summary or translation, the app sends the transcript text (or, for translation, the existing summary), the video's ID, and your device's language code. The transcript text is forwarded to our AI provider, DeepSeek, to generate the result, under DeepSeek's API terms. DeepSeek's servers may be located outside your country. We send DeepSeek nothing about you: no identifier, no token, only the text to be summarised.
The finished summary is cached on our server, keyed to your anonymous token, for up to 90 days, so that asking again for the same video is free and instant. The cache is private to your token: no other user is ever served your result.
When you buy credits, Apple processes the payment. The app sends us the App Store receipt so we can verify the purchase with Apple before crediting you. We keep the transaction identifier for up to 3 years, solely to prevent the same purchase being credited twice. We never receive your payment details, Apple ID, or billing information.
Your IP address is seen by our server, as it is by any server on the internet. We use it for one thing: counting registrations per network per day to slow down abuse of the free credits. Those counters expire after 48 hours. We do not log or store IP addresses beyond that.
WHAT WE DO NOT COLLECT
Name, email address, phone number, contacts, location, photos, browsing history outside the app, advertising identifiers, analytics events, crash reports tied to you. The app contains no analytics or advertising SDKs.
DATA DELETION
Uninstalling the app deletes everything stored on your phone, including the anonymous token. Server-side data (cached summaries, credit balance) is keyed only to that token; once the token is gone from your phone, nothing links that data to you, and it expires on its own schedule described above. If you want server-side data removed sooner, contact us with your request and, if you still have the app installed, we can identify the data via your token.
CHILDREN
Lede is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect data from them.
CHANGES
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted at this address with a new effective date. We will not weaken it retroactively.
CONTACT
Questions or deletion requests: jasonlzpbiz@gmail.com
LEDE SUPPORT
Lede turns a YouTube link into a transcript you can read and search, plus an optional AI summary.
Contact: jasonlzpbiz@gmail.com. Include the video link if your question is about a specific video.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
The transcript came back empty or said the video has no captions.
Lede reads the caption tracks a video already carries. Some videos genuinely have none (music videos, some sports edits, many nursery rhymes), and for those there is nothing to extract. This is a fact about the video, not a bug.
The transcript is in the wrong language.
The caption language setting chooses between subtitle tracks the video already has. It cannot translate: if a video only carries English captions, the transcript will be English regardless of the setting. Most videos carry exactly one track. To read a summary in your language instead, use Summarise (summaries are written in your device's language) or Translate on an existing summary.
What do credits pay for?
Transcripts are unlimited and free. A credit is spent only when the AI writes something: 1 credit for a summary of a typical video (long videos can cost more, and the price is shown before you confirm), 1 credit to translate a summary. Repeating the same request is free. New installs start with 3 free credits.
I paid but my credits did not appear.
Force-quit the app and reopen it. Lede checks for unfinished purchases at every launch and credits them automatically. If the balance is still wrong after a relaunch on a working connection, contact us with the approximate purchase time and we will put it right.
Do credits transfer if I delete and reinstall the app, or to my other devices?
Yes, when iCloud Keychain is on (it is by default). Your credit balance is tied to a private token that syncs through your iCloud Keychain, so it survives reinstalling and is shared by your iPhone and iPad signed into the same Apple ID. Your transcript library itself stays on each device; pasting a link again rebuilds any transcript in seconds, free, and a summary you already generated comes back without spending another credit.
Summarising fails but transcripts work.
Transcripts are produced on your phone; summaries need our server. This usually means a temporary server or AI-provider issue. Wait a few minutes and try again. A failed summary is never charged.