Manarah

Privacy

Last updated

Manarah translates a Friday khutbah as it is spoken. This page says exactly what it collects, what it does not, and how to remove it. It is written to be read, not to be survived.

There is no account

Manarah does not ask for your name, email address, or phone number. You can use it without signing in to anything. The app generates a random identifier for your installation so that a free monthly session can be counted and a subscription can be recognised. It is not derived from your device or from you, and reinstalling the app creates a new one.

How audio is processed

When you start a session, audio is sent through our server to Soniox or AssemblyAI for transcription. Soniox provides translation directly. For AssemblyAI sessions, finalized transcript passages and up to two preceding passages are sent to Google Gemini for text translation. The AssemblyAI LLM Gateway remains available as an operator-selected alternative. Sessions use Soniox first in all countries, with AssemblyAI handling supported languages when Soniox is at capacity or unavailable. Country does not determine the speech provider. The relay may keep up to ten seconds of unfinished audio in memory to recover from a provider failure. If the connection drops, the app temporarily saves audio on your device and uploads it when the connection returns. Recovery audio is deleted after processing. Uploads that remain unsuccessful for seven days are cleared when the app next processes its queue. If you enable “Improve after the khutbah”, audio is also held on the relay until the optional correction pass finishes, then deleted. This setting is off by default. We do not use your audio to train models.

Optional recording feedback

After a recording longer than five minutes, you may send a private rating from 1 to 5 stars and an optional comment (up to 2,000 characters). Feedback is linked to that recording and used by the Manarah team to improve the listening experience. It is not posted publicly. Submitted feedback is queued on your device while offline and sent when connected. Its server copy is deleted when the recording expires or you use Delete everything. Public app-store reviews are separate, handled by Apple or Google, and are never requested based on your private score.

Saved recordings and transcripts

When recording storage is available, recordings and transcripts are saved on your device and uploaded privately. Server copies last 1 year (365 days) from upload. Removing an item from your device keeps the server copy until expiry. Delete everything removes both. Incomplete uploads expire after seven days. Only record where you have permission.

What is stored, and for how long

Who else processes it

Soniox
Speech recognition and translation.
AssemblyAI
Speech recognition and translation through its LLM Gateway, using session audio and finalized transcript passages when gateway translation is selected.
Google Gemini
Text translation of finalized passages with limited preceding context. This translation path receives text, not session audio.
RevenueCat
Subscription status and a last-recorded-country hint for service routing. It receives a billing identifier, never your name or payment details.
Apple and Google
Payment. We never see your card.
Fly.io
Hosting.

We do not sell your data, and there is no advertising and no third-party analytics in this app. Nothing about how you use Manarah is sent to an analytics company; the little we do count is counted on our own server, and every field of it is listed here.

How we know the app works

Fault reporting, functional measurement and optional session counting are separate.

Faults. When something breaks, Manarah sends the type of the fault and which screen it happened on — never the message, never anything you or the speaker said, and less than that on the reading screen, where a verse could be on display. This is on unless you turn it off, because an app that breaks silently during the one hour a week it is needed is not much use to you.

Counting. Whether a session happened at all — how long, in which reading language, on which kind of phone, and the time zone your phone is set to. This one is off until you say yes. We ask once, plainly, and you can change your mind in Settings at any time. If you say no, no session analytics record is kept. The processing, recovery and allowance records described above are separate.

First-use and reminder measurement. Independently of optional session counting, we automatically record Home visits, preview completion, reminder setup, tests and opens, and listening steps from microphone permission through connection, first source text, first translation, useful output and five minutes of listening. Each visit or listening attempt gets a new random identifier. Records include its entry point, platform, app version, event name, broad waiting-time range and receipt day in UTC. They contain no installation or billing identifier, language, audio, transcript, precise location or chosen reminder time. These unlinked events cannot be identified for individual deletion and expire after 30 days, with cleanup while the relay is idle. Turning optional session counting off does not stop these functional events. A test reminder is recorded separately from an ordinary reminder.

Friday reminders. Reminders are optional and scheduled on your phone at your chosen local time. The app checks the schedule when it opens. Notification permission and your phone’s settings control delivery. Tapping a reminder opens Home and does not start the microphone.

Plus offer interactions. Independently of optional session counting, we automatically count paywall views, plan selections, checkout starts, successes, cancellations, pending payments, failures, retries, plan-loading failures, dismissals and restore outcomes on our own relay. Each paywall gets a random identifier that connects events within that view only. Records include the entry point, monthly or yearly choice, offering group, phone platform, app version, event order and attempt number within that view. They contain no installation or billing identifier, language, price, payment details, audio, transcript or error message. They expire after 30 days; cleanup runs while the relay is idle. Turning optional session counting off does not stop these functional events. These records cannot be linked back to your installation for individual deletion.

Subscription event reporting

To report subscription sales and lifecycle changes, our server can receive authenticated events from RevenueCat separately from optional app counting. We keep only the event type, store, monthly/yearly/unknown plan category, offering group, trial or subscription period category, event and receipt times, reported purchase value in US dollars, and a hashed event identifier to prevent duplicate counting. Customer identifiers, transaction identifiers, subscriber attributes and the original event body are discarded. These records are not linked to listening activity or per-visit paywall identifiers, cannot be located by your installation for individual deletion, and expire after 30 days with hourly cleanup while the relay is idle. RevenueCat and your store remain the source of truth for payments, refunds and subscription access.

Fault reports and session analytics contain no words from the sermon and are deleted when you delete your data. Session detail is kept for 90 days and then reduced to monthly totals with no installation identifier. Fault reports are deleted after the same period. Cleanup runs when the relay is idle and may be delayed during active sessions. Anonymous totals cannot be linked back to your installation for deletion.

Private relay diagnostics

With Report faults enabled in a compatible app, the relay may keep a private technical summary for up to 24 hours after its last update. It includes an opaque diagnostic id, session and installation association, audio duration and signal-level statistics, provider/model and connection attempt ids, queue and send counts, recognition and translation counts, output counts and termination reasons. It contains no audio, transcript, translation, or predicted spoken language. It is separate from opted-in session counting.

Summaries are restricted to the operator and your authenticated data export, never sent to error-monitoring services. Turning Report faults off during listening deletes that session's summary; Delete everything removes all summaries for your installation. Summaries expire automatically, including incomplete ones left by a restart. The relay keeps at most eight attempts per summary, 16 KiB per record and 2,000 records in total.

Anonymous relay process totals, such as starts, active streams, capacity refusals and silent-session alerts, run independently of these preferences. They contain no identifiers or individual session history. Daily aggregate session starts, HTTP request counts, and live audio duration are retained for 90 days; other process counters reset on restart.

A note on what this data is

Attending Jumu'ah is a religious practice, and a record of your sessions is information about your religious belief. Saved recording and transcript copies remain privately on the server for 1 year from upload. Your on-device archive remains until you remove it. Delete everything removes both local and server content for this installation.

Deleting everything

Settings › Your data › Delete everything removes your transcripts and settings from the phone and asks our server to erase its records for your installation. You can also export everything first. To make the same request by email, write to hello@northstarengineering.mu. If you have reinstalled since, we may no longer be able to link a request to the old records; those expire on their own.

Children

Manarah is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect data from them.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, the date above changes and the app will say so.

Contact

Northstar Engineering Ltd
hello@northstarengineering.mu