Privacy Policy
Last updated:
This page explains what happens to your data in the radio app published at alradio.app (shown on the iPhone today as “Echo Radio”), and on this website.
In short
- No account, no ads, no analytics or tracking.
- What you save — favourites, hidden stations, your own stations, your Shazam history, your listening history and your settings — stays on your device.
- The app asks for no permission: no microphone, location, contacts or photos.
- The app connects to other services so its features work, and sends each only what that feature needs, as set out below.
What stays on your device
The app keeps, on your device only:
- Your favourites and their order, your hidden stations, and the stations you add yourself.
- Your Shazam history: the songs it named, when, and on which station. Nothing is removed from it automatically; you can delete a song or clear it all in the app.
- Your listening history: each listening session of 30 seconds or more (the station, when it began, how long it lasted), the latest 2,000 sessions only, to show what you listened to lately.
- Your settings: language, appearance and colours, the Shazam Effects options, and Even Volume with the loudness it measures for each station.
- Cached copies of station pictures, which iOS removes whenever it needs the space.
None of this is uploaded to any server, and no one else sees it. Like any app’s data, it is part of your device’s backup (iCloud or a computer) if you back it up.
A copy that outlasts deleting the app
The app keeps a copy of your favourites, hidden stations and your own stations in your device’s keychain. iOS keeps it even after the app is deleted, so if you install the app again, it restores them once, at the first launch. The copy is not synced to iCloud Keychain, and it is included in your device’s encrypted backups.
The copy is updated after every change, so if you empty those lists before deleting the app, the copy is emptied too. Your Shazam history, listening history and settings are deleted with the app.
What leaves your device, and to whom
Radio needs the internet. These are all the parties the app connects to and what reaches them. As with any internet connection, each of them sees your device’s IP address.
The station list — Google Firebase
The app reads the list of stations (their names, links and pictures) from Cloud Firestore, a Google service within Firebase. It only reads: no account is needed, and nothing you have saved is sent.
Station pictures — Cloudinary
The pictures of the listed stations come from Cloudinary, an image hosting service. The picture of a station you added comes from the link it was taken from.
The broadcast itself — the stations
The sound comes straight from each station’s server, or from whoever hosts its stream, as with any internet radio, so that server sees that you are listening. The app may ask a station’s server ahead of time for its actual stream link, so the sound starts sooner.
Naming the song — Shazam by Apple
When you tap the Shazam button, the app turns the station’s sound into an audio signature on your device and sends it to Apple’s Shazam service to name the song. It never uses the microphone: it hears the station alone. The result is saved in your Shazam history on your device.
The song’s cover — Apple
When a station names the song it is playing, the app asks Apple’s iTunes Search for its cover, sending the song’s title and artist as the station broadcasts them, and your device’s region.
Opening a song in a music service
When you tap Deezer, the app sends the song’s recording code (ISRC) to Deezer to open it. Apple Music opens the song’s page; Spotify, YouTube and Anghami open a search for the song’s title and artist. This happens only when you tap, and from there that service’s policy applies.
Adding your own station — Radio Browser
When you paste a link to add a station, the app opens that link and the pages and streams it names to find the stream and check that it plays, and asks Radio Browser (radio-browser.info, a public directory of stations) about the link or the name to learn the station’s name, picture and country. If you search Radio Browser from the app, it receives what you type; if you pick one of its stations, the app tells it so — a click the directory uses to learn which stations are listened to most.
A station’s words as text — on your device
Turning what a station says into text happens on your device, with Apple’s speech recognition model, and nothing of it is sent. The model may be downloaded from Apple the first time.
Siri, Shortcuts and Spotlight
The app gives iOS, on your device, the names of the stations so you can find them with Siri, Shortcuts and Spotlight search. What you ask Siri is handled by Apple under its own policy.
What the app does not do
- It does not ask for an account, your name or your email.
- It shows no ads and contains no analytics or crash-reporting tools from other parties.
- It does not track you across apps and websites, and it does not sell any data.
- It asks for none of the iOS permissions.
This website
This website uses no cookies and no analytics, and loads nothing from other sites. Your device’s IP address reaches the server that hosts it so it can send you the pages, as with any website.
Changes
If what the app does with your data changes, we update this page and the date above.
Contact
Questions or feedback: info@alradio.app