Privacy Policy

Last updated 8 October 2026

Who is responsible

Highlighted is made by Matthew Berendt, Kraków, Poland, who is the controller of the data described here. Contact: highlighted@berendt.ai.

What stays on your iPhone

• Audio recordings of the lessons you start. They are stored in Highlighted's private storage, excluded from iCloud and device backups, and never uploaded.
• Transcripts, made on the iPhone by a speech model (Whisper, run on-device with WhisperKit, or Apple's on-device speech recognition on older iPhones).
• Notes, flashcards and practice checks, your edits and corrections, your timetable and the tests you enter.

Deleting a lesson in Notes removes its recording, transcript and note. Deleting the app removes everything.

What leaves your iPhone, and why

• To write a note: the transcript text, the class name, the date, the lesson language and its length are sent over an encrypted connection to Highlighted's server, hosted by Hetzner Online GmbH in Germany (EU).
• To answer a question in Ask: your question, your timetable, the tests you entered, and the notes and transcript lines most related to the question are sent the same way.
• The server passes this text to Anthropic (Anthropic, PBC, USA), whose Claude model writes the note or the answer and sends it back. Under Anthropic's commercial terms this data is not used to train its models; Anthropic may keep inputs and outputs for a limited period to detect misuse, and then deletes them.
• Highlighted's server does not store transcripts, notes, questions or answers. Its logs contain only the time, the result code, how long the request took, its size and the number of model tokens used. They contain no text from your lessons and no IP addresses.
• Each install has a random identifier, created by the app and not linked to you, your device or your Apple Account. The server uses it only to apply a daily usage limit and forgets it within a day.
• Requests also carry your subscription's App Store transaction, signed by Apple, so the server can check the plan is active. It reads the product and the expiry date, keeps the transaction number in memory for at most a day to apply the daily limit, and stores nothing.
• Audio never leaves the iPhone. Cloud transcription, where audio would be sent to the server, is not available in this version. If it is added, audio will leave the iPhone only when you turn Highlighted Cloud on, and this policy will say so first.

The legal basis for this processing is providing the service you asked for (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). Transfers to Anthropic in the USA are covered by the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

Recording other people

A lesson may include the voices of a teacher and classmates. Their words can appear in your transcript and are processed as described above, only to write your note. You are responsible for getting permission from the teacher or school before recording. Highlighted's notes refer to "the teacher" and don't name students.

Other services the app uses

• Apple handles purchases and subscriptions. Highlighted never sees your payment details.
• Hugging Face hosts the speech model the app downloads once. The download is a normal file transfer; nothing about you or your lessons is sent.
• Apple Calendar, if you choose to import your timetable: the app reads only the calendar you pick, on the iPhone, and never changes your calendars.
• Class reminders are local notifications scheduled on the iPhone.

Who Highlighted is for

Highlighted is meant for high-school and university students. If you are under 16, ask a parent or guardian before using it.

Your rights

Everything Highlighted keeps is on your iPhone, where you can see, correct and delete it. The server holds no personal data to access or delete. You can contact us at highlighted@berendt.ai with any question, and you have the right to complain to the Polish data protection authority (Prezes Urzędu Ochrony Danych Osobowych, uodo.gov.pl).

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version is published here with a new date before the change takes effect.