Privacy Policy

Effective August 13, 2026

CuePoint ("CuePoint," "we," "us") lets you send short clips of songs through iMessage. This policy explains what happens to your data. For song previews and Apple Music playback, the short version is: almost nothing, because there's almost nothing to collect. Sound bites you record yourself are the one exception — see below.

No account

CuePoint does not require an account, sign-in, or any personal information to use. The app runs primarily on your device and talks directly to Apple's own services (the iTunes Search API for previews, and Apple Music / MusicKit for full-song playback if you have a subscription). Searching, browsing, and previewing songs never leaves a record on any server we control.

Sound bites you record

If you use the "sound bite" feature to record and send your own audio clip, that recording is uploaded to Firebase Cloud Storage (a service we run on Google Cloud infrastructure) so the person you send it to can download and play it, even if they don't have the file locally. This is the one case where CuePoint does have a server-side component:

• What's uploaded: the audio file itself, at a storage path keyed to a random clip ID (not your name, device, or Apple ID).
• How it's protected: the file is reachable only by a long, unguessable URL derived from that random ID — it isn't listed, indexed, or searchable, so only someone who receives the link (i.e., the recipient of your iMessage) can retrieve it.
• Anonymous authentication: uploading requires a Firebase anonymous sign-in. This doesn't create an account or identify you — it's a random, per-install credential that exists solely so our storage rules can reject automated abuse of the upload endpoint. It is not linked to your name, Apple ID, or any personal information.
• Retention: uploaded sound bites are automatically deleted after 30 days.
• Deleting a sound bite yourself: deleting it from your own device also attempts to remove the uploaded copy right away, rather than waiting for the 30-day auto-expiry above. This happens automatically in the background and doesn't require a separate step.
• Sub-processor: this storage is provided by Google Firebase, governed additionally by Google's Firebase privacy policy.

Song previews and Apple Music playback do not go through this pipeline — only sound bites you explicitly record and send.

Photos you attach

If you attach a photo to a cue, that photo is uploaded to the same Firebase Cloud Storage service described above. This is the only way a photo can get from your device to the recipient's: it's uploaded so their device can download it, and the iMessage payload itself carries only a reference, not the image.

• What's uploaded: the photo itself, at a storage path keyed to a random ID (not your name, device, or Apple ID).
• How it's protected: reachable only by a long, unguessable URL derived from that random ID, the same as sound bites above.
• Anonymous authentication: the same anonymous, per-install credential described above is used, not linked to your name, Apple ID, or any personal information.
• Retention: the uploaded copy is automatically deleted 30 days after it is uploaded, by the same storage lifecycle rule that clears sound bites. Once your recipients' devices have downloaded the photo they keep a local copy, so it stays viewable in the conversation even after the server copy is gone.
• Sub-processor: this storage is provided by Google Firebase, governed additionally by Google's Firebase privacy policy.

Anonymous usage statistics

CuePoint records a small set of anonymous feature-usage events — for example, "a cue was sent" or "a sound bite was created" — as an event name and a timestamp, nothing more. These are uploaded in batches under the same anonymous identifier used for sound bites, and are automatically deleted within 30 days. They contain no message content, no song choices, no contact or sender information, and nothing linked to your identity. We use them only to understand which features are used so we can improve the app. They are never used for advertising or tracking, and never shared with anyone.

What we don't collect

• No personal information (name, email, phone number, etc.)
• No behavioral tracking or third-party analytics SDKs — the anonymous feature counters above are the full extent of usage data
• No advertising identifiers or third-party ad SDKs
• No account credentials — CuePoint has none to store
• We never sell or share your information with third parties for advertising or any other purpose

CuePoint's App Store privacy label and the app's on-device Privacy Manifest disclose the exceptions above (sound-bite audio, photos you attach, an anonymous device identifier, and anonymous usage events — used only for app functionality and product improvement, never linked to your identity and never used for tracking).

What stays on your device

A small amount of information is stored locally on your device only, and is never transmitted anywhere:

• Preferences and a trending-songs cache, stored via iOS's standard app storage (shared between the CuePoint app and its iMessage extension so both can read the same cache).
• Song previews are streamed, never cached. Playing a preview clip pulls audio live from Apple's servers each time and never writes it to your device's storage — this matches the terms Apple's preview API requires, and means there's nothing stored locally to worry about even for the free preview tier.
• A local cache of sound bites you've received, so a bite you've already opened plays back instantly without re-downloading. This cache is also limited in size and automatically evicts the oldest files.

Sending clips through iMessage

When you send a song preview or Apple Music cue, CuePoint delivers only the information needed to reconstruct it (which song, and which timestamp) inside the iMessage message itself — through Apple's Messages infrastructure, subject to Apple's own security and privacy practices (including end-to-end encryption for iMessage-to-iMessage conversations). No audio for these cues passes through any server we control.

Sound bites and attached photos work differently, because they're your own content rather than a reference to a song Apple already hosts: the file is uploaded to our Firebase Storage (see "Sound bites you record" and "Photos you attach" above) and the iMessage payload carries a reference to it. In all cases, we do not keep a server-side log of who you sent a clip or photo to or when. Your device does keep its own local "recently sent" history so you can revisit and replay what you've sent — see "What stays on your device" below — but that history is never transmitted to us and we have no record of it.

Apple Music and the iTunes Search API

Song previews are streamed directly from Apple's content delivery network via the public iTunes Search API. Full-song clips use Apple's MusicKit framework and require you to be signed in with an active Apple Music subscription on your own device. Your interaction with Apple Music (authentication, subscription status, playback) is governed by Apple's Privacy Policy, not this one — CuePoint never receives your Apple ID credentials or Apple Music account details.

Apple Music affiliate link

The "Get Apple Music" link on this site and in the app is an affiliate link. If you subscribe through it, CuePoint may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This link does not share any personal data about you with CuePoint — the subscription transaction happens entirely on Apple's platform.

Children's privacy

CuePoint is intended for users age 13 and older, and asks you to confirm this the first time you open the app or the iMessage extension. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, including children under 13, and if a user tells us they're under 13, the app blocks further use until they return and confirm otherwise. The exceptions described above — sound-bite audio and photos you attach, both auto-deleted after 30 days — apply only to users who have passed this screening step, are stored only briefly to deliver them, and are not linked to any identity. If you believe a child under 13 has used CuePoint or provided us information despite this screening, contact us and we'll investigate and delete any associated data.

Canadian privacy law (PIPEDA)

CuePoint is based in Ontario, Canada, and handles personal information in accordance with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). Our privacy contact, reachable at the email below, is accountable for compliance with this policy and can answer questions about how your information is handled.

You have the right to access the personal information we hold about you and to challenge its accuracy. In practice, there is very little to access — as described throughout this policy, almost nothing we handle is linked to an identifiable person. If you have a privacy concern that we haven't resolved to your satisfaction, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

European users (GDPR)

If you're in the European Economic Area, the UK, or Switzerland, the following also applies. As described throughout this policy, CuePoint collects almost nothing tied to an identifiable person — no accounts, no names, no emails. The two exceptions are the anonymous per-install identifier (used only to prevent abuse of the sound-bite upload feature) and the anonymous usage-event counters described above; neither is linked to your name or any other identifying information we hold.

Legal basis for processing. We process sound-bite audio and the anonymous identifier that accompanies it because they're necessary to provide the sound-bite feature you've chosen to use. We process the anonymous usage-event counters on the basis of our legitimate interest in understanding which features are used, weighed against the minimal impact on you given that nothing is linked to your identity.

International transfer. Sound-bite audio and the anonymous identifiers described above are stored with Google Firebase / Google Cloud, which may process data outside the EEA/UK. This transfer is covered by Google's standard contractual clauses, part of its Cloud Data Processing Addendum for Firebase customers.

Your rights. You have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict, or receive a portable copy of any personal data we hold about you, and to object to our processing. In practice, given how little we hold, a request will most often confirm there's nothing further to provide beyond what's already described in this policy — but you're welcome to ask, at the email below. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection supervisory authority.

Users outside Canada, the EU, UK, and Switzerland

CuePoint is available in most countries, including places with their own data-protection laws — for example Brazil's LGPD, Japan's APPI, South Africa's POPIA, and Quebec's Law 25. Rather than write a separate section for each, we extend the same commitment everywhere: the rights described above under "European users (GDPR)" — to access, correct, delete, restrict, or receive a portable copy of any personal data we hold about you, and to object to our processing — apply to every CuePoint user, regardless of where you live, not only those in the EEA/UK/Switzerland. As throughout this policy, there is very little to act on in practice, since almost nothing we collect is linked to an identifiable person.

Our privacy contact, reachable at the email below, is responsible for handling requests under any of these frameworks, the same as under PIPEDA and GDPR above.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we'll update the effective date above and post the revised version here.

Contact us

Questions about this policy? Email cuepointapp@gmail.com.