Privacy Policy

The short version

Zella is a video recorder and editor for Mac and iPhone. There is no account, no login, and no cloud. Your recordings, edits, transcripts, captions and exports are processed entirely on your device and stay there. We do not receive them, we cannot see them, and we could not hand them to anyone else if we were asked.

Zella’s app privacy manifest declares no tracking and no collected data types, and that declaration is accurate: the app contains no analytics SDK, no advertising SDK and no crash-reporting SDK.

Three optional features reach the network, and each is described in full below. None of them ever transmits your video or audio.

Who this policy covers

This policy covers the Zella apps for macOS, iOS and iPadOS, and the zellahq.com website. Zella is operated by Nasir Uddin Shamim. For privacy questions, contact privacy@zellahq.com.

Where the GDPR applies, we are the data controller for the limited website and email data described below. For the apps, we are not a controller of your media because we never receive it.

What the apps collect: nothing

We want to be precise rather than reassuring, so here is the complete list of what leaves your device by default: nothing.

• No account, no sign-up, no email address required to use the app.
• No analytics, telemetry, advertising identifiers or fingerprinting.
• No recordings, audio, transcripts, captions, projects or exports.
• No contact list, location, photo library indexing or device identifiers.

Zella does record a small amount of diagnostic information on the device itself - a rolling in-memory buffer of at most 200 recent events such as “export started” or “recording stopped”, used to diagnose problems while the app is running. It is never transmitted anywhere, it is not written to a server, and it is discarded when the app quits.

What runs on your device

All of the following happen locally, using Apple’s on-device frameworks and Zella’s own on-device models, with no network involved:

• Screen, camera and microphone recording
• Transcription for captions, filler-word removal and the transcript editor
• Caption translation on iPhone, through Apple’s on-device Translation framework
• Background removal, replacement and blur
• Auto-Polish, Make it Viral, colour grading, transitions, reframing and audio processing
• Every export

The optional features that use the network

Each of these is off until you choose to use it, and none of them sends your video or audio.

1. Captions model download

The first time you generate captions on iPhone, the app downloads a speech-recognition model of roughly 145 MB from Hugging Face, once. After that, transcription is fully offline. The request is an ordinary file download; it carries no identifier for you and no content from your project. If you never generate captions, it never happens.

2. The AI Assistant

The AI Assistant is off unless you add an API key for a provider you choose yourself (for example OpenAI, Google, Groq, OpenRouter, or a local model through Ollama). When you use it, only the text you type and a short structured summary of your project’s editing state - clip counts, durations, caption text, effect settings - are sent to that provider so it can decide which editing action to run.

Your video and audio are never uploaded. Your key is stored on your device, in the system Keychain on iPhone. The provider you choose handles that request under their privacy policy and terms, not ours, and we have no visibility into it. If you would rather nothing leave the device at all, use a local model or leave the Assistant switched off.

3. Stock b-roll (optional)

Auto B-Roll works with no key and no network by default: it generates cutaway cards on your device. If you add a free Pexels or Pixabay key to fetch real stock footage instead, Zella sends only a single keyword taken from your captions to that provider in order to search, and downloads the resulting clip. Your video is never sent. Those providers’ own privacy policies apply to the search request.

4. Help links

Menu items such as Documentation, Contact Support and this page open zellahq.com in your browser. That is an ordinary web visit, covered by the website section below.

Permissions the apps ask for

Zella asks only for what a given feature needs, at the moment it needs it, and iOS or macOS shows you the prompt:

• Camera - to record you.
• Microphone - to record your voice.
• Speech Recognition - for on-device transcription.
• Photos - to import footage you pick, and to save exports if you choose to.
• Screen Recording - to capture your screen (on Mac, a system privacy setting; on iPhone, the system broadcast picker).

Declining any of these disables that feature and nothing else. None of these permissions results in data being sent to us.

Zella’s privacy manifest additionally declares three “required reason” APIs, all used purely locally: file timestamps for showing when a project was last modified, user defaults for storing your preferences, and available disk space for warning you before a long export fails.

Purchases

Zella Pro and Zella Founder are one-time purchases made through Apple’s App Store as a Universal Purchase. Apple processes the payment and holds your payment details. We never see or store your card number, billing address or Apple ID. The app checks your entitlement with the App Store on your device to unlock the features you paid for.

What the website collects

zellahq.com uses lightweight, cookie-free analytics to understand which pages people find useful. It records the page path, the referring URL, your browser’s user-agent string and anonymous click events such as which download button was pressed. A per-tab session identifier is kept in your browser’s sessionStorage and cleared when you close the tab.

It does not set advertising cookies, build a cross-site profile, or sell data to anyone.

If you submit the contact or newsletter form, we use the email address you give us to reply or to send what you asked for, and nothing else. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Children

Zella is a general-audience creative tool and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. Because the apps require no account and collect no personal data, there is nothing for a child to disclose to us through them. If you believe a child has sent us personal information by email, contact privacy@zellahq.com and we will delete it.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, port or restrict the processing of your personal data, and to object to it. Under the GDPR these include the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority. Under the CCPA and CPRA, California residents have rights to know, delete, correct and opt out of sale or sharing.

We do not sell or share personal information, and we never have. In practice, the only personal data we hold about anyone is an email address they chose to send us. To exercise any right, email privacy@zellahq.com; we will respond within 30 days.

Deleting your data

There is no account to delete, because there was never one to create.

• In the app: your projects, recordings and exports are ordinary files in your own storage. Deleting them in the app, in Files, in Finder or in Photos removes them permanently. Deleting the app removes its container and everything in it, including the downloaded captions model and any API key you added.
• With us: if you have emailed us or subscribed, write to privacy@zellahq.com and we will delete your address and correspondence.
• Purchases: your purchase history belongs to your Apple ID and is managed by Apple, not by us.

Retention

Website analytics events are retained in aggregate and contain no identifier that points to you. Emails you send us are kept only as long as needed to help you, and are deleted on request.

Security

The strongest security property Zella has is structural: the sensitive material never leaves your device, so there is no server of ours to breach. Your API key, if you add one, is stored in the system Keychain on iPhone. The website is served over HTTPS. No system is perfectly secure, and we will tell you promptly if anything happens that affects you.

International transfers

Our website and email are hosted by providers that may process data outside your country. Because the only personal data involved is an email address you chose to give us, transfers are limited to that. Requests you make to an AI provider or a stock-footage provider go directly from your device to that company, wherever they operate.

Changes

If our practices change, we will update this page and revise the date above. Material changes will also be noted in the app’s release notes so you are not expected to re-read this page to notice them.

Contact

Privacy questions: privacy@zellahq.com Anything else: the support page