Privacy Policy for the Als Preview App

Datenschutzerklärung für die App Als Preview · Effective 15 October 2026

This policy covers the Als Preview app for macOS, including its Audio Unit plugin for Ableton Live, its Quick Look preview and its Remote Script for Live. The website has a privacy policy of its own.

In short: Als Preview works entirely on your Mac. It has no account and contains no analytics, advertising or tracking software; the app itself sends nothing about you or your music to us or to anyone else. We, the developer, can’t see your projects, recordings or anything else you do in the app. The only information we receive is what Apple itself collects and shares with developers, such as crash reports if you allow it (see section 5).

1. Who is responsible

The controller under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for any processing by us is:

2. What stays on your Mac

To work, the app stores the following on your Mac, and only there:

• Your library: what it reads from the Live Sets in the folders you choose (names, tempo, key, tracks, plugins, samples, file locations), and what you add (statuses, favorites, collections, notes).
• Recordings: the audio the plugin records while your sets play in Live.
• Approximate previews: audio the app renders on your Mac from your Live Sets’ clips and samples, so you can hear sets the plugin hasn’t recorded.
• Time tracking and exports: when a set was open and playing in Live, and when you exported from it.
• Momentum: when you changed a project’s status (which project, from which status to which, and when), the goals you chose and set, the days a project’s arrangement grew to song length or the project was picked up again after a month or more, and the projects you asked not to be suggested again. The app uses them, together with your time, saves and exports, to show your progress, and keeps them on your Mac.
• Remote Script sessions: if you install the Remote Script, it notes for each set Live opens the set’s file path and name, the version of Live, when the set was open, playing and recording, when you did something in it, and which view and which tracks (by their names) you had selected. It writes this to files in a Sessions folder next to itself in Live’s User Library on your Mac. The app reads these files there, on your Mac, and moves those of closed sets into its own data folder.
• Caches and settings: waveforms of your samples, your folders, layouts and choices.
• Spotlight: project names and details, which macOS indexes on your Mac so you can find projects in Spotlight.

None of this is transmitted to us. The app reads your Live Sets but doesn’t change them, and neither does the Remote Script; the only thing that goes into a set is the plugin’s identifier, which Live saves with the plugin’s settings. You can delete recordings in Settings › Storage, the Remote Script’s files by deleting its AlsPreview folder from Live’s User Library, and everything else by deleting the app and its data folder; see Your data and disk space.

3. No network connections of its own

The app has no permission to connect to the internet itself. The plugin connects only to the AlsPreview Remote Script running in Ableton Live on the same Mac (a local connection that never leaves your Mac), to learn whether a track is soloed. The Remote Script accepts that connection only from the same Mac and makes no other connections. The app reads the Remote Script’s sessions from its files on your Mac (see section 2), so they don’t leave your Mac either.

4. Purchases through the App Store

The free trial and the Lifetime purchase are handled by Apple through the App Store. Apple processes your Apple Account and payment details on its own responsibility, under Apple’s privacy policy; depending on your country, Apple sells the app on our behalf or acts as our agent. The app only learns from Apple whether you have started the trial or bought Lifetime, and when, and, so that earlier buyers keep their purchase, which version of the app you first downloaded. It keeps this on your Mac to unlock the app, the plugin’s window and Quick Look. From Apple we receive sales reports without names or contact details.

5. Crash reports and statistics from Apple

The app contains no analytics or crash-reporting software of its own or from third parties, and keeps no logs that are sent anywhere.

If you have agreed in macOS (System Settings › Privacy & Security › Analytics & Improvements › Share with App Developers) that Apple shares information with app developers, Apple makes the following available to us in its developer tools (App Store Connect and Xcode):

• Crash reports: where in the app’s code a crash happened, with the app version, the macOS version and the Mac model.
• Usage statistics: figures summed up over many users, such as installations, sessions and crashes per day.

Apple collects this information, decides what it contains and how long it stays available, and describes this in App Analytics & Privacy. According to Apple, information is only shared with developers in a form that doesn’t personally identify you. The reports contain no name, email address or Apple Account, and we don’t try to identify anyone from them.

We look at them only to find and fix errors, based on our legitimate interest in a working app (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). We don’t copy them out of Apple’s tools. You decide about the sharing with Apple and can turn it off in the same place at any time; you can also object to our use of them (section 8).

Test versions: if you test pre-release versions of Als Preview through Apple’s TestFlight, Apple shares crash reports and the feedback you send with us regardless of the setting above, as described in Apple’s TestFlight terms.

6. Support by email

If you write to us, we process your email address and message to answer you, as described in the website’s privacy policy. Please only send project files or logs you want us to see.

7. Children

The app is not directed at children. We don’t collect personal data through the app; the information Apple shares with developers is described in section 5.

8. Your rights

Where we process your personal data (for example, emails you send us), you have the right to access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, data portability and to object (Art. 15 to 21 GDPR), and to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority (Art. 77 GDPR), for example the Landesbeauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit Nordrhein-Westfalen, Kavalleriestraße 2–4, 40213 Düsseldorf, Germany. Write to contact@als-preview.de.

Data that stays on your Mac is under your control: you can view, copy or delete it at any time.

9. Changes

If a future version of the app processes data differently, for example to share projects with others, we’ll update this policy before that version is released and describe the change here.