Terms of use | Soffio

Last updated: [DATE]

These terms are an agreement between you and Roberto Cinetto, a sole proprietor in [PROVINCE], Canada ("we", "us"), who makes Soffio. They apply when you download, try, buy or use Soffio. If you do not agree, do not install or use it. If you use Soffio for a company, you accept these terms for that company too.

Nothing in these terms takes away rights you have under the consumer law of the place where you live.

1. Who is selling

You buy Soffio from Polar (Polar Software, Inc.), which acts as merchant of record and authorized reseller. Polar takes the payment, charges sales tax or VAT, sends the receipt and processes refunds. Your purchase is also covered by Polar's buyer terms. Your right to use Soffio comes from us, under these terms.

2. The licence

Soffio is licensed, not sold. When you buy a licence, we give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to install and use Soffio for personal or work purposes, under these terms.

One person, up to 3 Macs. One licence is for one person, on up to 3 Macs that person owns or uses. A company that wants Soffio for several people buys one licence per person.
Activation. A Mac uses a licence slot when you enter the key. You can free a slot from Settings > Licence > Deactivate this Mac, or from Polar's customer portal.
Version 1 updates are free. Every 1.x update is included. A future major version (2.0) may be a paid upgrade; we will say so in advance, and your 1.x version keeps working.
No subscription. You pay once. There are no word limits on local dictation.

Soffio, its code, design, name and content belong to us and are protected by copyright and other laws. We keep every right not given to you in these terms.

3. The free trial

You can try Soffio free for 14 days, with every feature and at full speed, with no card. The 14 days start with your first dictation and are counted on your Mac. When the trial ends, dictation and command mode stop until you enter a licence. Your history, dictionary, snippets and settings stay, and you can still read and export them.

4. What you may do

Install Soffio on up to 3 Macs per licence.
Use it for personal and commercial work.
Make backups of the app and your data.
Use what you dictate and what Soffio produces however you like. It is yours.

5. What you may not do

Share, sell, rent, lend or publish your licence key, or use one key for more than one person.
Remove, bypass or tamper with the licence check, the trial or the update signature.
Copy, modify, or make works based on Soffio, except as allowed by law.
Decompile or reverse engineer Soffio, except where the law allows it despite this rule (for example to make it work with other software).
Remove copyright, trademark or licence notices.
Use Soffio to break the law, including recording or transcribing other people without the consent the law requires where you are. Many places require consent from everyone in a conversation.
Use Soffio to harm people, or to make automated decisions about people that have legal or similar effects.

6. Price, payment and taxes

The price is shown on our website and at checkout, in your currency where Polar supports it, with taxes added or included as Polar shows. Launch prices and discounts apply only while they are offered. Prices may change, but a change never affects a licence you already paid for.

7. Refunds

You can ask for a full refund within 14 days of purchase, with no questions asked. See the refund policy. When a refund is made, the licence key is revoked and the licence ends.

8. Updates and support

Soffio checks for updates with Sparkle and asks before it installs one. Updates are signed and checked before they install.
Each major version gets security fixes for at least 2 years after its first release. See the security page.
Support is by email at support@getsoffio.app. We aim to reply within 3 working days. We are one person, so we cannot promise a fix for every request.
We may change or remove features in later versions. We will not remove a core feature you paid for from the version you already have.

9. Third-party services

Soffio works fully on your Mac without any of these. Some optional features use services you choose, under their own terms:

Groq. Cloud transcription, AI formatting, web search and some commands need your own Groq account and API key. You make that account with Groq and accept Groq's terms and policies directly. Groq requires users to be 18 or older. Groq may charge you, limit your use, or change its service. We do not sell, resell or include access to Groq, we are not affiliated with Groq, and we are not responsible for Groq's service. Your key stays on your Mac and is sent only to Groq. Groq is a trademark of Groq LLC and/or its affiliates.
Ollama. If you install Ollama and a model, command mode can use it on your Mac. The model's own licence applies (for example the Gemma Terms of Use at ai.google.dev/gemma/terms).
Websites and YouTube. "Read a page" downloads pages you choose. "Summarize a YouTube video" uses yt-dlp, a free tool you install yourself, to fetch captions. You are responsible for following the terms of the websites you use these tools on. These tools are off for new installs.
Hugging Face. The speech model is downloaded from Hugging Face on first launch.
Polar. Payments, receipts, licence keys and refunds.

If a third-party service changes or stops, the feature that uses it may stop working. That is not a defect in Soffio.

10. AI output and command mode

Speech recognition and AI models make mistakes. They can mishear words, change your meaning, or give wrong answers. Check the text before you send it, especially in important messages.

Do not rely on Soffio or the models it uses for medical, legal, financial or other professional advice, or for emergencies.
Command mode acts on your instructions. It can open apps and files, read files and images (it asks first unless you chose "Always allow"), and search the web. You are responsible for what you ask it to do.
If you turn on agent access (the soffio command line tool and MCP server), the agents you connect can read and act on your Soffio data with your permission. You are responsible for those agents.

11. Your content and privacy

What you dictate, your recordings and your history are yours and stay on your Mac. We do not receive them. The privacy policy explains what leaves your Mac and when.

12. Open-source components

Soffio includes open-source software and uses a speech model licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (NVIDIA Parakeet, post-trained by moondream, converted by FluidInference). Their licences are listed in Settings > About > Acknowledgements and in the THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES file inside the app. Where an open-source licence gives you more rights for that component, the open-source licence applies to that component.

13. No warranty

We work hard to make Soffio reliable, and the free trial lets you check that it works for you before you pay. But, as far as the law allows, Soffio is provided "as is" and "as available", without any warranty, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability and non-infringement. We do not promise that it will be error free, work without interruption, work with every app or Mac, or recognize every word.

Soffio needs a Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 15 or later.

Some places do not allow these exclusions. Where that is so, the exclusion applies only as far as the law allows, and your legal guarantees (for example the guarantee that digital content conforms to the contract in the EU and the UK, or the Quebec Consumer Protection Act) still apply.

14. Limit of liability

As far as the law allows:

We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses, such as lost profits, lost data, or loss caused by text pasted in the wrong place or a wrong transcription.
Our total liability for any claim about Soffio is limited to the amount you paid for your licence.

This does not limit liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or any other liability that cannot be limited by law. Please keep backups of important work.

15. Ending the licence

You can stop using Soffio at any time. Deactivate your Macs and delete the app.
The licence ends if you get a refund or a chargeback, or if you seriously break these terms (for example by sharing your key publicly). We will tell you by email first when we can.
When the licence ends, you must stop using the paid features. Your data on your Mac stays yours. Sections 9 to 18 continue to apply.

16. Export and sanctions

You may not use or export Soffio in breach of Canadian, US or other export control or sanctions laws, or in a country or for a person under those sanctions.

17. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of [PROVINCE] and the federal laws of Canada that apply there. The UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply. Courts in [PROVINCE] can hear disputes. If you are a consumer, you keep the protection of the mandatory laws of the country where you live, and you can bring a claim in your local courts.

Please write to us first. Most problems are fixed faster by email.

18. Other terms

Changes. We may update these terms for new versions or new laws. The version in force when you bought keeps applying to that purchase for the major version you bought, unless you agree to a new version. Changes that are required by law or that only help you can apply right away.
Whole agreement. These terms, the refund policy and the privacy policy are the whole agreement between you and us about Soffio.
Severability. If a part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies.
No waiver. If we do not enforce a term at once, we can still enforce it later.
Transfer. You may not transfer this licence without our written agreement. We may transfer these terms if we sell or pass on Soffio, and your rights stay the same.
Language. These terms are written in English. A translation is for convenience; the English text prevails where the law allows.

19. Contact

Roberto Cinetto, [ADDRESS], [PROVINCE], Canada. support@getsoffio.app.

Terms of use and licence