Tonalyn privacy policy

Effective September 30, 2026. This policy covers the Tonalyn app and these Tonalyn information pages.

Microphone and song recognition

With your permission, Tonalyn listens during an active foreground session to estimate the music’s key and identify the song. Microphone audio is processed on your device in temporary memory and is never saved as a recording or uploaded to Sesher Inc.

For song identification, ShazamKit creates an acoustic signature and sends it to Apple’s Shazam service. Apple describes these signatures as non-invertible: they cannot be converted back into the original audio. This recognition service requires an internet connection. See Apple’s ShazamKit information and Apple’s privacy policy for Apple’s practices.

Listening stops when you stop the session or the app enters the background. You can revoke microphone access in your device’s privacy settings. Free Play and the original practice demo do not require microphone access.

MIDI input and practice information

Connected MIDI devices provide note and controller messages so Tonalyn can respond to your playing. Tonalyn saves identified song titles and artists, catalog links, the time of identification, guess counts, active practice time and completed key discoveries in a song history on your device. Raw microphone audio, Shazam acoustic signatures, MIDI messages and individual played notes are not included in this history or uploaded to our cloud service.

What stays on your device

Tonalyn saves your keyboard sound, keyboard volume, “Show note names” and “Keep discovered notes highlighted” preferences on your device. It also remembers whether you have dismissed the first-use Help screen. These preferences are not sent to us. Your current practice session remains available when the app is temporarily in the background; microphone use pauses while it is there.

Optional accounts and cloud sync

Cloud sync is optional. Until you choose Account and sign in, your song history is stored only on your device. Tonalyn contacts our service without an account only for the Song Library described below: when you open All Songs, and, if you turn on “Share my charts”, to share your charts. Shazam identification is a separate Apple service described above.

If you create an account or sign in with Google, our authentication provider, Neon, stores your account identity, email and secure sign-in information. Google supplies your account identity and verified email when you choose Google sign-in. Tonalyn has no display-name field. Authentication providers may keep profile information required by their own systems.

When you enable cloud sync, the song history described above is saved to your account in our Neon database and sent securely through our Vercel-hosted service. We also keep security records of account email and password changes, without passwords. Account emails are delivered through our authentication provider and Resend. We use this information to sign you in, restore your history and secure your account. We do not sell it, use advertising identifiers or include advertising or analytics tracking.

To prevent repeated sign-in attempts, we keep short-lived keyed fingerprints of account email and connection address, not raw values in the rate limiter. Expired limits are removed on subsequent requests. We also retain nonreversible hashes of used verification links to prevent reuse; these do not contain your password or song information.

Reset All Songs removes your saved songs from active history. When you are using cloud sync, it applies only to your account. Cloud records are marked inactive rather than physically erased: we retain their song information, reset time and opaque account/request identifiers so old devices cannot restore reset entries and interrupted requests can be retried safely. These records are excluded from normal history and sync results. There is no automatic purge period or in-app restoration promise for reset records. Delete Account is the separate action that removes retained cloud song information and disables the account.

Signing out stops cloud sync and keeps your local song history. Use Delete Account in the app’s Account page to remove your cloud song history and scores and permanently disable sign-in. Deletion requires confirmation and a recent sign-in. Your local history stays on the device; deleting the app removes that local information but does not itself delete your cloud account.

When deletion starts, we block cloud access, remove saved song history, shared chord charts, chart reports, Song Library settings, roles, pending account changes and native sessions, and replace the email in our application database with an opaque deleted-account value. If the authentication provider cannot finish immediately, the account stays locked while the same deletion request is retried. We retain an opaque account tombstone and minimal deletion and security records. Neon keeps the disabled sign-in identity, including its email and provider-linked identity, to prevent the deleted account from being recreated through an old Google or email sign-in. These retained records are not used for marketing or active practice accounts; there is no automatic 30-day purge commitment. A hashed deletion receipt allows retry for 24 hours; expired receipts are removed during subsequent deletion or maintenance requests. Contact support for questions about retained security records.

Song Library (shared chord charts)

Tonalyn can share the chord charts it detects so that every learner gets the best version of a song. A shared chart contains the detected chord names and their start and end times, the song’s title and artist, and the catalog identifiers Shazam reported for the recording (Apple Music ID and link, Shazam ID, ISRC and song length). It never contains microphone audio, Shazam acoustic signatures, MIDI messages, individual played notes, your name or your email address.

When you are signed in, sharing is on by default and your charts are stored with your account in our Neon database, sent through our Vercel-hosted service. Without an account, sharing is off until you turn on “Share my charts”. Tonalyn then creates a random identifier for this device; our service stores only a one-way hash of it with your charts. If you later sign in, charts shared from that device are moved to your account.

Other learners never see who shared a chart. We combine charts from at least two contributors into the “best version” shown in All Songs. When the app asks for the All Songs list or for best versions of songs in your history, it sends the song’s catalog identifiers, a random entry ID and your account token or device identifier, and nothing else about your history. If you sync your history, the catalog identifiers above are saved with each song in your cloud history.

You can report a chart. A report stores the chart, the reason you chose, any note you type, and your account or device identifier so that the same person cannot report the same chart repeatedly. We review reports before a chart is removed.

Turn off “Share my charts” on the Account screen (or in All Songs) to stop sharing. Choose to remove shared charts to delete the charts you already shared. Reset All Songs also withdraws the charts from the songs it resets. Delete Account deletes every chart, report and sharing setting linked to your account. A best version that is your chart is removed immediately, and All Songs is rebuilt without your charts at the next daily update.

Support email and this website

If you email support, we receive your email address and the information you choose to include, and use it to respond to your request. Please do not send microphone recordings or sensitive personal information. You can ask us to delete support correspondence by emailing us.

These information pages are hosted by Vercel. Visiting them may involve technical request information, such as an IP address and browser details, needed to deliver and secure the website. See Vercel’s privacy notice. This is separate from the Tonalyn app’s on-device practice processing.

Contact and updates

For privacy questions or support, email gadgetkortina@gmail.com. We will update this page and its effective date when these practices change.