Privacy and usage data
Your meetings stay yours. Lalela does send a small amount of anonymous usage data so we can see which features help people and which get in the way. This page lists exactly what that is and how to switch it off. The full policy is at lalela.auxodigital.africa/privacy.
You can also check the on-device part for yourself: the code that records, transcribes and stores your meetings is open source as Lalela Community.
The two switches
In the desktop and iPhone apps, open Settings → Recording and find the Privacy & consent section.
| Switch | Starts as | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Share anonymous usage data | On | Tells us which features get used. Untick it and sending stops straight away, and stays off. |
| Send anonymous crash & error reports | Off | When something breaks, sends a cleaned-up error report so we can fix it. |
The first-run screen also has the usage data checkbox, so you can untick it before you start.
On the web app, go to Settings → Privacy and untick Share anonymous usage data. This also stops Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity in that browser. The choice is saved per browser, so set it on each browser you use.
Microsoft Clarity shows us how pages in the web app get used, such as where people click and scroll. On the web app all text is masked in your browser before anything is sent, so your meetings, transcripts, notes and chats never reach Clarity. It never runs on shared meeting links.
What usage data includes
Usage data records that something happened, never what was in it:
- The app was opened, its version, and whether it's a first launch or just after an update
- You saw the sign-in screen, created an account, signed in or signed out
- First-run setup was started or finished
- A recording started or stopped, and roughly how long it was (for example "5–15 minutes")
- A transcription finished, which engine ran it, and whether it worked
- A meeting was imported, and from where (an audio file, a transcript file, Teams, Otter and so on)
- A summary was made or tasks were suggested, with the kind of AI used (on-device, your own key or the free allowance) and the model family, such as "Claude" or "Llama"
- You opened one of the main screens: Meetings, Search, Chat, Tasks, Knowledge, Automations or Settings
- You searched (a rough count of results, never your search words)
- You sent a chat message (that you sent one, never what it said)
- You added a task, made a share link, exported a meeting or sent one to a connected tool
- An automation or folder rule ran, and whether it worked
- Whether sync and update checks are working
- When you first try newer features, such as auto-sort, folder automations, dictation and Send to Atlas
- When you report an AI result (the problem category and which screen — never your comment or the AI text)
Each event also includes your app version, operating system, chip type, whether you're signed in, and your plan.
What it never includes
Audio, recordings, transcripts, notes, summaries, chat messages, AI prompts or answers, meeting titles, people's names or email addresses, file or folder names, your search words, anything you type, voiceprints or screenshots. Lalela has no automatic click tracking or screen recording. Only the events listed above can be sent, and anything else is dropped before it leaves your device.
Reporting an AI result is separate from usage data: it only happens when you press Report and send. The usage event records just the problem category and which screen it came from. The report itself — your comment, and the AI text only if you leave Include the AI output in my report ticked — goes to Auxo Digital for review, never to PostHog. See the FAQ for what a report contains.
Is it linked to me?
If you're not signed in, events use a random ID made on your device. If you sign in, they're tied to your account's internal ID (never your email address), so we can see how the desktop, iPhone and web apps are used together. Signing out starts a new random ID. Crash reports are never linked to your account.
Where it goes
Usage data and crash reports go to PostHog in the EU. We keep them for up to 12 months, and we don't sell them or use them for advertising. To have your usage data deleted, email support@auxodigital.africa.
Measuring our ads
When you arrive on our website from one of our ads, the site keeps the campaign tags from the link (such as which ad it was) in a cookie for 90 days. The web app reads the same cookie when you create an account. Ad click IDs from Google or Meta are only kept if you accept advertising cookies in the banner.
When you confirm an account created on the web (including Continue with Auxo ID), its email address, account ID and those campaign tags go to Duma, Auxo Digital's own marketing system, so we can count sign-ups per campaign. The same happens once when you record your second meeting (activation). Accounts created in the Mac, Windows or iPhone app send Duma only the account ID, with no email address, and are never passed on to anyone.
Duma runs on Convex, hosted in the United States, so this data leaves South Africa. Duma deletes the plain email address within 30 days and keeps only a hashed form after that. Only if you accepted advertising cookies does Duma pass the sign-up and the activation on to Meta and Google, with your email address hashed, plus your browser's user agent and the ad click IDs, so they can tell us which ads work. The Meta Pixel runs only on our website, never in the apps. Meeting content is never part of any of this. Deleting your account deletes Lalela's record of these events.
Cloud AI asks first
Summaries, chat, tasks, Copilot and automations can run on a cloud AI model. When they do, the text they work on (your transcript, notes and question) goes through our server to OpenRouter, which passes it to the company behind the model you picked, such as Anthropic, OpenAI or Google. With your own OpenRouter key it goes straight to OpenRouter, which is still a third party, so it needs the same permission.
In the Lalela app on iPhone, iPad and Windows (Microsoft Store), and on Mac and the direct Windows download from version 1.3.11, Lalela asks once before it sends anything to a cloud AI model. The question appears the first time you start something that needs cloud AI yourself, such as pressing Generate on a summary or sending a chat message. Choose Allow to go ahead, or Not now to keep everything on your device.
Until you've answered, automatic steps never ask and never send anything. A new meeting keeps its default name instead of an AI title, an automatic summary waits for you, and automations, folder rules and scheduled reports skip their AI steps.
To change your answer later, open Settings → Recording, find Privacy & consent, and tick or untick Allow cloud AI. On-device options never need this permission: a local model you download in Settings → AI (Mac and Windows) and Apple Intelligence where your device has it.