Privacy policy

Retold is made by Zossoz, Inc. ("Zossoz," "we," "us"). Retold exists to hold your family's most personal recordings, so it is built on a simple rule: your stories are yours, and we never see them.

The short version

• Retold has no account and no sign-up.
• We operate no servers and collect no personal data.
• Recordings and transcripts live on your device, with optional backup to your own iCloud.
• Transcription and AI features run entirely on your device.
• Optional reminders, the widget, and Siri Shortcuts all work without any data leaving your device.
• Retold has one optional one-time purchase, handled entirely by Apple.
• No ads, no analytics, no tracking, no data sales. Ever.

What Retold stores, and where

Your recordings, transcripts, storyteller profiles, book layouts, and settings are stored locally on your device. If you enable iCloud backup, the same files are mirrored to your personal iCloud storage under your own Apple ID, governed by Apple's security and privacy terms. Nothing is ever sent to Zossoz — we have no servers to send it to.

Microphone

Retold asks for microphone access for one purpose: recording the stories you choose to record. Audio is captured only while you are actively recording and is saved only to your archive.

Transcription and on-device intelligence

Speech-to-text runs on your device, using Apple's on-device speech recognition (explicitly set to require on-device processing, never Apple's server-based option) or, optionally, open-source models you can download in the app. Optional features like suggested titles, follow-up questions, and the people-and-places index also run entirely on device, using Apple's own on-device models or, if you choose to download one, an open model that also runs fully offline. The words in your recordings are never transmitted to Zossoz or to any third party by Retold.

If you choose to download an optional transcription or intelligence model, your device fetches the model file from its public host (for example, Hugging Face). That download sends no personal data — it is the same as downloading a file in a browser — and everything the model does afterward happens offline on your device.

Search, Siri, and Shortcuts

Retold indexes your stories in Spotlight so you can search for them from your device's search screen, and offers a few actions to Siri and the Shortcuts app (like recording a story for someone, or playing back something they've said). Both features run entirely on your device, reading only the archive already stored there — nothing about your stories or your search activity is sent to Zossoz or to Apple's servers by these features.

Reminders and notifications

If you turn on the weekly reminder, or leave birthday and remembrance-day prompts on, Retold schedules ordinary local notifications on your device. These are calculated and delivered entirely on-device from dates already in your archive — no reminder data is sent anywhere.

Widget and Live Activity

The Home Screen widget and the Live Activity shown while you're recording read a small snapshot of this week's question (and, while recording, your elapsed time) from a private, on-device App Group shared only between Retold and its widget. Nothing here touches a network.

Sharing and export

Stories, books, and archives leave the app only when you explicitly share or export them — by AirDrop, Messages, printing, or the encrypted safe copy. You choose every recipient; Retold never shares anything on its own.

Purchases

Retold is free, with one optional one-time purchase ("Retold Keepsake") that unlocks the printed Book, the encrypted safe copy, printed question cards, story threads, and the downloadable transcription and intelligence models. That purchase is handled entirely by Apple through the App Store — Zossoz never sees your payment details. You can restore a past purchase from Settings at any time, and the purchase can be shared with your family through Family Sharing.

The safe copy

The succession feature creates an encrypted archive (AES-256) locked by a passphrase you choose. Only someone with that passphrase can open it. Zossoz cannot decrypt it and cannot recover it if the passphrase is lost — keep it somewhere safe.

What we don't do

• No analytics or tracking SDKs of any kind.
• No advertising, and no data sales — we have nothing to sell.
• No collection of names, emails, contacts, locations, or identifiers.

Children

Retold is not directed at children under 13 and, consistent with the rest of this policy, collects no personal information from anyone.

Deleting your data

Delete individual stories or storytellers in the app at any time. Deleting the app removes all locally stored data. If iCloud backup is enabled, you can remove Retold's data in iOS Settings → your name → iCloud.

Changes to this policy

If Retold's behavior ever changes in a way that affects your privacy, we will update this policy and note the new effective date above before the change ships.

Contact us

Zossoz, Inc.
Email: privacy@zossoz.com
Phone: (305) 788-2174