Privacy Policy

Opening the app creates an anonymous account automatically, identified only by a random ID — no email, name, or password. It is fully functional: subscriptions, playback, downloads, and sync all work. Adding a username or email later only makes the account recoverable if you sign out or switch devices; it does not change anything about how the app works.

• Account info, if you add it: an email or username, an optional display name, and — for a password account — a hash of your password (never the password itself). We use argon2id, the same algorithm recommended for this by security researchers; a database breach would not expose usable passwords.
• Your library: subscriptions, folders, tags, per-show settings, playback position and progress, and your up-next queue. This is what makes a show you follow on your phone show up on the web, and vice versa.
• Device info: a device name and platform for each device you use Podcasty on, so sync and downloads know where to send things. If you enable notifications, a push token is stored so we can reach that device — this feature is not active yet, so nothing is sent to it today.
• Sessions: signing in issues a login token. We store a one-way hash of it, not the token itself, and it can be revoked at any time (locking or deleting an account revokes every session immediately).
• Short-lived operational counters: aggregate numbers like requests per minute and how many accounts were active recently, used only to keep the service running and to catch abuse. These are not tied to your browsing or listening history, and they expire automatically after about a month.

• No ads, no analytics, no trackers. The apps ship with no advertising SDK, no analytics SDK, and no crash-reporting service. Nothing about how you use the app is sent to a third party for marketing or profiling.
• Audio never passes through our server. When you stream or download an episode, your device connects directly to the podcast publisher’s own hosting — we only store the playback position you report, never a record of the audio request itself.
• We do not sell or rent any personal data, to anyone, ever.

Search, charts, and recommendations are powered by the Podcast Index and Apple’s iTunes Search API. Your search text is sent from our server to theirs to get results — it is not tied to your account or identity when we do this. Show and episode data itself comes from parsing the publisher’s own RSS feed directly, not from either directory.

Account deletion is available any time from Settings → Account, and it is immediate and permanent: your email or username, password, sessions, and library data are all removed. An anonymous account you never upgraded is kept until you delete it yourself or sign in with a real one — there is currently no automatic cleanup of untouched anonymous accounts, so it will not disappear on its own after a period of inactivity.

There is no self-service data export yet. If you would like a copy of what is stored against your account, email the address below and it will be sent by hand.

Podcasty is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone in that age group.

If what is collected or how it is used changes, this page will be updated and the date at the top will move. There is no mailing list this gets announced to — check back if you are curious.

Questions, deletion requests, or anything else: [email protected].