Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 5, 2026

This policy explains what Aside processes, what we store, and what we never see. The short version: your meeting audio is transcribed on your computer and is not uploaded, unless you switch on cloud transcription yourself. That setting is off by default and covered in section 2. When you ask for an answer, we receive the question, a short excerpt of the conversation, and what you have added to your profile, such as your résumé and notes, so the answer fits you (section 3). Your context, notes and résumé are also sent on their own, so AI can pick out the names and terms Aside should listen for (section 3.3). If you switch on smart detection, we also receive the text of what the other person says (section 3.1), and if you ask for a wrap-up of a session, we receive that session’s transcript and answers (section 3.2). We don’t store conversation content or your profile on our servers.

1. Who we are

Aside (“we”, “us”) provides a meeting copilot app for macOS and Windows. Contact: support@meetaside.com.

2. Audio and transcription: on-device by default

Aside listens to your microphone and system audio during sessions you start, and transcribes that audio locally on your device using an on-device Whisper speech model (WhisperKit on macOS, whisper.cpp on Windows). Raw audio is processed in memory on your device. It is not uploaded to our servers or to any third party, and we have no ability to access it. Your transcripts and session history are stored locally on your device, not on our servers.

2.1 Cloud transcription (optional, off by default)

Some computers cannot transcribe fast enough to keep up with live speech. Without GPU acceleration the on-device models can run several times slower than real time, and Aside has to skip parts of the conversation to stay current. For those machines, Settings › Transcription › Transcribe in the cloud moves transcription to our servers instead.

This setting is off by default and only ever enabled by you. Aside will point you at it if it detects that your computer is falling behind, but pointing at it is all it does. The app never turns it on for you, and the setting screen states plainly that enabling it means transcription is no longer done entirely on your device.

While it is on, each utterance is sent to our servers over an encrypted connection and forwarded to OpenAI, our speech-to-text provider, which transcribes it and returns the text. Along with each utterance, the app sends the vocabulary list described in section 3.3 (names and terms picked out of your profile, not the profile itself), so they come back spelled correctly. We discard the audio once it is transcribed, and we do not store it, review it, or use it to train anything. Only the resulting text returns to your device, where it is stored locally like any other transcript. The on-device model stays loaded and takes over automatically if a request fails. Turning the setting off returns Aside to transcribing entirely on your device, immediately and with nothing retained on our side.

This is the same shape as answers, which have always been forwarded to Anthropic. Both are named here because you should know exactly who touches your data, not just that we do not keep it.

3. What is sent when you request an answer

When Aside generates an answer (because it detected a question, because you asked one with the hotkey, or because you used Screen Assist), the app sends the following to our servers over an encrypted connection:

• the detected or typed question;
• a short excerpt of the surrounding transcript, for context;
• for Screen Assist, the screen capture you triggered;
• up to nine earlier questions from the answers panel, with the answers Aside gave, so it can follow up on them;
• the context you have entered (what the meeting is about), if any;
• what you have added to your profile: your name, your notes, the text of your résumé, and the name and text of the reference document you have selected (section 3.3);
• your answer-style and answer-language settings.

Earlier screen captures are not sent again, only the answers to them. The answers panel keeps these earlier questions between sessions until you clear the panel, use the Clear answer memory shortcut, or quit Aside.

Our API receives this request, checks your plan limits, and forwards the content to Anthropic (our AI subprocessor) to generate the answer, which is streamed back to your device. We do not store the content of these requests or responses. They pass through our systems to serve your request and are not retained as conversation records.

3.1 Smart detection (optional, off by default)

Aside finds questions on your device by matching words. Settings › Transcription › Smart detection adds an AI check that catches questions phrased in ways word matching misses.

This setting is off by default and only ever enabled by you.

While it is on, each line of transcript from the other side of the conversation is sent as text to our servers over an encrypted connection and forwarded to Anthropic, which checks it for questions and returns them. If you listen through the microphone only, Aside cannot tell whose voice is whose, so every line it transcribes is sent, including yours. This setting sends no audio. We do not store these lines. Turning it off returns question detection entirely to your device, immediately.

3.2 Wrap-ups (only when you ask for one)

A wrap-up turns a saved session into an overview, the key questions, action items and a follow-up email draft. Aside never writes one on its own. It writes one only when you press Wrap up on a session in Past sessions (or on the wrap-up card of the “What Aside can do” tour), and again each time you press Re-summarize.

Each time, the app sends the following as text to our servers over an encrypted connection:

• the session’s transcript, with the time of each line and, where Aside can tell, whether you or the other side said it (very long sessions are cut off after the first 60,000 characters);
• each question Aside answered during the session, with the answer it gave;
• the context you had entered (what the meeting is about) when the session started, if any;
• your answer-language setting.

We forward it to Anthropic, which writes the wrap-up and returns it to your device, where it is saved with the session. No audio or screen captures are sent. We do not store the transcript, the answers, or the wrap-up.

3.3 Your profile

Your profile is what you tell Aside about yourself: your name, notes about you, your résumé and any reference documents you attach, plus the context you enter for a meeting. It is stored on your computer, and you can leave any of it blank. The app sends it as text to our servers over an encrypted connection in these cases:

• With every answer, as listed in section 3: your name (only the first one, if you also listed nicknames), notes, résumé and context, and the name and text of the reference document you have selected. Your other documents are not sent.
• When you press Questions to ask them in the box where you type a question to Aside: the same details and the recent transcript, so AI can suggest questions for you to ask.
• To build your vocabulary list: a moment after you add or change your context, notes or résumé, the app sends those three, but not your name or documents, so AI can pick out the names, products and terms likely to come up in your meetings. The list that comes back is kept on your computer and helps transcription spell those words correctly.

We forward each of these to Anthropic, which returns the result to your device. We do not store your profile or anything in it, only yes or no values for which parts are filled in (section 4). If you switch on cloud transcription, the vocabulary list (names and terms only, not your résumé or notes) is also sent with each utterance to OpenAI (section 2.1).

4. What we store

We keep the minimum needed to run accounts, billing, and plan limits:

• Account data: your email address and plan/subscription status, plus a record of the checkouts you start on our website and the payments you make (plan, amount, date and whether it went through).
• Sign-in details: the IP address your account was created from (or, if it was created when you bought Aside on our website, the one you first sign in to the app from), the IP address each sign-in code was requested from, and, for each computer you sign in on, its name, whether it runs macOS or Windows, when it was last used, and a one-way fingerprint of its hardware ID, never the ID itself. We use these to keep accounts secure, to stop free trials being claimed over and over, to block accounts banned for abuse, and to see roughly which countries people use Aside from. Our servers also keep standard request logs, which include IP addresses, to keep the service secure and fix problems.
• Usage metadata: answer counts, token counts, model used, which feature a request came from, and timestamps (numbers, not content), so we can enforce answer caps, bill correctly, and see which features people use.
• Profile setup: whether you have added a résumé, notes, context or a document, and whether name alerts are switched on, stored as yes or no values only, never their contents. It tells us what people use Aside for.
• Support correspondence: emails you send us.
• Feedback you choose to send: if you answer the in-app “How useful was Aside?” prompt, we store your rating and anything you type into the feedback box, linked to your account so we can follow up and improve the app. It’s never shared, and it never includes transcripts or answers, only what you write. We also record when the prompt is shown and whether it was closed without an answer, so we know how many people were asked.

We do not store your audio, transcripts, questions, answers, wrap-ups, screen captures, or the contents of your profile.

5. Payments

Purchases are processed by Dodo Payments as merchant of record; subscriptions bought before October 5, 2026 were processed by Paddle.com. The merchant of record collects and processes your payment details (card number, billing address, tax information) under its own privacy policy. We receive only what we need to associate a subscription with your account and keep our records: your email, your subscription status, the country you are billed in and the kind of card you paid with, never your card number or full billing address.

6. Subprocessors

• Anthropic: generates AI answers from the requests described in Section 3, checks transcript lines for questions while smart detection is on (Section 3.1), writes the wrap-ups you ask for (Section 3.2), and suggests questions and picks out vocabulary from your profile (Section 3.3), under its commercial API terms.
• OpenAI: transcribes audio while cloud transcription is on, with the vocabulary list from Section 3.3 as a spelling hint (Section 2.1).
• Dodo Payments: payments, tax, and billing, as merchant of record.
• Paddle: the same, for subscriptions bought before October 5, 2026.
• country.is: tells us which country an IP address from Section 4 belongs to. Only the IP address is sent.

7. This website

Our website does not use analytics, advertising trackers, or marketing cookies. Checkout runs on Dodo Payments’ own pages, which may set cookies strictly needed to process the transaction.

8. Data retention and deletion

Account data, sign-in details and usage metadata are kept while your account is active and for as long as needed for legal and accounting obligations. You can request deletion of your account and associated data at any time by emailing support@meetaside.com; we will delete data we hold about you except what we must retain by law (for example, billing records). Everything stored locally on your computer (transcripts, history, settings) is yours to delete directly by removing it in the app or uninstalling.

9. Security

Requests between the app and our API are encrypted in transit (TLS). Access to production systems is restricted and authenticated. No system is perfectly secure, but our design keeps the most sensitive material (your audio and transcripts) on your device in the first place.

10. Your responsibilities to other participants

Aside processes audio from conversations that include other people. Depending on where you and they are, you may be required to notify them or obtain consent before transcribing a conversation. You are responsible for meeting those obligations, as described in our Terms of Service.

11. Your rights

Depending on your location, you may have rights to access, correct, export, or delete personal data we hold about you, and to object to or restrict certain processing. To exercise them, email support@meetaside.com. We respond within the timelines required by applicable law.

12. Children

The Service is not directed to children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them.

13. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in a material way, we will give notice by email or in the app before the change takes effect. The “Last updated” date above always reflects the current version.

14. Contact

Privacy questions and requests: support@meetaside.com.