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Privacy

Rooster edits video on your Mac. Your recordings, transcripts and projects stay on your Mac and are never uploaded to us. We do not operate a server that receives your media, so there is nothing on our side to hand over, sell or lose. This page is mostly a list of the few things that do cross the network, so that the claim above can be checked rather than taken on trust.

Last updated: 9 November 2026

1. Who we are

Rooster is operated from 25 Wilton Road, Pimlico, London SW1V 1LW, United Kingdom. For anything on this page, including any request about your own data, write to support@rooster.cam. We are the data controller for the limited personal data described below.

2. What never leaves your Mac

Video and audio you record or import, the transcripts Rooster produces from them, your projects and edit history, and any media you export. Transcription and the Studio Voice, Eye Contact, Green Screen and Blur Background effects all run in the application on your own hardware, and so does the speech recognition the teleprompter’s Voice scroll uses, and finding where the speaker’s face sits in a take so a layout can frame it. The two exceptions are choices you make: if you set up transcription with your own API key, the audio of the file being transcribed goes to the provider you chose, and if you let an AI app such as Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor use Rooster, that app can read your projects’ words, details and frames, as section 3 describes. None of it is sent to us, and Rooster has no account to sign in to.

3. What does cross the network

There are eleven cases, and they are the complete list.

  1. Downloading transcription models

    Rooster transcribes with a model that it downloads the first time you need it, from Hugging Face. That request necessarily discloses your IP address to the host serving the file, in the same way as visiting any website. No recording or transcript is involved: the traffic runs in the other direction. Once the model is on disk, transcription works with networking switched off. The teleprompter’s Voice scroll listens with Apple’s speech recognition on your Mac instead. If macOS does not yet have its speech model for your language, macOS downloads it the first time Voice listens; that request is made by macOS, under Apple’s privacy policy. What the teleprompter hears is recognised on your Mac and not kept.

  2. Checking for a Rooster update

    The copy you download from this site can update itself. Asking whether a newer version exists fetches a small file - from GitHub (raw.githubusercontent.com) in Rooster 1.2.1 and later, and from rooster.cam in earlier versions - which discloses your IP address and the version you are running to the host serving it, in the same way as visiting any website. If there is an update and you accept it, Rooster downloads it from github.com, where our signed releases are stored - that request discloses your IP address to GitHub, and nothing else about you. Nothing about your recordings, transcripts or projects is involved in either request, and no hardware or usage profile is sent with them. Rooster will not check on its own until you have said it may: it asks once, on an early launch, and if you decline you can still check by hand from the Rooster menu. The copy sold through the Mac App Store will not do this at all, because Apple updates that one.

  3. Sending feedback from the app

    Rooster has a Send Feedback box, and asks once, when a free trial ends without a licence, what stopped you. When you press Send in either - and only then - what you typed or picked is posted to rooster.cam, together with your email address if you chose to give one, an image if you chose to attach one, and four facts about the build: the Rooster version, the build number, how you got the copy and your macOS version. The box shows you those facts in a sentence before you send. An image goes only if you put it there - by dropping it on the box, pasting it or choosing a file - and Rooster never captures your screen or your project for it. Before it goes, Rooster shrinks it and saves it again as a JPEG, which leaves behind the location and camera details a photo file can carry, and its file name is not sent. What the picture shows goes as the box shows it, so crop out anything you would rather we did not see. Rooster adds nothing else: no media, no transcripts, no project names, no file paths and no identifier for you or your Mac. As with any request, it discloses your IP address to the host serving it. The message, and any image as an attachment, is relayed straight to our support inbox, delivered by Resend in the same way as the support form below, and nothing is stored on this site: there is no database, no ticket and no log of what you wrote or sent. Your address is used to reply to you and is never added to a mailing list. Opening the box, typing in it and closing it again send nothing. If Rooster has kept a crash report or a record of a transcription problem, the box offers an Attach diagnostics checkbox; tick it and that text, shown in full in the box, goes with your message as an attachment. Left unticked, it stays on your Mac.

  4. Sending a crash report

    If Rooster quits unexpectedly, it writes down what went wrong on your Mac, and the next time you open it, it shows you that report in full and asks once whether to send it. It is posted to rooster.cam only if you press Send, or, if you have turned on Send crash reports automatically in Settings > Diagnostics, without asking - that switch is off unless you turn it on. The report carries what went wrong (the kind of crash and the error message, with any file path or project name taken out), where in Rooster’s code it happened (the names of the program files involved and positions within them), when it happened to the minute, the Rooster version, build number and how you got the copy, your macOS version and the version of Rooster’s project format. It carries no names, no file paths, no project details, no media or transcripts, and no identifier for you or your Mac. You are asked about each report once: press Don’t Send and it stays on your Mac, where Rooster keeps the last five for 30 days. As with any request, sending one discloses your IP address to the host serving it. The report is relayed to our support inbox by Resend, as feedback is, and nothing is stored on this site. We delete a crash report from the inbox once its crash is fixed, and within 12 months of receiving it at the latest. macOS also keeps its own crash reports and shares them with Apple only if you allowed that in System Settings; that is Apple’s, not ours.

  5. Usage counts, if you turn them on

    Rooster can send eight one-time counts that show where new users get stuck: the first launch, the speech model finishing its download, the first recording, import, transcript and export, a licence being activated, and the trial ending without one. Each goes once. It also sends one count on each day you use Rooster, which shows whether people keep using it. Every count carries the Rooster version and build, how you got the copy, your macOS version (major and minor only), whether Apple Intelligence is available on your Mac, the minute it happened and a random ID made only for these counts - never the ID your licence uses. They carry no names, file paths, project details, media, transcripts, licence key or email address. This is off unless you turn it on, on Rooster’s welcome screen or in Settings > Diagnostics, and turning it off stops them and discards the ID, unless you gave your email (the next case), which keeps the ID until you remove it. If you give your email, the counts are linked to it. The counts go to rooster.cam, which uses your IP address only to limit abuse and does not pass it on; it adds the country your request came from, as a two-letter code. The counts are then stored by PostHog, our analytics provider, in the EU (Frankfurt), for one year. Settings > Diagnostics shows the ID; write to us quoting it and we will delete its counts.

  6. Your email, if you give it

    You can give Rooster your email for a reminder before your free trial ends (direct download only), a few tips for your first video, and one question about how easy Rooster has been. It is sent only when you type it on Rooster’s welcome screen or in Settings > Diagnostics and press the button beside it, or Return. What goes is the address, whether usage counts are on, the trial’s last day if Rooster knows it, where you gave it, and the same random ID as the usage counts, so with usage counts on the tips follow what you have done. Turning usage counts on or off while your email is held tells rooster.cam, so the tips follow them only while they are on; counts sent before stay linked until you remove the email. Activating a licence tells rooster.cam too, so the reminder is not sent. rooster.cam uses your IP address only to limit abuse and does not pass it on, and adds a code for the question’s links that only it can read. The address is stored by PostHog in the EU (Frankfurt), which sends the emails from updates.rooster.cam. Every email has an unsubscribe link. Remove in Settings > Diagnostics deletes the address and any usage counts linked to it; until then we keep it, or until you write to us. The email a purchase or a feedback message carries is never used for these emails.

  7. Transcription with your own API key

    If you choose to supply a key for an OpenAI-compatible service, audio from the file you are transcribing is sent to that provider so it can be transcribed, and your key is stored on your Mac. This is off unless you turn it on and provide a key. Your relationship in that case is with the provider you chose, under their terms and their privacy policy, not ours.

  8. Letting an AI app use Rooster

    If you turn on Let AI apps use Rooster in Settings > AI Apps and connect an AI app such as Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor, that app can read your projects’ transcripts, details and frames on your Mac, make edits and start exports. Rooster itself uploads nothing for it; what the AI app then sends to its own service is between you and that app, under its terms and its privacy policy, not ours. This is off unless you turn it on, a project you mark Keep Out of AI Apps stays out, and turning the switch off stops it.

  9. Opening a page in your browser

    Some Help menu items - Rooster Help, Frequently Asked Questions, What’s New in Rooster, Roadmap and Feature Requests, Contact Support, Manage Subscription, Privacy and Terms - and a few links in Settings, open a page in your web browser. Rooster sends nothing itself: your browser loads the page as it would any other. Pages on this site are covered by section 4, and other sites - Creem’s customer portal, Hugging Face and the sites the credits link to - by their own policies. Contact Support, and Send Feedback when it opens the support page instead of its box, put the Rooster version and build number, how you got the copy and your macOS version in the support page’s address, so that the page can show them to you before you send. If you allow this site’s analytics, it records that address as it records any page you open.

  10. Buying Rooster

    Rooster is sold through Creem, operated by Armitage Labs OÜ, which acts as the merchant of record and reseller. When you buy, you do it at a checkout Creem runs: Creem processes the payment, issues the receipt, handles tax and refunds and emails you your licence key, and we never receive or store your card details. Creem shares with us the details of your order - your email address, your name and country as you gave them, what you bought and when, and whether a subscription is active - which we use to support you and to honour your licence. What Creem does with your details is in its privacy policy. When checkout finishes, Creem sends you back to a page on this site whose address carries identifiers for your order. The page does not read them, and site analytics, if you allow it, records the page without them. Entering the licence key in Rooster is the next case, and it sends nothing to Creem except as that case says. Where Rooster is later sold through the Mac App Store, Apple processes that purchase instead and tells us only what it reports to any developer, which does not include your payment details. If you have turned on Apple’s sharing of crash reports with developers, Apple may pass us diagnostic reports; that setting is yours and lives in macOS, not in Rooster.

  11. Activating and checking your licence

    The free trial is kept on your Mac alone and sends nothing to the licence server. Once it ends, Rooster needs a licence: you enter the key from your receipt in Rooster, in Settings > Licence. When you press Activate, Rooster sends the key, a random identifier it makes for your installation, your Mac’s model identifier (such as Mac15,3) and the Rooster version to rooster.cam - our own server, and only ours - which counts the Macs each licence is on, two at most. Nothing is sent on to Creem, with one exception: a key our server has no record of is sent to Creem once, to confirm that it exists and which plan it is for. We keep the key and the installation identifier only as one-way hashes, never as sent, together with the Mac’s model, the dates it was activated and last checked in, and the email address from your purchase. Once a Mac is activated, Rooster checks the licence with rooster.cam now and then - about once a day for a subscription and once a month for a lifetime licence - sending the activation’s identifier, the installation identifier and the Rooster version; a Mac that has never been activated makes no such request. If our server answers that the Mac’s place was released, Rooster activates it again once, by itself, sending the same details as an activation. Deactivate This Mac tells our server to free that Mac’s place. Nothing about your recordings, transcripts or projects is involved, and as with any request, each discloses your IP address to the host serving it.

4. This website

The site loads analytics only if you choose “Allow analytics” in the privacy choices. We remember that choice in your browser’s local storage. It is used only to remember the choice, and you can change it at any time with the Privacy choices button in the footer.

If you allow analytics, the site counts page views using Google Analytics and Vercel Web Analytics. Google Analytics uses first-party analytics cookies to distinguish visits and reports pages, approximate location, device and browser information to us. Advertising storage, ad personalisation and ad-user data are disabled. We do not run Google Ads or use these analytics to advertise to you. The cookies are named _ga and _ga_<container-id>. Google gives both a default lifetime of up to two years, subject to browser limits; withdrawing consent removes them from this site. Google explains the processing in its privacy policy.

Vercel Web Analytics records the page you opened, the site that referred you, the country, region and city the request came from, and your browser, operating system and device type. It writes no cookie or analytics identifier to your device. Repeat views within a day are recognised by a hash Vercel derives from the request itself, and that hash is discarded after 24 hours. It tells us which pages are read. It does not tell us who read them. If you decline analytics, neither analytics service loads.

When you press Download, this site’s server counts the download as it sends you on to the file. The count holds the Rooster version offered, the page on this site you pressed it from and the time, and nothing that identifies you: no cookie is read or written, your IP address is not passed on, and the random ID it carries is made fresh for each count and linked to nothing. It is stored by PostHog in the EU (Frankfurt), as a number of downloads, for one year. Because it identifies nobody and touches nothing on your device, it is made whatever your analytics choice.

The short videos on the homepage are files served from this site, like its images. No third-party video player is embedded, and playing them sends nothing beyond the ordinary request for the file.

The site is hosted by Vercel, which also processes requests on our behalf and keeps short-lived operational logs that include IP addresses, as any web host must in order to serve and protect a site.

The support page has a form. What you type into it - your name, your email address, the topic and your message - is emailed to our support inbox, and so, when Rooster opens the page for you, is a line naming the Rooster version and build number, how you got it and your macOS version, which the page shows you before you send. None of it is stored anywhere else: there is no helpdesk, no database and no ticket. The email is delivered by Resend, which acts on our instructions and handles the message in transit. Your address is used to reply to you and is never added to a mailing list. You never have to use the form; writing to support@rooster.cam from your own mail client reaches the same inbox and involves us no differently.

Our roadmap and feature requests live at roadmap.rooster.cam, a separate site run for us by ProductLift. Nothing of it is embedded in these pages. Anyone can read it; to vote, post or comment you sign in there with an email address and password or with Google, GitHub or X, and ProductLift then holds your email address, any name you give and what you posted or voted for. Your address is used to tell you about requests you posted or voted on. That site asks for its own cookie choice, and ProductLift explains its processing in its privacy policy.

Until 5 October 2026 this site also carried a launch waitlist form and a beta application form. Anything sent through either is an email in the same support inbox, held nowhere else; to have yours deleted, write to support@rooster.cam.

None of this touches the application. Rooster reports nothing about what you edit. Its usage counts, optional email and crash reports, described in section 3, go only if you turn them on, press the button or say yes, and carry nothing from your projects. If we add anything to this website that collects more than the above, we will describe it here before it ships.

5. Legal basis and your rights

For the website analytics described above, our basis is the consent you give in the privacy choices. You can withdraw it at any time with the Privacy choices button in the footer. For the app’s usage counts, our basis is the consent you give by turning them on, which you withdraw by turning them off in Settings > Diagnostics. For the optional email, it is the consent you give by pressing the button, which you withdraw with Remove in Settings > Diagnostics or any email’s unsubscribe link. For other personal data, our basis is our legitimate interest in operating and securing the website and in supporting people who write to us. Under UK GDPR you have the right to ask what we hold, to have it corrected or erased, to object to processing, and to receive a copy. In practice we hold very little beyond the emails you send us, the licence records section 3 describes, usage counts if you turned them on, and your email if you gave it. Write to support@rooster.cam and we will respond within one month.

If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk. We would rather you told us first so we can put it right.

6. Keeping and sharing data

We keep support correspondence for as long as it is useful to the person who sent it and then delete it. We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it except with the providers named on this page acting on our instructions, or where the law requires it.

7. Children

Rooster is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal data.

8. Changes

If this policy changes we will update the date above. Where a change materially affects what leaves your Mac, we will say so in the application as well, because a website nobody revisits is a poor place to hide a change of that kind.