1. The short version
SonoLab does not collect your personal data.
Sound from the microphone is turned into numbers — decibel levels and frequency bands — on your device, and those numbers are what the app works with. Nothing from the microphone is sent anywhere, and nothing from it reaches us. There is no account, no sign-up, no analytics service, no advertising and no third-party tracking code in the app. The measurements you save stay on your device and, if you use iCloud, in your own private iCloud account.
2. Who we are
SonoLab ("the app") is developed and published by Miguel Cozaín ("we", "us"), an independent developer. This policy explains what the app does with information on your device. It covers the SonoLab iPhone app and this website.
3. The microphone and your audio
SonoLab is a sound level meter. To measure sound it needs access to your iPhone's microphone, and iOS will ask you for permission the first time you start a measurement. You can decline; the app will simply not be able to measure.
How the audio is handled:
- Audio is processed on your device, in real time, to compute sound pressure levels and a frequency spectrum.
- Nothing from the microphone is transmitted off your device — not to us, and not to anyone else.
- No speech recognition, no audio fingerprinting and no content analysis of any kind is performed. The app only measures how loud sound is and at which frequencies.
- What is kept is derived numeric data only: levels, averages, peaks and band magnitudes, and only when you explicitly save a session or a spectrum capture.
Background measurement. SonoLab declares the iOS "audio" background mode so that a measurement session you started keeps running when the app is not on screen — for example while a work shift continues. The microphone is only active while a session is running, and iOS shows its usual system indicator whenever it is. Stopping the session releases the microphone.
4. What SonoLab stores
Everything below is stored locally on your device by the app:
- Sessions you save. A name you type, the start time and duration, the average, peak and dose figures, a compact trace of the level over time, and the settings the session was measured with (exposure standard, frequency weighting, time response, calibration offset).
- Spectrum captures you save. The time of the capture and the band levels it contained.
- Your settings. Calibration offset, weighting, time response, alert threshold, chosen exposure standard, whether onboarding has been completed, and similar preferences.
The app does not ask for, and has no way to obtain, your name, email address, phone number, contacts, photos, precise location, health data or any other personal identifier.
5. iCloud sync
If your device is signed in to iCloud, SonoLab syncs your saved sessions,
captures and settings through Apple's CloudKit service, using the
private database of the app's iCloud container
(iCloud.com.miguelcozain.sonometer). In practice this means:
- The data lives in your own iCloud account, under your Apple Account, and counts against your iCloud storage.
- It is available to your other devices signed into the same Apple Account, and to nobody else.
- A private CloudKit database is not readable by the app's developer. We cannot see your sessions, your levels or your file names.
- Apple processes this data as your cloud provider under Apple's Privacy Policy.
- If iCloud is unavailable — no iCloud account, iCloud Drive turned off, or the container unreachable — SonoLab falls back to storing everything locally on the device only.
You can turn syncing off at any time in iOS Settings under your Apple Account → iCloud.
6. Notifications
SonoLab can alert you when the sound level crosses the threshold you set. These are local notifications, created on your device by the app itself. No push server is involved, no device token is registered with us, and no data leaves your phone to produce them. iOS asks for your permission before the first one is shown, and you can revoke it in iOS Settings → Notifications.
7. Exporting and sharing
You can export a session as a PDF report. The export is created on your device and handed to the standard iOS share sheet, where you choose what happens to it — save it to Files, mail it, send it to another app. We receive no copy, and we have no visibility into where you send it. Once the file leaves the app it is governed by the privacy policy of whichever service or app you sent it to.
8. What we do not do
- We do not collect, transmit or store any personal data on our own servers. We do not operate a server for this app.
- We do not use analytics, crash-reporting or attribution SDKs.
- We do not use advertising, ad identifiers or any form of tracking, and we do not track you across apps or websites owned by other companies as defined by Apple's App Tracking Transparency framework.
- We do not sell, rent or share personal information with third parties — there is none to sell.
- We do not create user profiles or make automated decisions about you.
The app ships with a privacy manifest that declares no tracking, no tracking domains and no collected data types.
9. Apple and the App Store
SonoLab is distributed through Apple's App Store. Apple independently collects information about downloads, purchases and, if you opt in, crash and usage statistics for developers, all of which reach us only in aggregated, anonymized form through App Store Connect. That processing is Apple's, described in Apple's Privacy Policy, and is outside our control.
The app may occasionally ask you to rate it using Apple's standard in-app review prompt. That prompt is presented and handled entirely by iOS; we never learn whether you rated the app or what you wrote.
10. Your choices and controls
- Microphone: grant or revoke at any time in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone → SonoLab.
- Notifications: iOS Settings → Notifications → SonoLab.
- iCloud sync: iOS Settings → your name → iCloud.
- Background measurement: only happens while a session you started is running. Stop the session and it ends.
11. Deleting your data
- Delete individual sessions and spectrum captures inside the History tab.
- Deleting the app removes everything stored on that device.
- To remove the synced copies, delete the app's iCloud data in iOS Settings → your name → iCloud → Manage Account Storage.
Because we hold no copy of your data, we cannot delete it for you — and we have nothing to delete on our side.
12. Children
SonoLab is a general-audience measurement tool. It is not directed at children, and because it collects no personal information at all, it collects none from children either. If you believe a child has somehow provided us with personal data, contact us and we will look into it.
13. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export or delete personal data a company holds about you — for example under the GDPR in the European Economic Area and the UK, the CCPA/CPRA in California, or the LFPDPPP in Mexico. Those rights apply to data a controller holds. We hold none: your measurements never leave your device and your own iCloud account, both of which are under your direct control as described above. If you have a question about this, write to us and we will answer it.
14. Changes to this policy
If the app changes in a way that affects this policy, we will update this page and change the date at the top. Material changes will also be noted in the App Store release notes. Continuing to use the app after an update means you accept the revised policy.
15. Contact
Questions about privacy in SonoLab go to contact@sonolabapp.com.