Terms of Use
Effective: 5 July 2026 · Version 1.0
1. Who we are, and what these terms cover
Abschrift is a macOS application published by the operator identified in the Imprint ("we"). These terms govern your use of the Abschrift software, in its free version and with an activated Pro license.
Purchases are made from Polar. Pro licenses are sold by Polar Software Inc. as merchant of record. The purchase contract — payment, invoicing, taxes, the 14-day refund policy, and your statutory withdrawal rights as a consumer — is governed by Polar's terms. These Terms of Use govern the software license you receive.
2. The software and your license
Abschrift records meetings on your Mac, transcribes and attributes speech on-device, and writes notes. The free version includes the full local pipeline, limited to 5 new recordings per calendar month. A Pro license removes this limit and enables additional features (local note generation via Ollama, the MCP server, automatic export).
We grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to install and use Abschrift for your own purposes — personal or professional — on Macs you control. A Pro license key may be activated on up to 3 Macs at a time; you can deactivate a Mac at any time to free a slot. Keep your license key confidential; it is issued to you and may not be published or resold.
You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the software except to the extent such restrictions are prohibited by mandatory law (e.g. Art. 21 of the Swiss Copyright Act or Art. 6 Directive 2009/24/EC on decompilation for interoperability).
3. License states, refunds, and your data
If a Pro purchase is refunded or a license key is revoked, the software returns to the free version. Your data is never locked: all notes, transcripts, and settings remain fully readable and exportable regardless of license state — they are plain files on your Mac and remain yours.
4. Updates
The app can update itself; every update is cryptographically signed and notarized. A Pro license includes feature updates up to (not including) version 2.0. Any statutory rights regarding updates for digital products that apply to your purchase (for EU consumers, via your contract with Polar) remain unaffected. Update checks can be disabled in Settings.
5. Your responsibilities
Recording consent — this one matters. You are solely responsible for ensuring that recording a conversation is lawful in your situation and jurisdiction, including obtaining the consent of all participants where required. In Switzerland, recording a non-public conversation without the consent of everyone involved is a criminal offense (Art. 179ter Swiss Criminal Code); Germany has an equivalent (§ 201 StGB), and many other jurisdictions have comparable consent requirements. Abschrift only ever records when you explicitly start a recording — whether that recording is permitted is your decision and your responsibility.
Third-party AI providers. If you configure a cloud provider for note-writing (e.g. Anthropic, OpenAI, Google) with your own API key, your use of that provider is governed by your contract with them, including their pricing and data terms. Only transcript text is transmitted, and only at your instruction.
Lawful use. You will not use Abschrift to violate the rights of others, including privacy, confidentiality, and data-protection rights of meeting participants. If you process personal data of others with Abschrift in a professional context, you are responsible for your own compliance (e.g. under the GDPR).
6. Automated output — verify before you rely
Transcripts, speaker attribution, and notes are generated automatically by machine learning models. Automated output can be incomplete or wrong: words may be mistranscribed, speakers misattributed, and summaries may omit or distort meaning. Abschrift's output is an aid, not a record of evidentiary quality — review it before relying on it or sharing it, especially where decisions, obligations, or other people's words are concerned.
7. Warranty
For consumers, the statutory warranty rights for digital products apply and are not limited by these terms. For the free version, which is provided without charge, warranty is limited to cases in which we fraudulently concealed a defect.
8. Liability
We are liable without limitation for damage caused intentionally or through gross negligence, for personal injury, and where mandatory product-liability law applies.
To the extent permitted by law (Art. 100 Swiss Code of Obligations), any further liability — in particular for slight negligence and for indirect or consequential damage — is excluded. If you are a consumer, mandatory liability rules of the country of your habitual residence that cannot be waived remain unaffected.
In particular, subject to the above, we are not liable for consequences of acting on automated output without verification (see § 6) or for unlawful recordings made by users (see § 5).
9. Intellectual property; your content
The software is licensed, not sold; all rights in the software remain with us and our licensors. Everything you create with Abschrift — recordings, transcripts, notes — is yours. It is stored on your Mac; we never receive, host, or claim any rights to it.
10. Changes to these terms
We may update these terms for future versions of the software or where legally required. The version published here at the time you obtain a given release applies to that release; material changes will be noted in the release notes.
11. Final provisions
Swiss law applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods and conflict-of-law rules. If you are a consumer, the mandatory consumer-protection provisions of the country of your habitual residence remain unaffected.
Should individual provisions of these terms be invalid, the remainder stays in effect.