Picardo Course Maker is developed and operated by Oleksa Kozak, an individual developer based in Ukraine, acting as the data controller for the limited processing described below. Contact: oleksa.kozak2013@gmail.com.
The following is stored in the app's private storage on your phone. It is not uploaded, backed up to us, or shared with anyone:
Uninstalling the app, or using Android's Clear storage, deletes all of it permanently. We cannot recover it, because we never had it.
Picardo has one server, operated by us on Railway infrastructure. The app talks to nothing else on the internet — it never loads content directly from third-party hosts, so no other company sees your IP address through this app.
| When | What is sent | Where it goes after our server |
|---|---|---|
| Creating or extending a course, generating a lesson, checking a spoken or written answer | The subject and goal you typed, and the lesson context needed for the request. Nothing that identifies you or your device. | Google Gemini API, which returns the generated text. |
| Reading a lesson aloud | The text of the lesson to be spoken, plus the chosen voice and language. | Microsoft Edge text-to-speech, or a self-hosted Piper voice running on our own server. |
| Illustrating a lesson | The lesson topic and course goal, used as a search query. | Openverse, a search index of openly licensed images. The image is fetched by our server and passed to you, so the image host never sees your device. |
Requests contain no account, no device identifier, no advertising ID and no location. Our server writes no request log tying content to a person, and we do not build a profile of you. As with any internet service, your IP address is visible to the server at the moment of the request as an unavoidable part of how the network works.
The app asks for microphone access only when you open a practice exercise that needs it, and Android will show you that prompt. You can refuse; the rest of the app works normally. There are two separate uses, and they behave very differently:
For the tuner, note recognition, ear training and metronome exercises, the app analyses the sound directly on the device to work out the frequency you played. No audio is recorded to a file, and none of it is transmitted anywhere. It exists only in memory, for milliseconds at a time.
If you would rather that never happen, do not use the speaking exercises, or deny the microphone permission. Some Android versions can perform recognition entirely on the device; whether yours does is a system setting outside the app's control.
| Permission | Why it is needed |
|---|---|
| Internet | To generate lessons, audio and illustrations. Without it the app still opens lessons already saved on your device. |
| Microphone | Only for practice exercises, as described in section 4. Requested at the moment you start such an exercise. |
| Notifications | Only for the study reminder you switch on yourself. Reminders are scheduled on your phone; no server is involved and no push service is used. |
Where the GDPR applies, our legal basis for sending your text to the services in section 3 is performance of a contract — it is the service you asked for, and the app cannot generate a lesson without it. Microphone use for speaking exercises rests on your consent, given through the Android permission prompt and withdrawable at any time in system settings.
We retain nothing. Content is passed through our server to fulfil the request and is not stored afterwards. Our processors keep data only as long as their own policies require to deliver and secure their service.
Picardo is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Because the app has no accounts and collects no identifiers, it holds no children's data to disclose or delete. A lesson is generated by a language model from whatever subject is typed in; parents should supervise use accordingly.
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or export your personal data, and to object to processing. In this app those rights are largely self-service, because everything personal lives on your phone: uninstalling the app or clearing its storage erases all of it immediately, and there is no account for us to look up. If you believe we hold something about you, write to oleksa.kozak2013@gmail.com and we will answer within 30 days. You may also complain to your national data protection authority.
If the app starts doing something materially different — accounts, for example, which we are considering — this page will be updated before that version ships, and the date at the top will change. Significant changes will also be noted in the app's release notes on Google Play.
Questions about this policy, or about anything the app does with data: oleksa.kozak2013@gmail.com.