Cathedra — Privacy Policy
Last updated 26 August 2026
Your recordings never leave your iPhone. There is no account, no sign-in, no analytics and no advertising. The audio of a lecture is never uploaded, never synced and never sent to any service.
Two things do leave the device, both of them text and both under your control. Your transcripts and timetable sync through your own private iCloud, which we cannot read. And if you use the optional AI feature, the text of the lecture you are asking about is sent to an AI service to answer your question — only when you ask, and only after you have separately agreed to it.
The sections below spell out exactly which is which, because a privacy claim is only worth anything if you can check it.
What the app stores, and where
Everything Cathedra creates lives in the app's own storage area on your device:
- Audio recordings of lectures you choose to record, as files on the device.
- Transcripts produced from those recordings.
- Your timetable — terms, courses, class times, rooms, exams and deadlines.
Audio stays on the device that recorded it. A term of lecture audio is several gigabytes, and the app is built so it never goes anywhere — not to us, not to iCloud. Transcripts and your timetable sync to your own private iCloud database so your library follows your Apple Account to your other devices; Apple gives developers no access to a user's private database, so we cannot read any of it.
The AI features, if you use them
These are the only parts of Cathedra that send anything to another company, so each one is described in full. None of them runs unless you have subscribed and agreed, on a screen that names the service and the destination, to send content off your device. Declining leaves every other part of the app working exactly as before.
- Finding announcements — exam dates, assignments, room changes — runs on Apple's on-device model. Nothing is sent anywhere, and it works with no connection.
- Asking a question about a lecture sends the text of that lecture's transcript to DeepSeek, an AI service outside your country, so it can answer you. Asking a question about a whole course sends the transcripts of that course's lectures, together with their titles, their dates and the course name. Your audio recording is never sent.
- Describing a photograph — a slide, a whiteboard — sends that photograph, and reading a syllabus sends the document or screenshot you chose. Only what you picked, and only when you ask.
- Fixing misheard terms sends a short list of phrases from the transcript, with a few words around each, so the model can judge whether they were misheard.
- Requests pass through a small service we operate on Cloudflare. It holds our API key, checks with Apple that your subscription is active, and counts how many questions the subscription has asked this month. To do that it keeps, for a few hours, the subscription's original transaction identifier and whether it was active, and the month's count — nothing else. It stores no transcript, photograph or document, and writes no content to any log.
- Your subscription is handled by Apple. We never see your name, email or payment details.
If you are in Türkiye, this transfer is the reason the app asks for your explicit consent separately (KVKK madde 9) rather than folding it into anything else.
Deleting things
Deleting the app removes all of it, and the app lets you delete any recording, any transcript, any course or any term individually at any time.
The microphone
Cathedra asks for microphone access so it can record lectures. Recording only ever starts when you start it — from the app, from a reminder's Start Recording button, or from the Lock Screen card. iOS does not permit an app to open the microphone on its own, and Cathedra has no way to do so. iOS shows its own recording indicator whenever the microphone is live.
Speech-to-text
Transcription runs on your device, using the speech recognition built into iOS. Your audio is not sent to us, to Apple, or to anyone else in order to be transcribed.
One thing does involve the network, and it is worth being precise about: the first time you transcribe a lecture in a language you have not used before, iOS downloads that language's speech model from Apple. That download is a request to Apple for a model file. It carries no audio, no transcript and nothing about your lectures. After it completes, transcription in that language works with the network switched off entirely.
Notifications
Class reminders and exam reminders are scheduled locally by your iPhone from the timetable you entered. They are not push notifications; nothing about your schedule is sent anywhere. If you decline notification permission, the rest of the app works normally.
What we do not do
- No accounts, no email address, no password — there is nothing to sign in to.
- No analytics, telemetry, crash reporting or usage tracking.
- No advertising and no advertising identifiers.
- No third-party SDKs of any kind are included in the app. The AI service above is reached over an ordinary web request to our own address; no outside company's code runs inside Cathedra.
- Nothing is ever sold, and nothing is shared with anyone except as described in the AI section above.
- We never receive your audio, and we never store your transcripts.
Recording other people
This part is about your responsibility rather than ours, and it matters more than anything else on this page.
A lecture recording contains someone else's voice — usually your lecturer's, sometimes other students'. Whether you may record it is decided by the law where you are and by your university's rules, not by this app. Many institutions permit recording for personal study and prohibit sharing; some require the lecturer's permission first; some prohibit it outright. Rules differ between countries and between universities in the same country.
Please check before you record, ask when in doubt, and do not publish or distribute a recording of someone who did not agree to it. Cathedra keeps your recordings private on your device by default; what you choose to export or share afterwards is up to you.
Children
Cathedra is intended for university and college students and is not directed at children. It collects no personal information from anyone, including children.
Your rights
Data protection law — including the GDPR in the European Union — gives you rights of access, correction, deletion and portability over personal data held about you. We hold none, so there is nothing for us to give you, correct, or erase.
Your recordings are on your own device, under your own control: the app can play, export in several formats, and permanently delete any of them, and deleting the app removes everything at once.
Changes
If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this address with a new date at the top. Material changes will also be described in the App Store release notes for the version they take effect in.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or about the app: support@cathedra.study