Privacy Policy
Line Run is made by one person, Kelly Wong, working in Canada. There is no company behind it, no marketing department, and no server of ours anywhere. This page is written to be read, not to be survived.
If anything here is unclear, please write to me at hello@linerunapp.com and I will answer you myself.
The short version, about the counting
What we collect: which features get used, and how often.
What we never collect: your recordings, your scripts, your notes, or anything you type. Those stay on your phone.
We measure how the app gets used, not who is using it. There are no accounts here, so there is no name or email address to attach anything to.
That is the whole of the analytics story, and section 4 shows the working.
There is one thing it does not cover, and it is the most important thing on this page, so it goes next rather than at the bottom.
1. Importing a script sends it to Google
If you use the import feature, the script you choose is sent to Google. There is no way to import a script without that happening. It is how import works.
When. Only when you pick a file and start an import. Nothing is sent when you open the app, when you rehearse, when you record, or when you sit and read. Import is a paid feature, so only runs for someone who has subscribed or is in free trial, and it never runs on its own.
What is sent. It depends on the document you give it.
- A digital PDF with real text in it. The text of the script goes to Google.
- A scanned or photographed PDF, where there is no text to read. Pictures of the pages go to Google, and in some cases the PDF file itself, so that the words can be read off the image.
- Either way, a short list of the unusual words and names found in your script is sent as a separate small request, so the app can work out how they are said out loud.
- In the picture case, the file's name goes too, as a label on the upload. If your file is called something you would rather not share, rename it before you import it.
Who it goes to. Google, using their Gemini service. Google acts as a processor here: they do the reading and hand the result back.
Why. To find the characters, the scenes and the lines, and to turn a document into something you can rehearse with. The app cannot do this part on the phone.
What Google does with it afterwards. Line Run uses the paid tier of Google's Gemini service. Under Google's own terms for that tier, Google does not use what is sent to improve or train their products, and keeps a short-lived log only to catch abuse of the service. Google's terms are at ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms.
What we do with it afterwards. Nothing, because we never have it. Your script goes from your phone to Google and the finished result comes back to your phone. It does not pass through anything of ours, and we keep no copy. On the picture path the app also asks Google to hold the document briefly while the pages are read, which saves you money, and the app deletes that copy as soon as the import finishes. If something goes wrong before it can, Google discards it within an hour.
If you never import, none of this ever happens to you. You can build a script by hand, record it in your own voice, and rehearse with it, and nothing about that script ever leaves your phone.
2. Your recordings stay on your phone
This is the strongest true thing on this page, so here it is plainly.
Line Run has no way to upload your recordings. There is no code in the app that sends an audio file anywhere, and there is no server of ours for one to go to. Your takes live in the app's own folder on your phone. They are yours, they stay yours, and deleting the app deletes them.
The same is true of your scripts once they are on the phone, your scene notes, your line notes, your character names and every edit you make.
If you have iPhone backups switched on, your scripts and recordings ride along in your own iPhone backup, in your own Apple account. That is Apple's backup of your phone, not ours, and we cannot see inside it.
3. Speech recognition, and where the listening happens
This one needs care, because the honest answer is "usually on your phone, but not always", and it would be easy to write a nicer sentence that was not true.
Line Run listens in two places: while you rehearse, so it knows when you have finished your line, and while you record a take in Prepare, so it can write down what you said.
While you rehearse. The app asks iOS to recognize your speech on the phone itself, with nothing sent anywhere, and on a modern iPhone that is what happens.
Except on Bluetooth. If you are wearing AirPods or any other Bluetooth headphones, the microphone audio is compressed and narrow, and the on-device model handles it badly. So on Bluetooth the app deliberately asks iOS to use Apple's speech servers instead, because the result is noticeably better. On that path, your speech goes to Apple. Rehearsing in AirPods is a very common way to use this app, so please assume this applies to you unless you rehearse on the speaker.
On an older iPhone, where the phone cannot do the recognition itself, the same thing happens for the same reason.
While you record a take in Prepare, the app uses Apple's speech servers every time, on every device, to turn your recording into text.
In all of these cases it is iOS doing the sending, under Apple's own privacy terms, not us. We never receive that audio and we never see the servers it goes to. iOS says so itself the first time you allow speech recognition: "Speech data from this app will be sent to Apple to process your requests."
We are not sending your voice anywhere ourselves, and your saved recordings are never part of this. But "your voice never leaves your phone" would be false, so you will not find that sentence here.
4. Counting how the app is used
Line Run sends counts of what happens in the app to Google Analytics for Firebase, so that one person deciding what to build next can see which parts of the app people actually use.
Everything that goes out is a count or a fixed word from a short list. A rehearsal reports that a rehearsal happened, which of the four modes it was in, and roughly how long it ran. An import reports that an import happened, whether it worked, and roughly how many pages long the document was. Your library reports a range like "between four and six scripts", never the number itself, because an exact number gets close to being a fingerprint.
It never carries any of your content. Not a script title, a character name, a line of dialogue, a scene name, a file name, a search you typed, a note you wrote, or any audio at all. That is enforced by how the code is built rather than by a promise: an event in Line Run cannot carry free text.
There are two things we count that sound worse than they are, so here they are outright.
We count how you are working on a part. How many times you have rehearsed a particular script, roughly how long you have been at it, and roughly how many hours you have put in altogether. All of that counting happens on your phone, and the script is never named. What leaves is a range: "between six and fifteen times", "somewhere between one and three months". It answers one question, and it is a question about the app rather than about you: do people work a part for weeks, the way actors actually do, or try it once and stop.
We count how you are listening. Whether the sound went through the speaker, wired headphones or Bluetooth, whether your screen was ever off while you rehearsed, and whether the microphone dropped out and had to be restarted. A lot of work went into making rehearsal survive AirPods and a dark screen, and there was no way to know whether any of it mattered to anybody. None of it says what you were rehearsing.
One identifier, and why we call it pseudonymous rather than anonymous
Line Run gives free access codes to schools and drama departments. When somebody redeems one, the app sends six characters worked out from the code, so we can tell which giveaways were worth doing. The school's name never leaves your phone.
That identifier is deliberately stable, which is what makes it useful, and anything stable is a stand-in for the thing it stands for. It identifies a batch of codes given to an organisation, never a person, it carries nothing about you or what you rehearse, and it is attached to that one event and nothing else. But we would rather call it pseudonymous and explain it than call it anonymous because that word is easier to say.
What Google's own software collects, that we never asked for
This part is less comfortable. It is true, so it is written down.
- A random identifier for your installation of the app, so repeat visits from the same phone are counted as one person rather than several. It is not your name, your email or your Apple ID, and it is replaced if you delete and reinstall.
- Your IP address, seen when your phone connects. Google turns it into a rough location, usually country and region or city, and does not keep the address itself.
- Your device model, your iOS version, your language, and your App Store country.
- When your sessions start and end, and how long they run.
- Whether a subscription was bought, converted from a trial, or renewed. That comes from the App Store through Google's own hook. We do not send it and we cannot switch it off on its own.
Line Run does not track you across other apps or websites. It never touches Apple's advertising identifier. The code that would read it is not even built into the app, which is why you will never see the "Allow this app to track you?" box: there is nothing for it to allow. There is no advertising in Line Run, no ad network, and no data broker.
So: we are not trying to work out who you are, and we have not built anything that could. But a random per-install identifier and a city derived from an IP address are not nothing, and you should know they exist.
5. Crash reports
When Line Run crashes, it sends a report to Firebase Crashlytics, which is also Google, the next time you open the app. This has been in every version of the app since it existed.
A report carries the technical wreckage: which line of our code it died on, what every part of the app was doing at that moment, your device model and iOS version, how much free space and battery you had, whether the screen was on, and a random identifier for your installation so that one crash hitting one person a hundred times is not mistaken for a hundred people.
It does not carry your scripts, your recordings, your notes, or anything you typed. The app never attaches text of its own to a crash report.
Apple sends us crash reports too, if you let it
Separately from all of the above, Apple has its own crash reporting, and it is entirely Apple's, not ours. If you have left Share With App Developers switched on in the iPhone Settings app, under Privacy & Security, then Analytics & Improvements, Apple passes developers a version of the crashes and the freezes their app caused on your phone.
We do not ask for that, we cannot switch it on, and we never see who it came from. It arrives already stripped of anything identifying, in a tool Apple gives every developer. You control it entirely, in that same iPhone Settings screen, and turning it off there turns it off for every app you have, not just this one.
Crash reports are how a bug that loses somebody their work gets found and fixed. They are not covered by the usage-data switch described below, and there is no separate switch for them today.
6. The premium voices
If you subscribe and use the generated voices, the app downloads a voice model from Hugging Face, which is where the open voice model is published. That is a download, not an upload: nothing of yours goes with it, beyond the fact that your phone asked for the file, which reveals your IP address to them the way visiting any web page does.
The voices themselves are generated on your phone. No line of your script is sent anywhere to be spoken.
7. Paying for Line Run
Subscriptions are sold and handled entirely by Apple, through the App Store.
Line Run never sees your card number, your billing address, or your Apple ID. The app asks Apple two questions: is there an active subscription on this device, and when does it run out. Apple answers yes or no and gives a date. That is all the app knows about your money.
To cancel, change or refund, you go to Apple, and the app hands you straight to Apple's own screen for it.
8. There are no accounts
There is no sign-up, no sign-in, no username, no password, and no email address. You cannot log in to Line Run because there is nothing to log in to.
This is the reason several of the usual paragraphs are missing from this page. We cannot show you your data on request, because there is no account holding any. We cannot delete your account, because you do not have one.
9. What the app asks permission for
The microphone, so you can record your lines in your own voice, and so the app can hear you while you rehearse and know when your line has finished.
Speech recognition, so the app can turn your recordings into text and follow along with you while you rehearse. Section 3 explains where that recognition happens.
Line Run asks for nothing else. It does not ask for your location, your contacts, your photos, your calendar or your health data, and it holds none of them.
You can withdraw either permission at any time in the iPhone Settings app, under Line Run. The app will keep working, with the parts that need a microphone switched off.
10. How to stop it, and how to remove what there is
To stop the usage counting: open Settings inside the app, find Your data, and turn off Share Anonymous Usage Data. That switch genuinely stops the collection rather than just the sending, and it stays off. It does not stop crash reports.
To stop the Google import upload: do not import a script. Build one by hand instead. There is no other switch, because import cannot work without it.
To remove everything: delete the app. Your scripts, your recordings, your notes and every setting go with it, because they were only ever on your phone. Deleting a single script from inside the app removes that script and its recordings in the same way.
What cannot be pulled back: counts and crash reports already sent to Google are not attached to you, so there is no "you" for us to look up and delete. Google deletes them on its own schedule. Deleting and reinstalling the app gives your installation a new random identifier, which breaks the thread between what was counted before and what is counted after.
11. Children and schools
Line Run is a general-audience app. It is built for actors of any age and it is not aimed at children.
It is also given free to schools and drama departments through access codes, so we know for a fact that some of the people using it are minors, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
Here is what that means in practice.
- There is nothing here that identifies a child. No accounts, no names, no email addresses, no age, no birthday, no photographs, and no contact details. The app never asks a user who they are.
- A child's recordings never leave the phone. Section 2 is true for every user at every age.
- Usage counting still applies to a school's device unless it is switched off. It carries the same counts described in section 4 and no content, but it does carry Google's own random installation identifier and a rough location from the IP address.
If you are a teacher or a school running Line Run with pupils, please turn off Share Anonymous Usage Data in the app's Settings before you hand out the devices. It takes one tap per device, and it means nothing at all is counted from your pupils.
If you are a parent or a school and you want something looked at, write to hello@linerunapp.com and I will answer.
12. Where in the world this happens
The developer is in Canada, so Canadian privacy law, PIPEDA, applies to what Line Run does.
Two things leave the country.
- Scripts you import go to Google's Gemini service, which processes them on Google's infrastructure outside Canada.
- Usage counts and crash reports go to Google's Firebase, likewise.
Speech recognition, on the paths described in section 3, goes to Apple, on Apple's own infrastructure.
If you are in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, you have rights over your personal data under the UK GDPR and the GDPR: to see it, correct it, have it deleted, and object to it being processed. Section 8 explains why most of those are strange to apply here, since there is no account and nothing of yours is stored anywhere we can reach. If you want to exercise any of them, or you simply want to ask what is held, write to hello@linerunapp.com.
13. If this page changes
The date at the top says when it was last changed. If something material changes, what we send or who we send it to, the app itself will tell you rather than leaving it to this page to be noticed. Small clarifications and better wording will just appear here with a new date.
14. Getting in touch
One person reads that, and it is me, the same person who wrote the app.