Privacy & terms

What Readable does

It links to your WhatsApp as a "linked device" (like WhatsApp Web) and, for the chats you allow, sends voice notes and videos to speech-recognition and language models to produce readable text, which it posts back into WhatsApp as you. View-once media is never processed. In disappearing chats the text disappears on the same timer as the recording.

What is kept

Your WhatsApp session keys; your settings (which chats are on or off, the language, a list of names you taught it); a short-lived fingerprint of each recording (a hash, not the audio) so a forwarded recording can be matched to its chat; and the display names of the chats and people it has seen, so it can credit a speaker. Recordings are deleted right after transcription. Message text is not stored. Transcripts are not stored; they exist only in your WhatsApp.

What passes through

Because it is a linked device, every message on your account passes through this server in transit, like it would through WhatsApp Web. Only voice notes and videos in allowed chats are processed; the rest is discarded immediately. Audio, the resulting text and the names it may contain are sent to third-party model providers (OpenAI, Groq) under their API terms, which do not use API data for training. Server logs contain counts, durations and error codes, never message text, transcripts or names.

Risks

This uses an unofficial WhatsApp client, which is against WhatsApp's terms of service. Accounts using unofficial clients can, in rare cases, be temporarily or permanently restricted by WhatsApp. Use at your own risk. This service is provided as is, without warranty, as a closed beta.

Leaving

Your link page has an "Unlink and erase" button. It logs the device out of your WhatsApp and deletes everything about your account here. You can also remove the device from WhatsApp → Linked devices at any time.