Tapedeck Privacy Policy

The short version

Tapedeck is a local desktop app developed and maintained by Melodic Development. There is no Tapedeck account, no Tapedeck server, and no telemetry. Your Google sign-in exists only to identify your account and, if you turn on sync, to store your library in a private folder in your own Google Drive. YouTube channel, playlist, and video data is fetched separately using Tapedeck's own API key, not your Google account — Tapedeck only ever reads public YouTube data, never your subscriptions or account. Nothing you do in Tapedeck is sent to Melodic Development or any third party we control, because we don't operate any backend for the app to send it to.

What Tapedeck stores locally

Tapedeck keeps the following on your own machine, in the app's local data directory:

• Library — the channels, playlists, and mixtapes you've added, as plain JSON files.
• Google refresh token — held in your OS's secure credential store (macOS Keychain, Windows Credential Manager, or the Linux Secret Service), never in a plain file.

Access tokens are kept in memory only and are discarded when you sign out or close the app.

Google sign-in and API access

Tapedeck uses Google's OAuth installed-app flow (system browser + PKCE) to sign you in. Depending on what you approve during sign-in, Tapedeck requests:

• openid, email, profile — to show your name and avatar in the app; no other use.
• drive.appdata — access to a hidden, app-specific folder in your Google Drive (not your regular Drive files), used only if you enable multi-device library sync. This folder is not visible in the Drive UI and no other app can read it.

These calls are made directly from the Tapedeck app on your device to Google's servers using your own OAuth client credentials — they never pass through infrastructure operated by Melodic Development.

Resolving the channels, playlists, and videos you paste into Tapedeck uses the YouTube Data API separately, authenticated with Tapedeck's own API key rather than your Google account. This is possible because Tapedeck only ever reads public YouTube data — it never reads your subscriptions, uploads videos, or modifies your YouTube account, and your Google sign-in is never involved in those requests.

Playback

Videos play through the official, visible YouTube embedded player (IFrame Player API). That means your interactions with playback are subject to Google's Privacy Policy and YouTube's Terms of Service, the same as watching on youtube.com. Tapedeck never downloads, extracts, or proxies video or audio.

What we don't do

• No analytics, crash reporting, or usage tracking of any kind.
• No advertising, and no data is sold or shared with advertisers.
• No Tapedeck account system — sign-in is entirely Google's.
• No server-side database — Melodic Development has no copy of your library, sync data, or tokens.

Revoking access

You can disconnect Tapedeck at any time from Tapedeck's sign-out option, or from your Google Account's third-party access settings, which also removes any synced data from your Drive appdata folder once you delete it there.

Open source

Tapedeck's full source is public and MIT-licensed, so every network call it makes can be verified directly in the code: github.com/MelodicDevelopment/tapedeck.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we'll update the date at the top of this page and, for material changes, note it in the project's release notes.

Contact

Questions about this policy can be filed as an issue on GitHub or emailed to rickhopkins@melodic.dev.