Last updated · July 30, 2026
Hi-Ho is built by documentary editors, for documentary editors. The short version: your footage stays on your machine, we collect only what we need to run the service and find bugs, and we never sell your data.
When you drop video or audio into Hi-Ho, the file is read directly from your disk by the macOS app. Your original files are never uploaded, and your video is never sent anywhere, in any form.
To produce a transcript, Hi-Ho extracts the audio on your machine, downmixes it to mono 16 kHz, and compresses it into five-minute chunks of roughly a megabyte each. Those chunks — a speech-only derivative, not your master media — are sent over HTTPS through our server to Groq, which transcribes them and returns the text. We hold that audio in memory only as long as it takes to pass it along: it is never written to disk, never logged, and never stored on our servers.
Once a transcript exists, asking Hi-Ho to mine it for story structure sends the transcript text to Anthropic's Claude API. Story Chat, speaker identification, caption translation, and Compose do the same each time you use them. Speaker identification additionally sends the file names of your media, so that names spoken in the conversation can be matched to clips. As with audio, we pass this through without storing it.
Your video files, your original audio files, project files, and any frames or thumbnails stay on your machine. Project files (.hiho) you save are stored on your Mac. We do not sync, back up, or read them.
Hi-Ho uses Google Sign-In. We never see, handle, or store a password of our own. When you create an account we store, via Supabase:
Email is used for authentication, billing receipts, and transactional product emails (e.g. "your credits ran out"). We do not send marketing email without explicit opt-in.
Card payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your card number. Stripe returns us a customer ID, the amount, and a receipt URL — that's it. Stripe's privacy policy applies to payment data: stripe.com/privacy.
To find bugs, fix crashes, and decide what to build next, the Hi-Ho macOS app sends a small amount of telemetry to our server. Each event includes:
mine.start, error)We do not collect: file paths, file names, transcript text, clipboard, screen recordings, microphone audio, IP-based geolocation, or browsing activity outside Hi-Ho.
Telemetry is stored in a rolling buffer that holds roughly the most recent 10,000 events globally. Older events are deleted automatically.
How long we keep things. Transcripts, prompts, and the AI's replies are not retained by us at all — they pass through our server and are never written down (our providers apply their own retention, linked in §6). What we do keep:
Opting out: open Hi-Ho → Settings → Privacy → toggle off "Send anonymous usage data". Errors that crash the app are still reported with no identifying information when the app restarts, unless you also disable that setting.
Hi-Ho uses the following third-party AI services:
Requests to these providers are routed through our server so your API keys never live in the app binary.
We keep your account data for as long as your account exists. If you delete your account (email hi@hi-ho.ai) we remove your email, user record, and credit balance within 7 days. Telemetry events tied to your user ID are unlinked at the same time and naturally fall out of the rolling buffer.
Stripe retains payment records as long as required by tax and accounting law (typically 7 years).
If you live in the EU, UK, or California, you have specific rights over your personal data: access, correction, deletion, and portability. Email us at hi@hi-ho.ai and we'll respond within 30 days. We honour these requests regardless of where you live.
Hi-Ho is not intended for users under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has given us personal data, contact us and we'll delete it.
When we change this policy meaningfully we'll update the "last updated" date at the top of this page. For significant changes (new categories of data collected, new processors), we'll also email registered users.
Hi-Ho is operated by Negative, LLC. Questions, requests, or concerns: hi@hi-ho.ai.