Legal

Privacy Policy

This is a courtesy translation. The German version is legally binding.

1. Controller

Viktor Stark — Starks.Design, Kempten (Allgäu), Germany. Full contact details in the legal notice.

2. This website

This website sets no cookies and uses no analytics or tracking tool. No consent is needed, which is why there is no cookie banner either.

When you open the website, the hosting provider processes technically necessary connection data (IP address, time, requested file) in server logs in order to deliver and secure the service (Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR). Hosting provider: Cloudflare, Inc., 101 Townsend St, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA (EU standard contractual clauses). Fonts and scripts are served from this domain, not by third parties.

If you write to us by email, we process your details in order to answer your request (Art. 6 (1) (b) or (f) GDPR).

3. The TalkPatch app

TalkPatch processes camera, microphone, speech and text solely locally on your Mac. There is no cloud processing, no account, no advertising or analytics SDKs and no telemetry. Neither audio nor video nor scripts leave the machine.

  • Camera and microphone are only used once you grant them in macOS, and only when you switch them on in the app. Recordings are only created when you start them and are saved to the location you choose.
  • Speech recognition runs on local models. The first time you switch a model on, the app downloads the model files from the distribution server of the respective provider (Hugging Face); technically necessary connection data arises in the process. After that, recognition works without an internet connection. If you choose the Apple model, Apple’s privacy policy for on-device speech recognition applies in addition.
  • Scripts and settings live in ~/Library/Application Support/TalkPatch/. The inbox folder (Inbox/) only reads files that you, or a program you use, put there.
  • Control API and Stream Deck plugin communicate only inside your Mac (loopback address 127.0.0.1) and are protected by a token that is generated anew at every launch. The interface cannot be reached from outside.

Free trial: On first launch, TalkPatch automatically requests the 7-day trial from our license server (api.starks.design). A pseudonymous device-related identifier, the app version and the macOS version are transmitted and stored there; no email address is collected for this. The identifier is derived on your Mac from a system device identifier using a one-way hash (the device identifier itself does not leave the Mac) and serves to tie the trial to this Mac and to grant only one trial per Mac. If no connection can be made, the app tries again at the next launch.

For a purchase and for license activation, the data required for this (email address, license key, the pseudonymous device-related identifier, version number) is transmitted to our license server and stored there. The legal basis for the trial, purchase and activation is Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR. The app then checks in briefly with the license server at longer intervals to verify validity, once a day during the trial; if the connection fails, the license stays valid. Every connection to the license server involves technically necessary connection data (including the IP address). Details are governed by the privacy policy of the shop on starks.design.

4. Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, data portability and objection. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority, in Bavaria: Bayerisches Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht (BayLDA), Ansbach.

As of October 2026