Why there is no cloud, and never will be
People reach for this app during the worst month of their year. Whatever else we get wrong, we are not going to be one more organisation holding a copy of it.
The conversations that end up in TextProof are not small talk. They are the row with the landlord about the deposit. The messages from the ex. The thing the builder promised and then denied promising. The chain that proves you did tell them, on the ninth, in writing.
People do not export a conversation because they are curious. They do it because something has gone wrong and they need to show somebody what was actually said.
The obvious way to build this
The straightforward version of this app uploads your recording to a server, does the reading there, and sends back a document. It would be easier to build. The processing would be faster. We could fix problems without shipping an update, see exactly what went wrong when somebody complains, and add web access, sync between devices, and a dashboard.
And it would mean a machine somewhere in a data centre holding the worst month of a stranger's year.
The question that settled it
Not "would we look after it properly?" — we would try. The question is what happens on the day we are careless, or acquired, or subpoenaed, or simply wrong about a permission setting. A promise is only as good as the worst day it has to survive.
So there is no server
Not a small one. Not an encrypted one. Not one that "only holds it briefly". There is no network code in the app at all.
Your recording is read on your own phone, by the text recognition Apple already builds into iOS. The transcript is written to your phone. The PDF is made on your phone. Nothing is transmitted, because there is nothing to transmit it to.
That is a stronger promise than a privacy policy, and a different kind of promise. A policy says we choose not to look. This says we cannot. If somebody demanded every message TextProof has ever processed, the honest answer would be that we do not have one, and never did.
What it costs us
We would rather be straight about this than pretend the decision was free.
- No sync. Your exports live on the phone that made them. Move phones and they do not follow.
- No web version. There is nowhere for one to run.
- Slower on older phones. A server rack would be quicker than an iPhone.
- Debugging in the dark. When somebody reports a bad export we cannot look at it.
That last one has genuinely slowed development down. Almost every fault worth fixing in this app was found by replaying what it read off somebody's screen — and every time, we had to ask permission first, explain exactly what was in the file, and wait.
We think that is the right trade. The alternative is convenience for us, paid for with a copy of your conversation sitting on a machine you have never seen.
How to check we are telling the truth
Put your phone in aeroplane mode and use the app. All of it works: importing, reading, editing, exporting, sharing. Nothing degrades, nothing waits, nothing complains about a connection.
An app that needs the internet cannot hide it. This one does not need it.
TextProof turns a screen recording of a conversation into a timestamped, print-ready document — entirely on your iPhone. See how it works →