Privacy
Privacy policy.
Shorthand records and transcribes on your computer. We don't run a server that receives your audio, transcripts or notes, and we don't sell data. This page lists everything that does leave your computer or your browser, and where it goes.
Shorthand is made by Horizon Vector Partners LLC. Last updated October 6, 2026.
This website
The site has no analytics, no cookies and no tracking scripts. It's hosted on Cloudflare Pages, so Cloudflare handles each request, including your IP address, to serve the page. On the home page, your browser asks GitHub for the latest release so the download button points at the current version; GitHub sees that request.
Buying a license
Payments go through Stripe. Stripe collects your card details; we never see them. We receive your email address, your name and billing details as you enter them at checkout, and the amount you paid. We use your email address to send your license key and to answer questions about your purchase, and we keep purchase records for accounting and tax. Stripe's handling of your data is covered by the Stripe Privacy Policy.
The app
Audio and transcription. Audio is recorded and transcribed on your computer and isn't sent anywhere.
AI notes. To write notes, Shorthand sends the transcript, the current AI-written note, your own notes and the meeting mode to the AI assistant you set up: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor CLI, the OpenAI or Anthropic API, or Ollama on your own computer. When your notes go to Obsidian, the assistant can also read files in that vault. This goes from your computer to that provider under your own account and their terms, not to us. Optional transcript post-processing, off by default, sends the transcript to the provider you choose for it.
Google Docs. If you send notes to Google Docs, Shorthand only gets access to the documents it creates or you open with it, and writes the AI-written sections there. The sign-in token is stored on your computer.
Crash reports and usage counts. On first run, Shorthand asks whether to send crash reports and usage counts to Sentry, our error-reporting service. The switch starts on, and you can turn it off then or any time in Settings. Nothing is sent unless it's on. When it's on, Shorthand sends crash details and stack traces, which known error happened (for example, the microphone failed to open), your operating system and device type, which capture mode and speech model you used, whether a capture succeeded and how long it ran, and a random install ID. It never sends audio, transcripts, notes or file paths. Turning it off stops reporting and deletes the install ID. Sentry receives your IP address as part of the connection.
Updates and speech models. Shorthand checks GitHub for new versions; you can turn this off in Settings. Speech models download from Hugging Face or from the Handy project's servers, the open source app Shorthand is built on.
Obsidian plugin. The plugin sends no crash reports or usage data.
Changes and contact
If what Shorthand collects changes, we'll update this page and the date at the top. Questions or requests about your data: [email protected].