trickle privacy policy

Effective date: July 26, 2026

Summary

trickle does not collect your information.

Data stored on the device

Subscriptions, reading state, playback progress, queue entries, settings, bookmarks, article cache, and downloaded media are stored locally. Text shared to trickle is held briefly in app-private system storage until trickle opens the editable Add Feed confirmation. Android backup and device transfer exclude trickle application data. On Apple platforms, trickle excludes its Application Support directory from iCloud backup.

Private-feed URLs and authorization headers are stored using the operating system’s Keychain or Keystore. Apple Keychain entries are restricted to the current device. An active authenticated media download may require the operating system’s app-private download scheduler to retain its URL and request headers until that task ends.

Deleting a feed removes its local content, files, and stored secrets. Uninstalling removes the application database and media. If an operating system retains Keychain entries across uninstall, trickle clears stale private-feed entries before a later fresh installation is used.

Network requests

trickle makes direct requests to third parties only to perform actions requested by the user:

• Apple receives podcast discovery search terms and standard network metadata when catalog search is used.
• Feed publishers and their hosting providers receive feed, article, artwork, transcript, chapter, and media requests, plus standard network metadata such as the device IP address.
• Nostr relays receive the public profile key being requested and standard network metadata. Media hosts linked from a post receive media requests only when that media is displayed or played.
• When the user adds a YouTube channel or playlist, YouTube receives the page or feed request. Opening one of its video entries loads a third-party video page in the in-app player. If that page cannot load, the same player falls back to the official source URL from the feed. Those services receive the request and standard network metadata under their own policies.
• The operating system and the destination selected by the user handle data when the user imports, exports, shares, or opens a link. Sharing a URL to trickle keeps that text on the device and does not send it to the developer.

Private feeds

Private-feed credentials are never sent to the trickle developer. They are sent only to the feed or media host selected by the user. Cross-origin redirects do not receive sensitive authorization or cookie headers.

Exports and backups

The user-initiated trickle ZIP export includes portable subscriptions, Nostr profiles and relay choices, articles and attachments, reading and playback state, queue entries, bookmarks, and settings. A private-feed URL is included when all access information is contained in that URL. Authorization headers, passwords entered separately from a URL, and downloaded media files are excluded.

OPML export includes podcast, RSS, Atom, JSON, and YouTube feed subscriptions whose URLs are portable. Nostr profiles are included in the trickle ZIP backup instead because they are not standard OPML subscriptions.

Background processing and notifications

Background refresh, downloads, and local notifications are scheduled by the device operating system and are best effort. trickle does not use a push-notification or analytics service operated by the developer.

Changes and contact

This policy may be updated when the application’s behavior changes. Questions can be sent to parmesh@hey.com.

• GitHub: therealparmesh/trickle