Last updated: June 27, 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 Mac. 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 Mac. 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 | Sync your own cache across your devices, and — anonymously — speed up first playback of the same song for everyone. |
None of these 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.
During the beta, 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 off at any time in Settings → Share anonymous usage, and 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.
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? Use Report a Bug inside the app (Help → Report a Bug), or open an issue at our releases repository.