Last updated: July 30, 2026
High Videlity is built privacy-first. It works offline, needs no account, and your audio never leaves your device — all music analysis happens locally on your device. The only things sent off your device are a song's title and artist, used to look up extra musical detail that makes the visuals smarter. We don't show ads, we don't track you across the web, and we never sell your data.
High Videlity listens to whatever you're playing and turns it into a real-time visual. The audio analysis — the spectrum, beat, key, and stem separation that drive the visuals — runs entirely on your device. We never upload your audio files or recordings. For optional song identification, Apple's ShazamKit computes an audio fingerprint and sends it to Apple; that is handled by Apple under Apple's Privacy Policy.
When the app can reach the internet, it looks up extra musical detail to tune the visuals to the track. Here is every piece of data that leaves your device and the service it goes to:
| Service | What's sent | Why |
|---|---|---|
| GetSongBPM | Track title & artist | Look up tempo (BPM) and musical key. |
| MusicBrainz | Track title & artist (or ISRC) | Resolve a stable song ID for enrichment. |
| AcousticBrainz | Song ID | Fetch beat positions and character attributes that tune the visuals. |
| lrclib | Track title, artist & duration | Fetch time-synced lyrics. |
| Apple Music & ShazamKit | Catalog requests / audio fingerprints | Playback and song identification, handled by Apple. |
| iCloud (CloudKit) | Song ID + derived musical features for songs you own; for songs recognized as commercial recordings, the computed stem features with title, artist and album | Sync your own cache across your devices, and — anonymously — give everyone instant stem detail on the same song. Stem sharing is on by default and can be turned off in Settings › Privacy & data on the Mac. Never audio, never unrecognized files. |
| Community presets | The handle and display name you choose, plus the presets you publish | Only if you publish a preset. Publish nothing and none of this leaves your device. |
None of the music lookups include your name, account, email, or any personal identifier — only the track's public metadata. We never put personal data in a web address or share it with anyone the request isn't for. The one exception is the last row: publishing a preset is public and uses a handle you choose, and it only ever happens if you ask for it — see Publishing a preset below.
This is off by default, and nothing is sent unless you switch it on yourself in Settings → Share anonymous usage. If you do turn it on, then when a song plays the app sends an anonymous event — the track's title and artist plus a random install identifier (not tied to your Apple ID, name, email, or device) — so we can see which music to tune for. It contains no personal information. You can turn it back off at any time, and either way it carries no penalty: the app works exactly the same.
If you're signed in to iCloud, your own analysis cache (preview offsets, tempo/key, and stem data) syncs privately across your devices through your iCloud account. Separately, for songs you own and that the app analyzed end-to-end, anonymized derived musical features (such as tempo, key, and stem analysis) may be contributed to a shared database so the next person who plays that song gets an instant result. This shared data describes the music, not you — it carries no personal identifier.
On the Mac, when you play a song from your local library (or press Cache), High Videlity analyzes it on your machine to separate the drums, bass, vocals and the rest. This runs entirely on your Mac and takes about a minute per song the first time. It keeps a small file of what it learned — about 1–2 MB per song, never the audio — so the song reacts with full stem detail every time after; those files stay until you remove them in Settings › Storage.
When a song is recognized (matched by ShazamKit to a commercial recording), the same derived features are also shared to a public High Videlity cache together with the recording's title, artist and album, so it plays with stem detail instantly on your other devices and for every other listener. Only recognized recordings are shared; personal recordings, demos and anything else that isn't recognized never leave your Mac. This sharing is on by default and can be turned off at any time in Settings › Privacy & data. Shared records carry no name or account identifier.
Sharing a preset with the community is the one part of High Videlity that is public and tied to you, so it works differently from everything above. To publish, you claim a handle and a display name of your choosing. Those are shown publicly on every preset you share, and they're linked to your iCloud account so that nobody else can publish under your handle. Your Apple ID, name and email are never shown or stored — only the handle you picked.
This is entirely opt-in and it's the only flow that publishes anything about you. Browse and download all you like without it: if you never publish a preset, you never claim a handle, and none of this leaves your device.
High Videlity is not directed to children under 13 and does not knowingly collect personal information from them.
If this policy changes, we'll update the date at the top of this page. Material changes will be reflected here before they take effect.
Questions about privacy, or want your data handled differently? Email beta@highvidelity.com, use Report a Bug inside the app, or open an issue at our releases repository.