Privacy Policy
Last updated: March 16, 2026
Private Press is built on a simple principle: your music data is yours. The app runs entirely on your Mac with no advertising, no user tracking, and no analytics.
What We Collect
Private Press has no user accounts, no telemetry, and no usage analytics. The only data transmitted from the app is artwork search queries (album and artist names) and the minimum required for license enforcement. We never receive your music files, listening history, or collection data.
What Stays on Your Device
All processing happens locally on your Mac:
- Your music collection metadata (album names, artist names, file paths, audio quality) — from Apple Music and local folders/NAS volumes
- Accepted artwork matches and press history
- Provenance records (append-only audit trail of every press)
- App preferences, settings, and Smart Rules
- Discogs API credentials (provided automatically via CloudKit)
- Folder access bookmarks for local music directories (security-scoped)
- Local reliability diagnostics (never transmitted)
Network Connections
Artwork search. When you search for artwork, album and artist names are sent to the search providers you select:
- iTunes Search API (Apple)
- MusicBrainz / Cover Art Archive (open source)
- Discogs API
These queries contain only album and artist names — no device identifiers, location data, or personal information. Each provider's own privacy policy applies to those queries. You control which providers are enabled.
Data accuracy. Artwork search results — including images, album titles, and edition metadata — are provided by third-party services. Keynell does not control or verify the accuracy of this data. Confidence scores reflect text similarity between your album metadata and the provider’s catalog entry; they are not a guarantee of correctness. We recommend reviewing matches before pressing, particularly during large batch operations.
Local file access. When you add a local folder as a source, Private Press accesses files through macOS security-scoped bookmarks. File reads and writes happen entirely on your Mac — no data from local folders is sent anywhere.
iCloud Sync
If you enable iCloud Sync in Settings, your artwork matches, press history, provenance records, preferences, and Smart Rules are stored in your private iCloud database, encrypted end-to-end by Apple. This data syncs only between your own devices. We cannot access it. Disabling the toggle stops all syncing immediately.
License Activation
When you activate a license key, the app contacts our licensing server (api.keynell.com) with:
- Your license key
- An opaque device identifier — a one-way hash derived from hardware characteristics, not raw serial numbers or MAC addresses
- Press counts, for quota enforcement on Test Pressing and Press Run tiers
This data exists solely to enforce license terms: device activation limits and press quotas. We cannot reverse the device identifier to recover hardware details. No other app data is transmitted to Keynell.
Purchases
Purchases are processed through our payment provider. License keys are delivered via email and activated in the app. No payment information is stored in the app or transmitted to Keynell — all payment processing is handled by the merchant of record.
File Access
Private Press reads your audio files to check embedded artwork and writes artwork metadata back into them. It never sends audio content anywhere. Before modifying files, the app creates local backups. All writes use atomic operations with rollback on failure.
No Tracking, Ads, or Analytics in the App
The Private Press app contains:
- No advertising SDKs
- No crash reporting services
- No usage analytics or telemetry
- No device fingerprinting beyond the opaque license activation identifier described above
- No third-party code of any kind — zero external dependencies
Private Press has zero external dependencies. Every format parser, metadata editor, FLAC codec, audio fingerprinting engine, and auto-update system is written in-house on Apple frameworks. No third-party code runs inside the app. This eliminates supply chain risk entirely — the only code that touches your files is ours and Apple's.
This Website
The Private Press marketing website (privatepress.app) uses Vercel Web Analytics, a cookieless, privacy-compliant analytics service. It records anonymous page-view data: pages visited, referrer URL, browser, operating system, and country. No cookies are set, no IP addresses are stored, and no personal information is collected. This analytics applies only to the website, not the app.
Children's Privacy
Private Press does not collect any personal information from anyone, including children under 13.
Changes to This Policy
If this policy changes, we'll update the date above. The core commitment won't change: your data stays yours.
Contact
Questions about this policy? Reach us at support@keynell.com.