Privacy ་ Kerog for iPhone and Mac

Privacy Policy

Last updated 5 October 2026 ་ Applies to Kerog for iPhone, Kerog for Mac, and this website.

Kerog collects nothing about you. There is no account, no sign-in, no analytics, no advertising, and no tracking of any kind. No usage data is gathered, and none is sold or shared, because none exists.

Everything the app does with Tibetan — listening, reading a photographed page, translating, speaking and the dictionary — runs on your phone, and works in aeroplane mode.

There are exactly four ways anything can leave your phone, all described in full below. One is a feature you switch on yourself and which is off until you do. The second is Apple's own English dictation. The third is a weekly question to the App Store — is there a newer version? — which carries nothing of yours. The fourth is your glossaries, kept in your own iCloud Drive so that your devices share them.

Kerog for Mac is the same app, and everything on this page holds for it: where it says phone, read Mac. Where the two differ, it says so.

Who is behind this

Kerog is made by Ramon Blanquer — one person, with no company behind it, no investor, and nothing being sold. That matters here only because it is why there is no reason to collect anything about you: there is no business that data could serve. Questions about anything on this page go to blanquer.ramon@gmail.com, and are answered by the person who wrote the app.

What the app stores, and where

Recordings, transcripts, photographed pages and anything you type are held on your device, in the app's own storage, the same as any other file on your phone. They are not copied anywhere else. Deleting an item in the app deletes it; deleting the app removes all of it.

Nothing in that storage is readable by anyone but you, and none of it is backed up to any server run by this project, because there is no server run by this project. If you have iCloud backup switched on for your device, your phone's own backup behaviour applies, which is a matter between you and Apple.

The four things that can leave your phone

1. The Cloud (Monlam AI) — off until you switch it on

Models small enough to fit on a phone are less accurate than models running on a server. So Settings has a section called Cloud (Monlam AI) with a switch for each task — speech to text, translation, reading a page, speaking. Every one of them is off when you install the app.

If you switch one on, then for that task and no other, the relevant content is sent to Monlam AI, a Tibetan-language AI service run by the Monlam Tibetan IT Research Center. That means:

Sent, if you switch it on: Speech to text — the audio you recorded or shared in.
Translation — the Tibetan or English text of that sentence.
Reading a page — the photograph of the page.
Speaking — the text to be read aloud.
Never sent, ever: The word-by-word gloss and the dictionary. Both are bundled with the app and always run on the phone, whatever the switches say.
Never sent, ever: Your identity. Nothing that identifies you or your device accompanies a request, because the app holds nothing that identifies you.

Two things worth knowing before you switch one on. Kerog uses Monlam AI's free public service, which is not run by this project and carries no promise of availability — it can be busy, slow, or unavailable, and when it fails the task falls back to your phone. And where a task sends a file rather than text — your recording, or your photograph of a page — that file is uploaded to Monlam and kept on their servers, for as long as their own terms provide.

Monlam AI's own handling of what it receives is governed by their terms, not by this policy. Their service is at monlam.ai. If you would rather send them nothing at all, leave every switch off and the app is complete without them — that is the state it ships in.

2. Apple's dictation, in the two places the app listens for English

Tibetan speech never goes to Apple. The Tibetan recogniser is bundled with Kerog and runs on the phone, and the only other place Tibetan audio can go is the Cloud switch described above.

English is different. Rather than bundle a second large model, Kerog uses Apple's dictation, which is already on your phone. Two things in the app use it:

The microphone in Look up — tapping it and saying a word to search the dictionary.
Recording or listening with the direction set English → Tibetan — speaking English to have it translated for the person in front of you.

Worth knowing about the first one, because it is not what you would guess: when you say tashi delek into the Look up microphone, that goes through Apple's English recogniser, not the Tibetan one. That is deliberate — catching the word as an English speaker would spell out the sound is exactly what lets the dictionary find it.

In both cases Kerog asks Apple to do the recognition on the device. Most iPhones have Apple's English dictation installed, and on those it does stay on the phone. On an iPhone that does not have it, Apple's dictation sends that audio to Apple instead — exactly as it would for any other app you dictate into. It is Apple handling it under Apple's privacy policy, and Kerog neither sees a copy nor keeps one.

3. A weekly check for a newer version — to Apple, with nothing of yours

Better models reach Kerog in app updates, and the App Store usually installs those by itself. For the phones where it does not, Kerog asks the App Store, at most once a week, whether there is a newer version than the one installed. If there is, Settings says so, with a button that opens the App Store.

Sent: The app's identifier, com.ramon.Kerog, to Apple's public App Store lookup — the same information the App Store page itself is built from. Like any request on the internet, it reaches Apple with your connection's IP address.
Never sent, ever: Anything you recorded, typed or photographed, and anything that identifies you or your device. The request carries no cookies and nothing from any request before it.
Never sent to this project: Anything at all. The question goes to Apple, which installed the app on your phone in the first place; there is no server run by this project for it to go to.

It waits while the phone is in Low Data Mode, and in aeroplane mode it simply does not happen. To stop it altogether, switch off Check for updates under Updates in Kerog's Settings. On the Mac the request also says it is the Mac asking, so the answer is the Mac's version.

4. Your glossaries — to your own iCloud Drive

A glossary keeps the meaning you chose for a word, so the word opens on it the next time. Where iCloud Drive is switched on for Kerog, each glossary is kept as a spreadsheet in a Kerog folder in your iCloud Drive, so your iPhone and your Mac hold the same ones. This is on unless you switch it off.

Sent, unless you switch it off: Each glossary: its name, its words, and the meaning you chose for each, or wrote in your own words. To Apple's iCloud, under your own Apple account and Apple's privacy policy.
Never sent, ever: The sentence you chose a meaning in, and anything you recorded, typed or photographed.
Never sent to this project: Anything at all. The folder is yours, in your iCloud Drive, and this project has no way to read it.

To keep your glossaries on the device alone, switch off Sync with iCloud Drive under Glossaries in Kerog's Settings; nothing is deleted. Signed in to a different Apple account from the one it last synced with, Kerog switches it off by itself rather than carry one person's glossaries into another's iCloud.

Permissions the app asks for

Microphone: To record or listen. Audio is transcribed on your phone unless you switched the Cloud on for speech.
Camera: To photograph a page of Tibetan. The photograph is read on your phone unless you switched the Cloud on for pages. The Mac app does not use the camera.
Photo library: Only the images you pick. Kerog does not browse, index or scan your library.
Files, on the Mac: Only the files you open, drop or paste into Kerog, and the place you choose to save a glossary. The Mac app is sandboxed and can reach nothing else on the disk.
Speech recognition: Apple's dictation, for English only, as described above.

Refusing any of them disables that one way in and nothing else. You can change your mind at any time in the iPhone's own Settings, or the Mac's System Settings.

Children

Kerog is rated 4+ and is suitable for any age. It collects nothing from anyone, children included, and it has no user accounts, no messaging, no user-generated content shown to other people, and no advertising.

This website

This site is static — text, pictures and short silent videos. It sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and has no tracking pixels or share buttons.

It is hosted on Cloudflare Pages, which like any web host records the requests it serves, including IP addresses, as part of delivering and protecting the site. That is Cloudflare's processing under their privacy policy. The site's typefaces are served by Google Fonts, so loading a page tells Google your IP address — the one third-party request on the site, and the only reason your browser contacts anyone but Cloudflare.

Your rights

Data-protection law gives you rights to see, correct, export and erase personal data held about you. They are satisfied here in the simplest possible way: there is nothing to see, correct, export or erase, because nothing about you is collected or stored by this project. What is on your phone is yours, under your control, and removable by deleting the app. If you believe otherwise, write and ask — the address is above.

Changes to this policy

If the app changes in a way that changes this page, this page changes with it, and the date at the top moves. Material changes — anything that would send something new off your phone — will also appear in the app's release notes rather than only here.