Tide Privacy Policy

Effective October 29, 2026.

1. Who we are

Tide is a music app for iPhone published by Florent Thollas EI, 10 place Lieutenant Morel, 69001 Lyon, France (email: support@tidemusic.app). “We,” “us,” and “our” in this policy mean the publisher, who is responsible for (the “controller” of) the personal data described here.

This policy covers the Tide app, its web pages at tidemusic.app (privacy, terms, and support), and the server that handles purchases made on the web (pay.tidemusic.app and go.tidemusic.app).

2. What stays on your iPhone, and only there

Tide stores the following on your iPhone, in the app’s own storage, so it can work:

• Your projects: the names you give them, when they were created and last changed, tempo, key, chosen sounds, recorded notes and finger gestures, mix, and arrangement.
• Your settings: metronome, appearance and theme, effects, haptics, and the settings of the surprise visual mode.
• Random IDs, one for each project, used only to keep them organized in the app. They can’t be used to identify you.
• For a web purchase only (United States and European Union): a random secret, created on your iPhone the first time the app shows web offers and kept in the iOS keychain of this iPhone only (it isn’t synced to your other devices), and the signed authorization our server sends once you’ve bought Tide Pro on the web. The secret lets the app prove to our server that it’s the same iPhone. Only a fingerprint of it, the installation ID, is used to identify this iPhone (section 8). Because of how the iOS keychain works, the secret may stay on your iPhone after you delete the app, so that a web purchase comes back when you reinstall it.

The app keeps no copy of your exports: a WAV, ZIP, MIDI, or project file is created when you ask for it and handed to the iOS share sheet (section 5), and nothing of it stays in the app.

We can’t access any of this. Apart from what section 8 describes for web purchases, it’s never sent to us or to anyone else, and other apps on your iPhone can’t read it.

If iCloud Backup is turned on for your iPhone, iOS may include the app’s data in that backup, which Apple stores in your iCloud account. We don’t have access to it.

3. What the app doesn’t do

• No account: no sign-up, no sign-in, no password.
• One server, for web purchases only: in the United States and the European Union, the app contacts our purchase server to show web offers and to unlock Tide Pro bought on the web (section 8). Apart from that and from your App Store purchases, which go through Apple (section 7), the app doesn’t exchange any data over the internet. All of its sounds, songs, and images are built in, so it never downloads anything.
• No ads and no usage analytics. The app doesn’t send crash reports, and it includes no third-party analytics or advertising tools.
• No tracking: the app doesn’t follow you across other apps or websites and doesn’t use your iPhone’s advertising identifier. The installation ID serves only your purchases.
• No access to your location, contacts, photos, camera, or microphone. The app never asks for any of them (see section 4).
• We don’t sell or share your personal information, and we don’t rent it out.

4. Permissions

Motion sensors

Tide reads your iPhone’s motion sensors (accelerometer and orientation) for three purposes: starting a surprise visual mode when you shake your iPhone during playback, moving that mode’s camera when you tilt your iPhone, and sliding the reflections on the glass if you turn on Glass follows the iPhone in the app’s settings (Menu > Settings > Appearance > Advanced). Motion is read on your iPhone in real time. Only the last few seconds are kept in memory, just long enough to recognize a shake. Nothing is saved or sent.

Camera and microphone

Tide doesn’t use your iPhone’s camera or microphone, and it never asks for access to them. The app records neither audio nor video: what you hear comes from its built-in sounds, and the only video you can make of it is a screen recording with iOS (section 5).

Files

To import a project or a backup, you pick a file yourself in the iOS file picker (Files, iCloud Drive, and so on). The app only receives the file you pick. It can’t see your other files or photos.

Clipboard

In the settings of the surprise visual mode, if you turn on the meter (⚙ > Meter), the Copier la trace (copy log) button copies a technical report to your clipboard: motion from the last few seconds, display measurements, and the iOS and app versions. It’s there so you can send it to us if we ask for it to help you. It copies only that, only when you tap it, and never sends it anywhere. You decide where to paste it.

5. When your creations leave your iPhone: only when you send them

Your projects and sounds only leave the app when you export or share a file yourself: a song (WAV), its separate tracks (ZIP), its notes (MIDI), a project file, or a backup of all your projects. The iOS share sheet lets you choose where it goes (Files, iCloud Drive, AirDrop, Messages, Mail, another app, and so on). What happens next depends on that destination and its own policies. The app keeps no copy of the file it hands over.

The same goes for a screen recording you make with iOS while you play: iOS saves the video to your photos, on your iPhone, and it isn’t sent to us.

What these files contain:

• A project file or backup contains your projects (names, dates, notes, settings), along with the export date and the app version. It’s sealed, so only Tide can open it and check that it hasn’t been altered.
• A WAV file contains your music, with the app’s name and version in its metadata.
• None of these files contain your email address or an identifier for your iPhone. They don’t contain your name either, unless you’ve put it in a project’s name: that name is reused in the names of exported files and inside MIDI files.

Links in the app (to this page, or to a Stripe payment page, for example) open in your web browser or in a Safari view, where that site’s own privacy policy applies.

6. What Apple may share with us

Apple distributes Tide and handles your data under its own Privacy Policy. If you’ve agreed in your iPhone’s settings to share analytics with app developers, Apple may send us crash reports and app usage statistics that don’t identify you. To stop sharing, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Analytics & Improvements and turn off Share With App Developers.

If you test a beta version of Tide through TestFlight, Apple shares with us the information TestFlight gives developers. Depending on how you joined the beta, this can include your name and email address, beta usage data, crash reports, and any feedback or screenshots you choose to send. We use it only to fix and improve the app.

7. Buying with the App Store

Tide is free to download from the App Store. If you buy Tide Pro (a subscription or a one-time purchase) with the App Store, Apple (for purchases made from France, Apple Distribution International Ltd., Ireland) handles the entire payment using the payment method on your Apple Account, under Apple’s terms and privacy policy. We never receive your payment details, your name, or your email address.

To know which App Store purchases you’ve made and unlock what you paid for, the app reads the purchase information signed by Apple on your iPhone. This check happens on the device, with no server of ours and no third-party service, and the app doesn’t send us anything about it. Apple gives us sales reports that don’t include information that identifies you.

In the United States and the European Union, the Tide Pro screen also asks our server which web offers to show (section 8), even if you then choose the App Store.

To manage or cancel an App Store subscription, open Settings on your iPhone, tap your name, then tap Subscriptions. To request a refund, contact Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com. For more about purchases and restoring them, see the Support page.

8. Buying on the web

In the United States and the European Union, the Tide Pro screen also offers Tide Pro on the web. The payment page is Stripe’s. With Stripe Managed Payments, Link, a Stripe service, sells Tide Pro to you as the merchant of record: it handles the payment, taxes, receipts, refunds, and customer service for the payment.

8.1 What Stripe and Link handle

On the payment page, you give your email address and payment details to Stripe, not to us. Stripe and Link process them as an independent controller under their own privacy policies (Link, Stripe). To match the purchase with your iPhone, the payment link the app opens carries the installation ID of your iPhone (section 8.2) and your language. Stripe keeps your purchase, your email address, your payment details, and that installation ID.

In our Stripe account, Stripe shows us the details of your purchase (such as your email address, your country, what you bought, the amounts, and its status). We look at them only to answer you, handle a refund, or fix a problem. We never receive your full card number.

8.2 What our purchase server keeps

When Stripe confirms a payment, it notifies our server, which keeps only what it needs to unlock Tide Pro on your iPhones and to keep our accounts:

• For each purchase: Stripe’s references for the purchase, for its payments, and for your Stripe customer record (when there is one); a fingerprint of your email address (a keyed hash, or HMAC: the server never stores the address itself and can only recognize it when it’s typed again); the plan; the dates of the period paid for; and its status (canceled, refunded, or disputed).
• For each iPhone: its installation ID (a fingerprint of the secret described in section 2, which can’t be traced back to Apple’s identifiers or to you) and two dates, when it was added and when it last checked in; in the European Union, also Apple’s tokens (section 8.4). A purchase works on up to 5 iPhones.
• For each payment: the amount, currency, and date of each purchase, renewal, and refund.
• To prevent abuse: a fingerprint of each email address typed to restore a purchase (whether or not there’s a purchase) and of the IP address of the request, deleted within three days.

The app sends the installation ID, your App Store country, and your language when it shows web offers, and the secret when it checks a web purchase, so that only this iPhone can get its authorization. The server keeps no name, postal address, payment card, or IP address (apart from the fingerprints above), and its request logs are turned off.

8.3 Restoring a web purchase by email

On a new iPhone, you can get a web purchase back with I bought on the web on the Tide Pro screen, by typing the email address you used to buy. If that address matches a current purchase, our server has our email provider, Resend (Plus Five Five, Inc., United States; emails sent from its Ireland region), send you a link that works once, for one hour. Resend receives the address and the message so it can send them, and keeps them in its sending history, under its privacy policy and our data processing agreement. Our server keeps only a fingerprint of the link and of the address, until a day after the link expires. The app shows the same answer whether or not a purchase exists.

8.4 In the European Union: Apple’s external purchase tokens

In the European Union, Apple allows the link to the web purchase under its own rules: before the payment page opens, iOS shows an Apple information sheet, and Apple requires us to report the sales made through the link. For this, when the app starts and before each possible purchase, it gets from iOS identifiers for external purchases (tokens) and sends them to our server, which links them to this iPhone’s installation ID. The server reports them to Apple every month, whether you buy or not, as Apple’s terms require. Apple then processes them under its own privacy policy.

8.5 Why we use this data (legal bases)

• To unlock what you bought, restore it on your iPhones, and handle cancellations and refunds: the performance of the contract you entered into by buying Tide Pro (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)).
• To keep payment records: our legal accounting and tax obligations (GDPR Art. 6(1)(c)).
• To report the tokens and sales made through the link in the European Union: our legitimate interest in following the Apple terms under which we may offer web purchases there (GDPR Art. 6(1)(f)).
• For rate limits and fraud prevention: our legitimate interest in protecting the service and our customers (GDPR Art. 6(1)(f)).

Nothing here relies on your consent, so the app doesn’t ask for it. You can object to uses based on our legitimate interest (section 13).

9. When you email us

If you email us at support@tidemusic.app, we receive your email address, your name if it’s included, the content of your message, and anything you attach (such as a project file or a screenshot). We use this only to reply and follow up on your request. Legal basis (EU): our legitimate interest in answering people who contact us (GDPR Art. 6(1)(f)). If you contact Link’s support about a payment, Link may also forward your request to us at that address. We don’t share your messages with anyone other than our email providers (below), and we never add you to a mailing list.

Messages sent to our address at tidemusic.app are forwarded by Cloudflare Email Routing (Cloudflare, Inc., section 10), which states that it doesn’t store them, to our Gmail mailbox, where Google (Google Ireland Limited, in the European Union) hosts them under its own terms and privacy policy. Google may process copies of them outside the European Union, including in the United States; this transfer is covered by the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework, under which Google LLC is certified. We keep your messages while we handle your request and for up to three years after our last exchange, and we delete attachments once the issue is resolved. Please don’t send sensitive information (health details, political or religious views, passwords, and so on).

10. Our host: Cloudflare

The Tide web pages, our purchase server (pay.tidemusic.app and go.tidemusic.app), and its database are hosted by Cloudflare, Inc. (101 Townsend St, San Francisco, CA 94107, United States). The pages use no cookies, no scripts, and no visitor analytics. As with any website, Cloudflare receives your IP address and browser information when you visit these pages or when the app contacts our server, to deliver them and protect them against attacks, under its own privacy policy. We keep no visit or request logs.

11. Service providers and transfers outside the EU

• Cloudflare, Inc. (United States): hosting of the pages, the purchase server, and its database, and forwarding of our email. Our processor; Cloudflare is certified under the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework.
• Stripe and Link: the sale and payment on the web, as an independent controller. Stripe, Inc. is certified under the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework and also relies on the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.
• Resend (Plus Five Five, Inc., United States): sending restore emails. Our processor, under a data processing agreement based on the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses; Resend also states that it complies with the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework.
• Google (Gmail): our mailbox, hosted under Google’s own terms and privacy policy (section 9); Google LLC is certified under the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework.
• Apple: distribution of the app, App Store purchases, and the external purchase reports in the European Union, under its own privacy policy.

You can ask us for a copy of the safeguards that cover these transfers.

12. Keeping and deleting data

• In the app: your data stays on your iPhone until you delete it. To delete a project, go to Menu > My projects, tap “…”, then Delete…, and confirm.
• Deleting everything: removing the app erases its projects and settings from your iPhone. This can’t be undone. First, export a backup of your projects (Menu > My projects > Back up all projects). The files you’ve already exported aren’t affected: they’re wherever you saved or sent them. Deleting the app doesn’t cancel a subscription, whether you bought it with the App Store or on the web (see the Support page).
• Elsewhere: files you’ve exported and your iPhone backups stay where they are until you delete them.
• On our purchase server: a subscription that has ended, a refunded or disputed purchase (and its amounts), and an iPhone that no longer checks in (and its tokens) are deleted two years later. A one-time purchase is kept as long as it’s in use. Stripe’s notifications are deleted after 35 days, restore links (only their fingerprint and that of the address) a day after they expire, and the abuse-prevention fingerprints within three days.
• At Stripe and Link, and at Apple: under their own policies. Your App Store purchases are kept by Apple, in your Apple Account.
• Your emails: see section 9.

13. Your rights

Everything the app stores on your iPhone is under your control, and you can view, change, export, or delete it yourself.

For the data our server keeps about a web purchase and for your emails, depending on where you live (for example, the European Union, the United Kingdom, or California), you may have the right to access it, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how it’s used, and get a copy of it. Email us at support@tidemusic.app, from the address you used to buy or mentioning it (or with the number of your Link receipt): our server only keeps a fingerprint of that address, so that’s how we find your purchase. We’ll respond within one month. We won’t treat you differently for exercising these rights.

Some limits: if you ask us to delete the records of a current purchase, it can no longer unlock Tide Pro on your iPhones or be restored, so we’ll first ask whether you also want to cancel it. Payment records we must keep for our accounts are kept for the time given in section 12. For the data Stripe and Link hold, ask Link (link.com/privacy); Stripe states that deleting your data for a purchase sold through Link also cancels its subscriptions. For your App Store purchases, ask Apple.

We don’t make any automated decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects.

If you think your rights haven’t been respected, you can contact your local data protection authority. Ours is France’s data protection authority, the CNIL (www.cnil.fr).

14. Children

Tide isn’t directed to children. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. In the European Union, buying on the web isn’t offered under 13 and goes through a parental gate from 13 to 17. If you’re under 13 (or under the age of digital consent where you live), please ask a parent before emailing us, and don’t include personal information in your message. If you’re a parent and think your child sent us personal information, contact us and we’ll delete it.

15. Changes to this policy

If Tide changes how it handles data, for example by adding a service, we’ll update this page and its effective date before that version of the app is released, and we’ll mention it in that version’s App Store release notes. Earlier versions of this policy are available on request.

16. Contact us

Questions about this policy or your data? Email support@tidemusic.app or write to Florent Thollas EI, 10 place Lieutenant Morel, 69001 Lyon, France. See also the Terms of Use and the Support page.