Terms of Use

1Agreement to these terms

These Terms of Use (“Terms”) are a legal agreement between you and Zydeno, the developer of Sayholm (“we”, “us”). They apply to the Sayholm app for Android, its updates and everything it shows or produces (together, “the app”). By installing, opening or using the app you accept these Terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the app and uninstall it.

The Privacy Policy explains how the app handles data and forms part of these Terms. If we offer optional features under additional terms in the future, for example paid features, those terms will be shown to you before you accept them and will apply together with these Terms.

You must be old enough to enter into a binding contract where you live, or use the app with the consent and supervision of a parent or guardian who accepts these Terms for you. If you use the app for an organisation, you confirm that you may accept these Terms on its behalf; the consumer-protection provisions of these Terms apply only to consumers.

2Who provides Sayholm

Sayholm is developed and published by Zydeno (“we”, “us”), an independent developer. Contact: support@zydeno.com, website zydeno.com.

The app is intended for adults. If you are under the age of majority where you live, use it only with the involvement of a parent or guardian.

3What Sayholm is and is not

Sayholm is a voice recorder with on-device speech recognition. It records audio, imports audio and video files, transcribes speech on your phone in the languages it supports, shows the transcript with word timings during playback, lets you edit text, mark speakers and bookmarks, search your recordings and export TXT, SRT, VTT, DOCX, PDF, audio and ZIP files. It works offline, has no ads and needs no account. All speech models are supplied by Google Play Asset Delivery; the app has no internet permission or direct model downloads. Chinese transcription uses the model’s output; there is no Traditional/Simplified selector or script-conversion feature.

Sayholm is not a call recorder, a surveillance or monitoring tool, a certified or human transcription service, a court-reporting or medical-dictation system, a translation service or an assistive device for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. It does not identify speakers by their voice.

4Recording laws and consent

• Consent rules differ. Some countries and states allow a participant to record a conversation with their own consent (one-party consent); others require every participant to agree (all-party or two-party consent). Recording conversations you are not part of, or recording in private places, may be a criminal offence.
• Other rules. Employers, schools, universities, courts, hospitals, venues and event organisers may forbid recording or set conditions. Copyright may protect lectures, talks and performances you record.
• Using recordings. Publishing, sharing or using a recording or transcript may need further consent, and may be limited by data-protection, privacy, defamation, confidentiality and copyright law.
• No hidden recording. The recording screen shows a REC lamp. Every saved recording requires notification permission on Android 13 and later, enabled app notifications and an enabled recording channel (and channel group, if any), whether Sayholm is open, another app is open or the screen is off. If these are refused or disabled, starting is blocked; if disabled during recording, capture stops and the recording is saved. A paused recording cannot resume without these safeguards; it is stopped and saved instead. Only the short onboarding “say a phrase” probe runs without saving or requiring notifications, and it is cancelled when the app leaves the foreground or the introduction screen is closed. Microphone permission is still required. Sayholm does not record phone or internet calls. You must not circumvent these safeguards.

5Transcripts can be wrong

• Check every passage that matters against the original audio before you quote, publish or rely on it.
• Do not use transcripts as verbatim legal, court, medical, financial or official records, or as evidence, without independent verification by a qualified person.
• Do not rely on live text or transcripts where missing or misreading a word could put anyone at risk.
• Accuracy differs between languages. It is highest in English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and German; for some languages, such as Hindi, Polish, Turkish and Italian, usable results need the larger optional model, and Arabic transcription is offered as a beta that makes noticeably more errors even with that model.
• Speed estimates and model recommendations are measured on your phone and are guidance only.

6Your responsibility

You are responsible for:

• the recordings you make and the files you import, and for having the right to record, keep and transcribe them;
• checking transcripts and exports before you use or share them;
• keeping your own copies (Export all) and protecting your phone and exported files, which may contain what other people said;
• how you use, publish or share recordings, transcripts, quotes and subtitles made with the app, and the consequences of doing so;
• complying with the laws that apply to you, including recording, data-protection, privacy and copyright laws.

7Speech models and Google Play delivery

All speech models are provided through Google Play Asset Delivery. Sayholm has no internet permission, opens no network connections and does not download models from a separate hosting service. After delivery, speech recognition runs on your phone. Google Play handles installation, asset delivery and updates under its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Google Play delivery may need connectivity, storage and use of your data allowance. We do not guarantee that any particular model, delivery option or device will remain supported. Missing or incomplete packs must be delivered before the corresponding model can be used offline. Models retain their authors’ open-source licences (§12). The Privacy Policy explains Google’s separate delivery processing and Sayholm’s local processing.

8Export formats

Sayholm writes TXT, SRT, VTT, DOCX, PDF and ZIP files with its own implementation of the published formats. Other programs may display the same file differently, apply their own limits for subtitles or ignore some formatting. DOCX files do not embed fonts. Keep your original recordings and check exported files in the software you use before relying on them.

9Not professional advice; no safety-critical use

The app is a tool to help you plan and calculate. It does not give professional, engineering, legal or other expert advice, and using it does not create a professional relationship with us. You remain responsible for your inputs, for how you interpret the results and for what you decide to do.

Do not use the app as the only basis for a decision where an error could cause death, personal injury, damage to property or the environment, or legal or financial loss, and do not use it in a safety-critical system, in an emergency or to control equipment. Sayholm is not a certified transcription service or an assistive hearing device, and an automatic transcript is not a verbatim or certified record. Whether you may record a conversation depends on the law where you record; the app does not tell you whether a recording is lawful.

10Licence to use the app

Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, personal, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable and non-sublicensable licence to download, install and use the app on Android devices you own or control, for your own purposes (including recording and transcribing your own work, studies, interviews and meetings). The app is licensed to you, not sold.

Except where these Terms, an open-source licence or mandatory law allow it (for example decompiling for interoperability where the law permits), you may not: copy, modify, translate or create derivative works of the app; decompile, disassemble or reverse-engineer it; rent, lend, sell, sublicense, distribute or publish it, or make it available for use by others over a network; remove or change any copyright, trademark or legal notice; or get around any technical limit of the app, including any future purchase, licence or advertising mechanism.

Open-source components and fonts in the app are licensed under their own licences, listed in the app under About → Open-source licenses. Those licences prevail for those components, and nothing in these Terms limits the rights they give you.

11Your recordings and backups

Your recordings, transcripts and settings are stored only on your device. You own them, subject to the rights of the people you recorded. We do not have a copy and cannot recover them if you lose your phone, uninstall the app, clear its storage or use “Delete everything”. Use “Export all” in Settings to keep your own copy, and keep it somewhere private. See the Privacy Policy for details.

The transcripts, subtitles and files you create are yours to use. We claim no rights in them.

12Speech recognition, fonts and open-source components

Sayholm is built with open-source software, models and fonts, listed with their full licence texts in the app under About → Open-source licenses:

These components remain the property of their authors, who do not endorse Sayholm. Nothing in these Terms limits the rights those licences give you for those components.

13Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• record anyone secretly or in breach of recording, eavesdropping, wiretapping or privacy laws, or use the app to monitor, stalk, harass or intimidate anyone;
• try to record phone or internet calls, or to hide or get around the REC lamp, the recording notification or other safeguards of the app;
• use recordings or transcripts to defame, deceive or impersonate anyone, or present an automatic transcript as a verified or certified record;
• record, transcribe or distribute material in breach of copyright or confidentiality obligations;
• copy, modify, redistribute, sell or reverse-engineer the app, except as allowed by law or by an open-source licence.

14Intellectual property

The app, its design, text, icon and the name Sayholm belong to the developer, except for the open-source components, models and fonts above, which belong to their owners. Other names are used only to identify components, formats and services and belong to their respective owners.

15Price, payments, ads and future paid features

Current version. The current version of Sayholm is provided free of charge, without ads and without in-app purchases or subscriptions. This describes the current version only. It is not a promise that the app, or any feature of it, will remain free of charge or free of ads.

Possible changes. We may at any time introduce advertising; offer paid features, in-app purchases, subscriptions or a paid edition; change which features are free; and set or change prices. Features that are free today may require payment in a future version. We will describe such changes in the store listing and release notes, and in the Privacy Policy where they affect data.

Purchases. Any purchase will be made through Google Play and processed by Google under the Google Play Terms of Service and its payment policies. Prices are shown in Google Play before you buy, including taxes where applicable. Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel them in Google Play; cancelling stops future renewals. Refunds follow Google Play’s refund policies and your mandatory consumer rights, such as the right of withdrawal in the EU and the UK. Where you ask for immediate access to digital content during a withdrawal period, you may lose that right to the extent the law allows, and you will be asked to confirm this before you buy. You are charged only if you choose to buy something.

Ads. If the app shows ads, they are supplied by third parties. We are not responsible for the content of ads or for the products and services advertised, and any dealings with advertisers are between you and them.

Price changes. We may change prices for future purchases at any time. For an active subscription, we will announce a price increase as Google Play and the law require, and you can cancel before it applies.

16Disclaimer of warranties

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the app and everything it produces are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of accuracy, reliability, fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability and non-infringement. We do not warrant that transcripts, word timings, language detection or subtitles are correct or complete, that every recording is captured without gaps on every device, that a recording interrupted by the system or a crash can be fully recovered, that model asset packs remain available through Google Play, that exported files open correctly in other software, or that the app will work on every device or Android version.

17Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the developer is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost or incomplete recordings, errors or omissions in transcripts, misquotations, claims by people you recorded or by third parties, consequences of recording without the required consent, fines or legal proceedings, data charges for Google Play delivery, lost profits or business losses, arising from or related to the app, its output or decisions based on it, even if we were told such damage was possible.

18Your rights as a consumer

If you use the app as a consumer, you benefit from the mandatory consumer-protection rules of the country where you live, and nothing in these Terms affects them. In particular:

• EU and EEA: your statutory rights, including those on the conformity of digital content and digital services under the national rules implementing Directive (EU) 2019/770 where they apply, and mandatory product-liability rules, remain unaffected.
• United Kingdom: your statutory rights, including under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, remain unaffected.
• Australia: our services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. Where the law allows us to limit our liability for failing to meet a consumer guarantee for services that are not of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use, our liability is limited to supplying the services again or paying the cost of having them supplied again.
• New Zealand: if you acquire the app for business purposes, you agree that the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 does not apply, to the extent the law permits.
• United States and Canada: some states and provinces do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties or the limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so some of the exclusions above may not apply to you. In Québec, the mandatory provisions of the Consumer Protection Act apply.

19Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless the developer against claims, liabilities, damages, losses and reasonable costs, including reasonable legal fees, brought by third parties and arising out of (a) the recordings you make or import, and the recordings, transcripts, quotes and subtitles you keep, publish or share, including any recording made without a consent the law requires, (b) your breach of these Terms, (c) your violation of any law or of the rights of others, or (d) output of the app that you provide to another person, such as a client or employer. This does not apply to the extent a claim is caused by our own breach of these Terms or our negligence, or where local consumer law does not allow it.

20Changes, availability and termination

To the extent the law allows, we may change, update, add or remove features, change data sources, and suspend or discontinue the app, in whole or in part or in any country, at any time. We are not obliged to provide updates, maintenance or support, except where mandatory consumer law requires updates to keep the app in conformity.

You may stop using the app at any time by uninstalling it. Your licence ends automatically if you materially breach these Terms, and we may end or suspend it where the law requires. When it ends, you must stop using the app and uninstall it. Your data stays on your device under your control, so export what you need first.

Provisions that by their nature should continue after these Terms end continue to apply, including those on intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, governing law and general provisions.

21Google Play

You obtain the app through Google Play. Your download, and any purchase you make, is also governed by the Google Play Terms of Service and Google’s policies. Where these Terms conflict with Google Play’s terms on the distribution, billing, refunds or licensing of apps obtained from Google Play, Google Play’s terms prevail to the extent of that conflict.

These Terms are between you and the developer only, not Google. Google is not responsible for the app or its content and has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for it. Android and Google Play are trademarks of Google LLC.

22Governing law and disputes

These Terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them or the app, including non-contractual disputes, are governed by the law of the country in which the developer is established, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

The courts competent for the place where the developer is established have jurisdiction. If you are a consumer, you keep the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of your country of residence, and you may bring proceedings in the courts of that country where that law allows it.

Before starting formal proceedings, please write to support@zydeno.com and give us at least 30 days to try to resolve the issue informally. This does not affect any time limit that applies to you by law or your right to use an alternative dispute-resolution body available to consumers in your country.

23General provisions

• Entire agreement. These Terms, the Privacy Policy and any additional terms you accept for optional features are the entire agreement between you and us about the app.
• Severability. If a provision is found invalid or unenforceable, it applies to the maximum extent permitted and the rest remains in effect.
• No waiver. Not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of the right to enforce it later.
• Assignment. You may not transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms. We may transfer ours, for example together with the app to another developer; where the law requires, this will not reduce your rights as a consumer.
• Events beyond our control. We are not responsible for failure or delay caused by events beyond our reasonable control, such as outages of networks, devices or third-party services, natural disasters or acts of authorities.
• Export and sanctions. You agree to use the app in compliance with applicable export-control and sanctions laws.
• No third-party rights. No one other than you and us may enforce these Terms.
• Notices. We may give notices in the app, in its store listing or release notes, or on this page. You can send notices to support@zydeno.com.
• Language. These Terms are written in English, which is the binding version. A translation, if offered, is for convenience only, unless the law of your country requires otherwise.

24Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms, for example when we change the app, introduce ads or paid features (§15), or when the law changes. The effective date and version at the top of this page show which version applies, and the version history (§25) summarises the changes.

For material changes we give reasonable notice before they take effect, for example in the release notes or in the app. If you keep using the app after the changes take effect, you accept the updated Terms; if you do not agree, stop using the app and uninstall it. Changes do not apply to disputes that arose before they took effect.

25Version history

26Contact

• Developer: Zydeno, the developer of Sayholm on Google Play
• E-mail: support@zydeno.com
• Website: zydeno.com

See also the Privacy Policy.