What leaves your phone, and what does not
Yarn records, transcribes and renders your video entirely on your iPhone. The words you give it to write from are sent away, as text, and only after you have said yes on a screen that says where they go. This page says what Yarn collects, how, what it is used for, who receives it, and what never leaves the device.
The short version
- Your recordings, your finished videos and your voice stay on your iPhone.
- The words you give Yarn to write from are sent, as text, to Awesomate’s server and on to an AI model, and only after you have said yes on a screen in the app that explains this. You can take that back at any time under Settings, Connections.
- Yarn has no accounts, no sign-up, no analytics, no advertising trackers, and sells nothing.
What Yarn collects, and how
Yarn holds the following on your phone because you typed or spoke it, or because it was made from what you recorded. Yarn collects nothing you did not put in front of it: no location, no contacts, no advertising identifier, no usage analytics.
| Data | How Yarn gets it |
|---|---|
| Your idea for a video (the brief) and your answers to Yarn’s follow-up questions | You speak or type them. Speech becomes text on the phone. |
| Your profile: your name, your business, what it does, who your videos are for, what they struggle with, how you sound | You fill it in under Settings or in the set-up guide. |
| Your scripts, captions and titles | Written by Yarn from the above, pasted by you, or transcribed on the phone from your recordings. |
| Comments on your posts, and your replies | Read from your Zernio account, only when you open a post’s comments. |
| Recordings, takes, finished videos and footage | Made by the camera, or chosen by you from Photos. |
| Keys for your own OpenRouter, Zernio, HeyGen and Kie accounts | You paste them. They are kept in the iPhone’s Keychain. |
| A handle and an anonymous Sign in with Apple id | Only if you claim a handle to send scripts to other Yarn users. |
What stays on your iPhone
| Thing | Where it lives |
|---|---|
| Your recorded takes and finished videos | On the device only |
| The audio of your voice | On the device only |
| The transcription of what you said | On the device only, by Apple’s on-device speech recognition |
| Your captions, styles and projects | On the device only |
| Your account keys | In the iPhone’s Keychain (the OpenRouter key also travels with each writing request, see below) |
What leaves your iPhone, who receives it, and why
Text to Awesomate’s server, and on to an AI model, to write
This is the one place your information goes to a third-party AI service. Yarn asks your permission on screen before the first time, saying what is sent and to whom, and nothing is sent until you tap Allow. What is sent is text only:
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| The words of your idea, your answers to Yarn’s questions and your profile | To write the script |
| The transcript of a video | To suggest a title and to plan where cutaway footage would help |
| The comments you open, with the video’s title and transcript, and your offer in your own words | To draft replies, and to write a comment-to-message funnel |
| A script and its title | To suggest how your AI twin should perform it |
Who receives it, and what they do with it:
| Who | What they do with it | Their policy |
|---|---|---|
| Awesomate (the maker of Yarn, Australia) | Runs the server. Passes the text to the model, returns the answer, and keeps none of the text once the reply has been sent. Keeps an anonymous registry of installs (an App Attest key id and a count of free scripts used) and has no way to tie one to a person. | This page |
| Anthropic (Claude) | The model for the ten free scripts that come with Yarn, on Awesomate’s account. Processes the text to produce the answer and, under its commercial terms, does not use it to train its models. | anthropic.com/privacy |
| OpenRouter, and the model provider you choose there | Once you add your own OpenRouter key. Your key travels with each request; Awesomate’s server uses it for that one call and does not store or log it. OpenRouter processes the text under its privacy policy and your own OpenRouter data settings, which decide which providers may see your requests. | openrouter.ai/privacy |
Each of these companies is bound by its published policy to protect the text to at least the standard this page promises. If you do not say yes, or you take it back under Settings, Connections, none of this is sent: you write or paste scripts yourself, and everything else in Yarn works as before.
Your own accounts, directly from your phone, only when you tap
| Where | What goes, and when |
|---|---|
| Zernio | The finished video, its caption and hashtags, your chosen accounts and schedule, only when you tap Post. Zernio then posts to the platforms you connected there. Yarn uses your own Zernio key; Awesomate never sees it. If you turn on comment notifications, Zernio sends new comments to Awesomate’s server, which forwards a notification to your phone through Apple’s push service and does not store the comment. |
| HeyGen | The script text, the direction for the read, and your HeyGen account’s chosen look, only when you ask your twin to read a script. The finished video comes back to your phone. Yarn uses your own HeyGen key. |
| Kie | The description of a b-roll shot, only when you ask for one to be made. Yarn uses your own Kie key. |
Between Yarn users, only if you use “Get someone to read it”
If you send a script to another Yarn user, the script, your notes and your caption look go to Awesomate’s server and on to their phone. If you record a script someone sent you and tap “Send the takes back”, your take videos leave your phone to a storage bucket (Cloudflare R2, Oceania) and are downloaded to the sender’s phone; copies in the bucket are deleted when collected, or after seven days at most. Handles are tied to Sign in with Apple, which gives Yarn an anonymous, stable id and nothing else; you can ask Apple to hide your email. Awesomate keeps the handle, the id, and the list of hand-offs (who sent what to whom and when), not the videos.
To Apple, and to your Photos
Yarn uses App Attest to prove to Awesomate’s server that requests come from a real copy of the app. This sends Apple an anonymous device attestation, not anything about you. If you allow notifications, Apple’s push service carries them. Finished videos are saved to your Photos library, on the phone, if you allow it.
Every use Yarn makes of your data
- To write scripts, suggest titles, plan cutaways, draft comment replies and write a funnel for you, as described above.
- To post where you ask, and to make a twin video or footage where you ask, through your own accounts.
- To send a script to another Yarn user when you ask, and to bring their takes back to you.
- Nothing else. No profiling, no advertising, no sale or sharing of data for anyone’s marketing, and Awesomate trains no models on anything.
What Awesomate keeps
A registry of attested devices (an anonymous key id per install and a count of free scripts used), and, if you turned on comment notifications, your push token and a webhook secret so comments can reach your phone. If you claimed a handle, the handle, the anonymous Apple id and the list of hand-offs. Nothing else. There is no account to keep, and no way for Awesomate to tie a device to a person.
Your permission and your choices
- Sending your words to be written is off until you say yes in the app, and the switch under Settings, Connections turns it off again.
- Each third-party account is connected by you pasting your own key, and “Forget this key” disconnects it.
- Camera, microphone, speech recognition, Photos and notifications are iOS permissions you grant and can withdraw in the iPhone’s Settings.
- Deleting the app deletes everything on the phone. Awesomate holds nothing that identifies you, so there is nothing to request or erase there; a handle can be released by writing to the address below.
Permissions Yarn asks for
Camera and microphone
To record your videos, and to hear your idea when you brief a script. Your recordings stay on this iPhone.
Speech recognition
To write your captions. Transcription happens on this iPhone and your audio never leaves the device.
Photos
To save your finished videos, and to pick footage for b-roll. Yarn only writes the videos you make.
Notifications
Only if you ask to be told when people comment or when a script is sent to you.
Refusing speech recognition or Photos degrades Yarn rather than blocking it. Without speech recognition there are no captions and the video still exports. Without Photos access the share sheet still works.
Children
Yarn is for business owners and is not directed at children under 13.
Contact
Yarn is made in Australia by Awesomate. For a privacy question, write to [email protected]. If this page changes, the date below changes and the new text ships with the next update of the app.
Last updated 22 September 2026