Privacy

Without an account, your songs stay on your device and we collect nothing about you. With a Stab Cloud account, we keep your songs and what running the service needs, and nothing about how you play or write. Crash reports, usage statistics and news emails happen only if you say yes.

Last updated 4 November 2026.

Who we are

Stab is made by Gargant, a company registered in France (EURL), which is the controller of the data described here. Write to [email protected] about anything on this page. No data protection officer is appointed: the law doesn't require one for what we do, and that address reaches the people who handle your data. The company's details are in the legal notice.

Without an account

Songs are files in a folder you choose on your Mac or PC, or in On My iPad › Stab, On My iPhone › Stab, or Stab's folder on Android. None of it is uploaded to us, and deleting the app leaves your songs where they are. There is no identifier for you anywhere in the app, no advertising and no analytics. The only code from other companies that sends anything is listed below: the stores' purchase systems, and on Android, Google's text recognition when Stab reads the words on a page of printed music. The Mac and Windows apps fetch one empty file once, the first time they open, so we can count first launches (below).

Analysis that runs on your device (Write Tab from Audio, Find the Chords, Find the Beats, stems, reading printed music, the tuner and practice by ear) runs on your device only: the recording, the microphone's sound or the page never leaves it.

Some things fetch files from us or others when you ask: sounds and analysis models from the Sound Library (from cdn.stab.audio, on Cloudflare), and, on the Mac and the web, a YouTube video you add as a song's reference, which plays in YouTube's own player, so Google receives what it receives from any embedded video, under Google's privacy policy. The web app at app.stab.audio keeps in your browser, on your device only, a few preferences and choices (the name you play together under, favourite and recent sounds, whether the keypad shows, your crash and usage answers and what's waiting to be sent), the track presets you save there (in the browser's IndexedDB) and, if you sign in, its session in a cookie. It sets no other cookie, and clearing the site's data removes all of it.

Other companies' code in Stab

Each app is built from our own code, open-source libraries that run on your device and contact nothing on their own (listed in the acknowledgements), and its platform's own parts. Of those, these are other companies' and touch your data:

• On Android, Google's ML Kit text recognition (part of Google Play services) reads the words on a page of printed music when you ask Stab to read one (a photo, a scan or a PDF). The page is read on the phone and never sent anywhere. ML Kit itself sends Google, over an encrypted connection, information to run and improve it: the phone's manufacturer, model and Android version, Stab's package name and version, a device identifier and per-installation identifiers, performance measurements such as how long a reading took, the request's settings (such as the image's size and format) and error codes. Google uses it for diagnostics and usage analytics and says it doesn't pass it to third parties (ML Kit's data disclosure, Google's privacy policy). Stab asks before it first uses it (Read the Words or Not Now, which reads the music without the page's words), and Settings › Score › The page's words changes the answer. Nothing else in the Android app sends anything to Google except purchases.
• The stores' purchase systems: Google Play Billing on Android and StoreKit on iPhone and iPad talk to the store on your device, to show prices, make a purchase and restore it. Apple and Google handle that as the store (below, Purchases).
• Sign in with Apple, only if you choose it: Apple confirms who you are and gives us the identifier and email described below.
• Paddle.js, Paddle's checkout, is fetched from Paddle only when you ask to buy: on stab.audio, when you press a Buy button or open the checkout page; in the web app, when you open Stab Cloud's page or buy credits, to show prices in your currency and take the payment. Paddle receives what a browser sends when fetching a page's script (your network address, your browser), keeps the cookies its checkout uses, and receives what you type into its checkout, under Paddle's privacy policy.
• YouTube's player, on the Mac and the web, only for a video you add as a song's reference (above).

Everything else that might sound like it runs elsewhere runs on your device and sends nothing: Apple's Vision (reading text on iPhone, iPad and Mac), Core ML and ONNX Runtime (Write Tab from Audio, stems, Find the Beats and the Chords, reading printed music), PDFium (opening PDFs), the photo picker and Apple's Declared Age Range (below). The apps' own connections go only to our servers (api.stab.audio, the relay, cdn.stab.audio) and the ones named here.

Your age

A Stab Cloud account, crash reports and usage statistics are for people 15 and over, and each says so where you give it: the sign-in asks you to confirm you're 15 or older, and on an iPhone or iPad that shares one, Apple's age range (from Apple's Declared Age Range) comes first. That answer, and Apple's range, stay on your device and are never sent to us. We don't ask or keep anyone's age: the service records only that the Terms were accepted, which version, and when.

A Stab Cloud account

An account is optional and free. With one, we keep:

• Your email address, and your display name if you set one. If you sign in with Apple, the identifier Apple gives us for you (with Apple's private relay address if you chose it).
• The language your app uses (English or French, for example), as the app last told us, and when, so the emails we send you are in that language.
• Your consent: when you accepted the Terms and which version, and whether you asked for news emails, when, and from where (below).
• Your devices: the name each one has (“Seb's iPad”), its platform, the version of Stab it runs and when it was last seen, so you can see and sign out each of them.
• Your songs: each song's versions (its history), its name, the recordings and other files it uses, and when each version was saved, on which device and by whom.
• Your templates and presets, if you keep any in Stab Cloud (Song Templates and Track Presets): each one's name, its file, its size and when it was made and changed, up to 500 of each kind. They count as your files, are listed in your export and are deleted with the account.
• Your shared songs: who each one is shared with and their role, the invitations you sent (the address, the role, its state) and the invite links you made (only a keyed hash of each link), and the people you've blocked.
• Your share links: their labels, expiry, how often and when last each was opened.
• Your published pages, if you publish: your public handle, each page's title and text, the version it shows, the rights you declared, and the sites you allowed to embed it.
• Your plan and purchases: which licences and subscriptions your account holds, from which store, and their dates (below).
• Counts for your plan: how much you store and transfer, and how often a song is saved, so limits can be applied and shown to you.

A song can hold more than notes: recordings of your playing or your voice, video, photos or scans of printed music, lyrics and credits. Whatever a song holds is kept with it, and is shared with whoever you share it with. Stored songs are encrypted on our storage's disks, but not end to end: the service can read them, which it needs to keep their history, render the pages you publish, and let support look when you ask.

Sign-in codes are stored only as keyed hashes and expire after 10 minutes. Rate limits on sign-in are counted against keyed hashes of the network address and email, never in clear. A device stays signed in for up to 180 days without use, the web app for up to 90; the web app keeps its session in a secure cookie, never in local storage.

We use this to provide the service you asked for (the contract between us), and for nothing else: no advertising, no profiling, nothing sold.

Shared songs

When you share a song, its members see the song, its history (with who saved each version, by display name) and each other's display names; only the owner sees the members' and invitees' email addresses. Members whose devices have the song open see that each other is there.

An invitation by email sends one email to the address the owner typed, with the song's name and the owner's display name, and keeps the address with the invitation for 14 days (or until an account with that address answers it). Every invitation email has a link to stop invitation emails to that address; we then keep only a keyed hash of the address, to honour it.

Block keeps who you blocked, so their invitations stop reaching you. Report… keeps the report (who and what was reported, the reason and your note, and who reported it) until one year after it's closed; support may open the reported song read-only to look, and that is logged. If an account's sharing is suspended, we keep that fact and why.

News and updates

If you tick “Send me news and updates from Stab” when you sign in, or turn on News and updates in Settings, we use your account's email to send you news about Stab, now and then. We record when you said yes, and from where. Turn it off in Settings or with the link in any of these emails, at any time; we then stop at once and record when you did. We send them through Resend, our mail provider; we don't give your address to anyone else.

Purchases and licences

Each store handles its own payment, as a separate controller under its own privacy policy:

• Bought from us (the desktop licence, or Stab Cloud on the web or the desktop): Paddle.com is our reseller and the merchant of record. Paddle takes the payment and the tax, and tells us what we need to deliver it: your email address, your country, the product, the transaction and its date. We keep Paddle's record of each purchase without anything about how you paid: the amounts, the currency, your country, the product, its identifiers, state and dates. We never see or keep your card details. For a desktop licence we keep the licence (your email, the product, the date, and only a keyed hash of its key) and mail you its key. Each computer you activate it on is recorded by a hash of an identifier of that computer (never the identifier itself), its platform, the name you see in the app, and when it was activated and last checked, so you can move the licence.
• The App Store: Apple sends us a signed record of the purchase or subscription (the product, the transaction number and its dates, the storefront's country, renewals and refunds), linked to your Stab account if you were signed in. We don't learn your Apple ID.
• Google Play: Google sends us the purchase's token, order number, product, country and state, linked to your Stab account if you were signed in. We don't learn your Google account.

A licence works without an account; linking it to one is up to you. A licence's record, with your email, is kept as long as the licence exists, so its key can be sent to you again. A subscription's or a credit pack's record is linked to your account while the account exists. The record of each sale (the product, the amounts, the currency, the country and the date, without your email or account) is kept for the 10 years French accounting law requires (Code de commerce, article L123-22).

Keeping your devices in step

While a song is open on a signed-in device, that device tells the service which of your songs it has open, so your other devices (and, for a shared song, its members) can show who's there and edit together. This is kept in the service's memory only, never written to disk, and goes as soon as you close the song, sign out, or the device stops answering (75 seconds).

Editing together, on your own devices or in a shared song, uses encrypted sessions like playing together (below): a key for each session is made on a device and passed to the others encrypted to each device's own key, which exists only in memory while the app runs. The service carries those public keys and encrypted keys, and vouches to the relay that each device may join; the relay can't read the session.

Share links and published pages

A share link lets anyone who has it see that song, read-only, in a browser. Only a hash of the link is stored; you can revoke a link at any time, and links can expire. Opening a link counts against the owner's transfer and is rate-limited per network address.

A published page is public: anyone can read it on stab.page, and search engines index it if you declared the song your own work or in the public domain. Withdrawing it takes it down. Readers of a page are not tracked and need no account. Anyone can report a page with the Report link on it, or by writing to [email protected]. We keep the notice (the page, the reason, what its sender wrote, and their name and email address, which a notice of child sexual abuse material may leave out) until one year after it's decided, and we don't tell the page's owner who sent it.

When you ask for help

When we act on a report or a notice

When we take a published page down, limit the Assistant for an account, suspend an account's sharing, remove a song's sharing or close an account, we email the account's holder a statement of reasons: what was done, the rule, the facts we relied on and how to contest it. Taking a page down keeps its state on the page's record, as long as the record exists. Whoever sent a notice about a page, with the Report link or to [email protected], is told the decision by email when they gave an address. Every action is written to support's log with the account's random identifier, the date, the note of the request that led to it and, for these actions, the rule and the facts; a gift made to an email address keeps that address in its entry. Each entry is kept 3 years from its date, then deleted. The log is not deleted with an account, so after an account is deleted its entries name only the random identifier (and a gift's address) until then. Closing an account deletes its data on the same 30 days as a deletion you ask for, and can't be cancelled by signing in.

If you contact us about a song, support may open it read-only for up to an hour to see the problem. That is logged with your request, and no copy is made. Mail you send to [email protected] is kept in our mailbox with Zoho Mail, in the EU, as long as the conversation needs it.

Counts we keep without asking

The service counts, per day, how many signed-in devices were active, by platform and app version. It also takes a sample every minute of how many devices are connected right now, how many songs are open on several devices, how many sessions the relay carries and how many people are in them, and the connected devices' platforms, app versions and language settings (as your device sends them, for example “fr-FR”). These are counts only: no account, device, song, room or address is in them. Samples are kept 30 days; the daily counts, which hold no more than a platform, a version and a number, are kept 2 years, then deleted. Your network address is never looked up to place you anywhere.

The first time Stab for Mac or Stab for Windows opens, it fetches one empty file from cdn.stab.audio whose name is only Stab's version (cdn.stab.audio/hello/1.3.0, for example), so we can count how many downloads became a first launch. Nothing goes with it: no identifier, no cookie, nothing about you, your device or your songs. Once the file has arrived it is never fetched again on that installation; if it couldn't be, Stab tries again the next time it opens. Cloudflare, which serves our files, receives the request as it receives any file fetched from us (with your network address, as any connection has), and gives us only counts of those requests by day, version and country. The web app and the iPhone, iPad and Android apps don't do this.

The server's logs record each request's method, path, result and timing, never its content, its query or your network address; the web server in front of the service records a network address only for a request that fails before reaching it (during a restart, say). Server logs are kept up to 30 days.

Crash reports: only if you say so

If Stab quits unexpectedly, it asks the next time it opens whether to send a report. A report says what happened in Stab's code: the error, the program's stack, the platform, the app version and the system version. It never includes your songs, your name, your account or an identifier for your device. Reports are kept 90 days. You can change your answer in Settings. Only for people 15 and over: under 15, Stab never sends them.

Usage statistics: off unless you turn them on

If you turn on usage statistics in Settings, Stab sends, once a day, which of 20 features you used that day (for example: a score pane shown, a MIDI recording, a share link made), with the platform, the app version and an install number that changes every month. Nothing finer than a day, and nothing about your songs. Nothing is recorded while they're off, so nothing from before your yes is ever sent; turning them off deletes what's waiting on the device. Show What's Sent, beside the setting, shows the report exactly as it would go. Reports are kept 400 days. Only for people 15 and over: under 15, Stab never sends them.

The Assistant

When you ask the Assistant something, what it needs from your song (its notes, chords, words, sounds and mix) and what you type go to Anthropic, the company that makes Claude, the model behind it. Anthropic doesn't train on it and deletes it after 30 days. You agree to this once for your account, right after signing up and before any purchase; we ask again only if these words change.

If Help improve the Assistant is on, we keep each request for 30 days: your words, what the Assistant read and wrote while answering, its answer, and what you then did with its proposal (accepted, rejected, undone). They're stored under a random number, not your name or email; only our support, looking into a problem you report, can see whose they were. After 30 days the words are deleted and only counts remain: how long it took, what it cost, which tools it used, and whether the change was kept. With it off we keep only what each request cost and the credits it used, and turning it off deletes what was kept. We use what we keep only to find where the Assistant goes wrong and make it better. A few requests may be kept longer as test cases for the Assistant, rewritten so that nothing in them points to you or your song.

It's your account's setting, the same on all your devices, and you change it in Settings › Editing or on the Assistant's consent card. It starts off for a new account.

If you use Report This Answer…, the answer and the request it answered are sent to us with your reason and note, and kept for review until one year after the report is closed.

Threads are saved in the song itself, so anyone you share the song with can read them. An AI app you connect on your computer (Connect an AI app) talks to Stab directly: nothing of it reaches us.

Playing together

A session is opened by one person, who gets a room code (and can share a link to it, or a link for an audience to watch). There is no public directory: a session can't be found without its code. The people in it see each other's display names.

On the same network, devices connect directly and nothing leaves the network. Otherwise the session passes through our relay, which can't read anything it carries: every message is encrypted end to end with a key that never leaves the devices (derived from the room code, or agreed between devices as above). The relay sees a room number and a stream of bytes, holds them only to pass them on, and stores none of it. You can turn the relay off in Settings and play on your own network only. Guests keep a copy of the song only if the host allows it.

Who handles it for us

These companies process data on our behalf, only to run Stab, under data processing agreements with each. Where data leaves the EU, it is covered by the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, as each one's agreement sets out:

Paddle (the reseller of direct purchases), Apple (the App Store, Sign in with Apple, the Declared Age Range) and Google (Google Play, ML Kit's diagnostics on Android, and YouTube's player when you add a reference video) are not our processors: each is responsible for what it collects when you buy, sign in or watch through it. Alerts to the studio about how the service is running (a job failing, a sale's product, amount and country, a report's category) go to a push-notification service; they carry no name, email address, song or note. Outside these, nothing is shared with anyone, unless the law requires it.

Why we may

• The contract (you asked for an account, a licence or a subscription): your account, songs, shared songs, devices, links, pages, purchases and plan counts, and sending what you ask the Assistant to Anthropic so it can answer. When a subscription ends, the storage it paid for ends with it, which is why songs past the free plan are deleted after 14 days (below).
• Your consent, which you can withdraw in Settings at any time: crash reports, usage statistics and news emails.
• Our legitimate interest in keeping the service running and safe: the anonymous counts above, rate limits, invitation limits and the stop list, blocks and reports, support's logged access, and the notices before deleting an unused account; and in making the Assistant better: the requests kept for 30 days while Help improve the Assistant is on, which you can turn off at any time (above).
• The law: purchase and accounting records, the record of consent (the Assistant's included), and answering notices about published pages.

How long, and deleting it

Your songs and their history stay until you delete them, with two exceptions below. Older versions are thinned over time (every save for a day, hourly for a week, then daily within your plan's history: 30 days on a free account). A song in the trash is deleted after 30 days. An expired or revoked share link's record goes 30 days later. An invitation not answered lapses after 14 days. The Assistant's requests are kept 30 days, then reduced to counts (above).

• When a Stab Cloud subscription ends (or a gift, or after a refund), the account returns to the free plan: its 3 most recently changed songs stay, and the others can be downloaded for 14 days, then they're deleted with their history, links and pages. We email you when it ends and 3 days before the deletion.
• An account unused for 12 months (no sign-in and no use of Stab Cloud from any device or the web) is deleted as described below, unless a Stab Cloud subscription runs on it or it holds credits you bought for the Assistant (those don't expire, so the account stays while they're there). We email you a month before and a week before; signing in keeps it. This is so we don't keep data no one uses.

Deleting your account is described below.

You can download any of your songs from the app at any time. To get everything we keep about your account in one file (your account, consent and devices, with links to download every song and recording), write to [email protected] from the account's address, and we send it to you.

Deleting your account

In any of the apps (Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android) or in the web app at app.stab.audio, signed in: Delete Account…, in Stab Cloud's account menu or settings. It first lists the songs you share with others, which you can hand to another member or delete for everyone. Or, without the app, write to [email protected] from the account's email address, and we delete it for you.

Every device is signed out at once. The account is deleted 30 days later; until then you can change your mind by signing in again. Then your songs, recordings, memberships, invitations, links, published pages, devices and sessions are deleted, with your email address, display name and consent record; the stored files go a week after their records, and backups age out within their 30 days. Versions you saved in other people's shared songs stay in their history, by “Former member”. Purchase records stay as long as the law requires (above), and reports about the account are kept until one year after they're closed, no longer linked to it. We email you the date. A licence you bought keeps working; a Stab Cloud subscription isn't cancelled by deleting the account, so cancel it where you bought it (Paddle's emails, the App Store or Google Play).

Your rights

You can see, export, correct and delete what we keep about you, object to or restrict its use, and withdraw a consent, from the app or by writing to [email protected]. We answer within a month. You can also complain to the French data protection authority, the CNIL (cnil.fr), or the one where you live.

Children

Stab works at any age without asking anyone's: writing, playing, practising, recording, files, the demos, reading a share link and joining Play Together with a code need no account, and send us nothing about the person. It isn't designed for or directed at children. A Stab Cloud account, crash reports and usage statistics are for people 15 and over, and each says so where you give it; where the device knows its user is younger (Apple's age range), Stab doesn't offer an account, never sends a crash report and keeps usage statistics off. There is no advertising, no chat and no public directory of people. If you think someone under 15 has given us data, write to [email protected] and we'll delete it.

Changes

When this changes, the date above changes with it, and any change to what leaves your device arrives with the update that causes it, and this page says so first.

Contact

[email protected]