Privacy notice — Throughline for macOS

Applies to: Throughline 3.0.0 (the macOS application)
Last updated: 2026-09-22
Publisher: Lucrative Pictures LLC, an Arizona limited liability company · postal address: PO Box 123, Flagstaff, AZ 86002, USA
Contact: [email protected] · PO Box 123, Flagstaff, AZ 86002, USA

This notice covers the application. Buying a licence happens on the website, which is a separate system with its own notice.

The short version

Throughline runs on your Mac. Your footage, your audio and your projects stay on your Mac. There is no account, no login, no cloud project, and no analytics of any kind. We do not receive your media, your transcripts, your file names or your usage.

Three things can leave your machine, and you control all three. They are listed in full below.

1 · What we collect

Nothing. The application sends us no data. There is no telemetry, no crash reporting, no usage analytics, no “anonymous statistics”, and no beacon on launch.

This is enforced in the code rather than promised in a document: the logging subsystem refuses to install any network-capable log handler, and the app forces HuggingFace’s telemetry off at startup so that a stray environment variable cannot switch it back on.

2 · Your licence key

Your licence is verified on your Mac by checking a cryptographic signature against a public key built into the application. Day to day there is no licence server and no network call: we cannot tell whether, when or how often you run the software, and the app keeps working offline.

Activation is the one exception. When you first enter a licence key the application contacts our payment provider once to confirm it, and re-checks occasionally thereafter. That exchange carries the key and nothing about your work: no footage, no transcripts, no file names, no project data. Between activations the app runs entirely offline, which is deliberate — this software is used in courthouses and on location where there is no network.

If you choose to bind a licence to one machine, the application stores a SHA-256 hash of your Mac’s hardware UUID. A hash is one-way — it cannot be turned back into an identifier for your machine. By default a licence is unbound and no hash is created at all.

3 · The three things that can leave your Mac

Each is off unless you turn it on.

3.1 Cloud AI story recommendations — off by default

If you choose OpenAI, Anthropic or Google Gemini as your story provider, Throughline asks for explicit consent, once per provider, and records it. After that, transcript text — never your video or audio — is sent to the provider you chose, using your own API key, under your own account with that provider.

We are not a party to that. You are the customer of that provider, their terms and their privacy policy govern what happens to the text, and we receive nothing. If you would rather nothing left the machine, use the Local provider: it runs on your Mac and refuses outright to connect to any address that is not loopback, so it cannot be pointed at a remote server by accident or by configuration.

3.2 Model downloads — only when you pick a model that is not bundled

Downloading a model is an ordinary HTTPS request to huggingface.co. They will see your IP address and user-agent, as any web server would. We are not involved in the request and receive no notification of it.

3.3 Update checks

There are none. Throughline 3.0.0 ships without an auto-updater, so the application never contacts us to ask whether a newer version exists. New builds are announced by email to licence holders and downloaded deliberately. If a later version adds an updater, this notice will be revised before it ships.

4 · What stays on your Mac

Preferences, licence file, consent record, caches (waveforms, fingerprints, analysis results), logs, and everything you export. Locations:

~/Library/Application Support/Throughline/     preferences, licence, consent
    ~/Library/Application Support/Throughline/cache/   analysis cache
    ~/Library/Logs/Throughline/                    logs
    

Delete those folders and nothing of Throughline’s remains but the app itself. There is no “delete my account” button because there is no account.

5 · Files you open

The application reads the media files you point it at, and macOS asks your permission before it can reach folders such as Desktop, Documents, Downloads and removable or network volumes. Throughline requests only two capabilities: outbound network access, and read-write access to files you select. It does not request your microphone, camera, contacts, calendar or location.

Throughline never modifies or deletes your source media as part of syncing. Repair and transfer features act on files only when you explicitly invoke them.

6 · Children

Not directed at children. You must be at least 13 to use it, and at least 16 in countries where that is the age of digital consent.

7 · Your rights

Because we hold no personal data about you, there is generally nothing for us to access, correct, port or erase. If you have bought a licence, the website holds your purchase record, and that notice explains how to exercise your rights over it under the GDPR, UK GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, PIPEDA, Quebec Law 25, the LGPD, the APPI, PIPA, the Australian Privacy Act, the DPDP Act and the revised Swiss FADP.

We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising — under any definition, in any jurisdiction.

8 · Changes

Material changes will be noted in the release notes and dated at the top of this file. The version bundled inside your copy of the application always describes that copy.