Privacy

Familiar is two apps: Familiar Server, which keeps your music library and analyses it — on your Mac, or in Docker on a NAS or another machine you run — and Familiar, the app you listen in on your Mac or iPhone, which plays from that server. There is no Familiar account and no Familiar service in between: your apps talk to your server. This page says what each handles and where anything goes.

What stays with you

• Your music files. Never uploaded anywhere. The server reads them where they are and never changes them.
• Profiles, favourites, playlists and play history. Stored by your server, in its own database.
• The server's sign-in token. Kept by the server, and by each app you pair with it (in the Keychain on Apple devices).
• Downloaded tracks and playlists. Held by the app on your device; removed when you uninstall it.

What the server sends out by default

To fill in what your files don't say, the server asks a few public services, sending the names it is asking about and nothing about you:

• MusicBrainz and the Cover Art Archive — artist, album and track names or identifiers, for metadata and album artwork.
• Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons and Spotify's public embed service — artist names or identifiers, for artist pictures and photo galleries.
• LRCLIB (lrclib.net) — title, artist, album and duration, for synced lyrics.
• ListenBrainz — a request for its public list of new releases, for Discover. Nothing about your library is sent. It can be turned off.
• The community cache (clapback.seethroughlab.com) — a one-way hash of a track's audio fingerprint, and its MusicBrainz recording id when known, to skip analysing music that has been analysed elsewhere. No file names, titles or listening history.
• GitHub — to check for new releases, and the first time it starts to download the analysis model. Familiar Server on a Mac also reads its update feed there.

What is sent only if you turn it on

• Contributing to the community cache — the analysis of tracks your server worked out itself, under the same hash, with an installation identifier that is not linked to you. Off unless you turn it on.
• Last.fm — if you connect an account, what you play (artist, title, duration) is scrobbled to ws.audioscrobbler.com, and artist information is fetched from it.
• AcoustID — with a key, audio fingerprints of tracks Familiar cannot otherwise identify.
• fanart.tv — with a key, an artist's MusicBrainz identifier, for more artist photos.
• YouTube — only when you search for or download a music video, the track's artist and title.
• An AI assistant you connect — Familiar holds no API key and calls no model. If you connect an assistant that speaks MCP (Claude Desktop, say), what you type goes from it to whichever provider you signed in to, on your account and under their policy, not through Familiar. What Familiar returns to it is search results, track and playlist details, and playback state. Never audio.
• Links you open — Bandcamp, Apple Music, Qobuz, Discogs, 7digital, Amazon Music: search and buy links that open in your browser.

What we don't do

• No analytics SDKs (no Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Sentry, etc.).
• No advertising identifiers, no ad tracking, no ads.
• No location, contacts, photos, health, or financial data.
• No sharing or selling of personal data to anyone.

The apps are distributed through Apple's App Store, and Familiar Server as a download from GitHub; Apple and GitHub see what they see of any download.

Retention and deletion

Everything personal lives on your server. Delete a profile to remove its data from the server; delete the server's data folder to remove everything. Uninstall an app to remove what it downloaded to your device.

Contact

Questions about privacy: jeff@seethroughlab.com.