Privacy policy

Who is responsible

The data controller is Pianino. For any privacy question or request, write to us at infopianinoapp@gmail.com.

Data that stays on your device

Pianino has no servers of its own and no user accounts. What the app needs to work is stored in the app’s storage, on your device:

• the nickname you choose and the age you enter during Welcome;
• your Welcome answers (for example, whether you have a piano, your experience, your goal or how you heard about Pianino);
• your progress, Sparks, streak and settings.

Your nickname and age never leave the device: the age is only used there to apply the protections for children described below. Some Welcome answers are part of the usage statistics if you allow them (next section). You can change your nickname and reset your progress in Settings; uninstalling the app deletes everything.

Microphone

If you choose the Ear mode, Pianino asks for permission to use the microphone so it can listen to your piano and recognise the notes you play.

Sound is analysed as you play, in the device’s memory, by a recognition model included in the app. Pianino keeps no recordings of your playing, sends no audio to any server (neither to us nor to Google) and uses it for nothing but recognising notes.

The permission is optional: you can deny or revoke it in your phone’s settings and keep using Pianino with the on-screen keyboard (Touch mode) or a MIDI keyboard.

MIDI keyboards

If you connect a digital piano or MIDI keyboard, the app receives the notes you play for the current lesson. They are processed on the device and sent nowhere.

Notifications

Pianino asks, with the system’s prompt, whether you want notifications: reminders to practise and, now and then, important news about Pianino.

Reminders are prepared and scheduled on the device itself from your progress (for example, how many lessons are left before a song, or your streak). Nothing is sent to any server to do it.

News is sent with Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google). Only when you are 13 or over, Welcome has ended, news is on (it is by default) and you allow notifications does the app ask Firebase for a registration token: a random identifier of this installation of the app, which is subscribed to the news topics for the app’s language and your platform (for example, Spanish on Android). The token is used only to deliver those messages: it is not linked to your name, email or nickname, and it is not used for advertising or tracking. We send the same message to everyone subscribed to a topic and do not know who receives it.

If you turn news off, revoke the permission or the age entered is under 13, the app unsubscribes and deletes the token. If usage statistics are on, Google Analytics also records when a news message is received or opened.

The permission is optional: you can deny or revoke it in your phone’s settings, which is also how reminders are turned off. News is turned off in Settings → Notifications.

Usage statistics, crash reports and performance

To fix bugs and improve the lessons, the app can send data to Google Firebase, a Google service. Nothing is sent before Welcome ends, and its privacy step explains this. For adults, sharing is then on and can be turned off at any time in Settings → Privacy (“Share anonymous usage data”); while it is off, nothing is sent. For children under 13, see “Children”.

Three services are used:

• Google Analytics for Firebase (usage statistics): the screens you open; when you start and finish a lesson, a song or a practice session, with its identifier, duration, percentage of notes hit, Sparks and streak days; when you leave a lesson or a song before finishing it, how many notes the app heard and how long you were in it; when the app could not listen to you (for example, because the microphone was denied) and the technical reason, and when it could hear you again after repairing the microphone by itself; what you chose when Pianino asked for the microphone before a lesson (allow it, open the settings, go to Pianino’s settings or close) and whether it was allowed; when you reset your progress; and, when Welcome ends, your answers about whether you have a piano, your experience, your goal and how you heard about Pianino, and whether the sound check heard your piano or you skipped it; whether you allow notifications, and when you open one. Also the listening mode and the app’s language. The SDK adds data of its own such as sessions, time in the app, first open, updates, device model, operating system, app version, language, and approximate country or region (derived from the IP address).
• Firebase Crashlytics (crash reports): when the app crashes, stops responding or hits an error, the technical trace of the error, the device model, the operating system and app versions, free memory and other technical device data, the screen it happened on, the listening mode, the language, the answers about piano and experience and whether notifications are on, and, if usage statistics are on, the latest usage events.
• Firebase Performance Monitoring (performance): how long the app takes to start, whether screens are drawn smoothly and how long note recognition takes to load.

We also use these statistics to measure the results of our promotional campaigns.

This data is tied to random identifiers of the app installation (the Analytics app instance ID and the Firebase installation ID), not to your name, email or nickname. The device’s advertising ID, your nickname, your age, your precise location and recordings are not collected. Data is encrypted in transit.

Google processes it as the provider of Firebase, under its terms and the Google Privacy Policy. More in Privacy and Security in Firebase and how Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.

Children

Pianino is a general-audience app: it is not specifically directed at children under 13, but they may use it, ideally with an adult. So when the age entered during Welcome is under 13:

• usage statistics (Google Analytics) are never sent, whatever anyone chooses;
• crash and performance reports are only turned on if an adult who is with the child agrees during Welcome; the child is never asked;
• those reports can be turned off later in Settings → Privacy;
• they are never shown the course rating or the message form, and nothing is sent on their behalf;
• they get no news: the app never asks for a notification token for them (practice reminders still come, as they never leave the device).

The child’s nickname and age never leave the device. If you believe we have received data from a child without an adult’s permission, write to infopianinoapp@gmail.com and we will help delete it as far as we can identify it.

Course ratings and messages

There are two things you can send us from the app, both optional: a rating when you finish a course (1 to 5 stars and, if you like, a comment of up to 500 characters; you can also tap “Not now”) and a free-text message from the Player tab (“Send feedback”, up to 2000 characters): ideas, complaints or bugs. No email, name or age is asked for, and no screenshots are attached.

They are stored in Cloud Firestore (Google Firebase), on servers in the European Union, and we use them for support and to improve Pianino, including fixing bugs. Each send carries this data:

• with a rating: the course’s identifier, the stars or the fact that you dismissed it, your comment if you wrote one, the app version, the platform (Android or iOS) and the app’s language;
• with a message: the text, the app version and build number, the platform, the operating system version, the device model, the app’s language and the listening mode (for example Ear or Touch), which help reproduce a bug.

So that nobody can flood us with sends, on the first send the app creates an anonymous Firebase Authentication account: a random identifier with no name, email or password, which cannot be used to sign in and is not linked to your identity. It is used only to limit sends (one rating per course, 60 seconds between messages and 5 messages per 24 hours) and so that Google can check that the send comes from the genuine app (Firebase App Check: Play Integrity on Android, App Attest or DeviceCheck on iOS). If you uninstall the app the identifier is lost, and reinstalling creates a new one.

Ratings and messages are deleted automatically 24 months after they are sent. They are never used for advertising, never shared with anyone but Google as the service provider, and never sold.

If usage statistics are on, Google Analytics also receives an event with the rating’s stars (never the comment), another if you dismiss it, and another, with no data, when you send a message (never the text). With usage statistics off, none is sent.

Children under 13 never see the rating or the message form, and the app sends nothing on their behalf and creates no anonymous account.

Android backup

The app supports Android’s automatic backup. If it is on for your phone, Android may save the app’s data (for example, your progress, streak, nickname and settings) to your Google account and restore it on a new device. That backup is handled by Google under its terms; we have no access to it.

You can turn it off in your phone’s settings (usually Settings → Google → Backup, depending on the manufacturer) and manage or delete backups from your Google account. More about Android backup.

This website

This site is hosted on Firebase Hosting (Google), which processes technical data such as your IP address to serve the pages.

We use Google Analytics 4 to learn how many people visit it: it records page views and which link or campaign brought you (for example, our TikTok profile link), clicks on the download buttons (which platform, where on the page and from which campaign) and whether you play the video, along with browser and device data and your approximate country or region. To do so it stores the cookies _ga and _ga_2FHGR8K14N in your browser, which last up to 2 years. You can block or delete them in your browser, or install the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

When you tap a download button, the campaign is passed to Google Play or the App Store so we know which campaign brought the install. The site also keeps in your browser the language you choose and, for the visit, the link’s campaign; they are not identifiers.

The home page includes a Pianino video hosted on YouTube (Google). Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play; the player then loads in YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com), and Google processes the data of that playback, such as your IP address and what the player stores in your browser, under its Privacy Policy.

The site has no forms, accounts or ads.

How long data is kept

• Data on your device: until you delete it in Settings or uninstall the app.
• Usage statistics (Google Analytics, for the app and the website): event-level data is kept for the period set in Google Analytics, 2 months by default and 14 months at most; aggregated reports may be kept longer.
• Crash reports (Crashlytics): 90 days.
• The news notification token (Firebase Cloud Messaging): until you turn news off, revoke the permission or uninstall the app; Firebase treats a token that has not connected for 270 days as expired.
• Performance data (Performance Monitoring): up to 30 days for data tied to an IP address and up to 60 days for data tied to the installation.
• Course ratings and messages (Cloud Firestore): 24 months from sending; the anonymous account’s send counter, 24 months from the last message.

Who data is shared with

Only Google, as the provider of Firebase and Google Analytics, which processes it on our behalf and may do so on servers in the United States and other countries (ratings and messages are stored in the European Union). If you play the video on the home page, YouTube (Google) also receives the data of that playback. We do not sell data or show ads, and there are no in-app purchases.

Your choices and rights

• Turn usage statistics and crash reports off in Settings → Privacy. Turning crash reports off also deletes any reports still waiting to be sent.
• Deny or revoke the microphone permission in your phone’s settings.
• Turn news off in Settings → Notifications, or every notification (reminders included) in your phone’s settings.
• Reset your progress in Settings → Progress, or delete all the app’s data by uninstalling it. Reinstalling creates new identifiers.
• Ask us for access to, correction or deletion of your data, or object to its processing, by writing to infopianinoapp@gmail.com. As there are no accounts and we do not know who you are, we may not be able to find your data without more information (for example, the text and approximate date of a message you sent); we will tell you what we need.
• Lodge a complaint with the data protection authority of your country.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will publish the new version on this page with its effective date.

Contact

Pianino · infopianinoapp@gmail.com