Last updated: 12 October 2026
Trad Buddy is a tune-learning app made by one musician for other musicians. The privacy story is short because we collect almost nothing.
Your tune lists, quest log, settings and session history are stored locally on your device. If you never sign in, nothing about you leaves it.
Signing in exists for one purpose: keeping your tunes in sync across your devices. We store your email address and a copy of your app data (tune lists, settings) on our database, hosted by Supabase. Sign-in emails are delivered via Resend. Your data is protected so that only your account can read it. We never sell, share, or mine it.
If you turn on your friend code, anyone who has the code or link can see your display name, avatar, level and tune list — nothing else (no email, no practice history). Friends you add see the tunes you have in common. If you join or start a group, its members see the same things about you, and the group name is stored with the list of who is in it. Turning your friend code off hides you right away; leaving a group removes you from it. When you follow someone, they can see that you follow them (and follow you back). If a group member invites you to their group, you see the invite with their name; saying no or joining clears it. There is no posting or messaging. If you report someone, the report and their name come to the maker so it can be looked at.
To make a friend code or join a group without an email, the app can make a guest account for this device — no email or personal details. If you later add your email, your groups and code move to that account and the guest account is deleted.
Scanning codes: the camera is only used, on your device, to read a Trad Buddy code. No pictures or video are stored or sent anywhere.
The app counts daily totals — visits, tunes learned, sets played — with no names, accounts, IP addresses, or device identifiers attached. One number per day, so we can tell whether anyone is enjoying the thing.
No advertising, no trackers, no analytics SDKs, no selling of data, no third-party profiling. The tune database comes from the wonderful thesession.org community.
All the sound — the tune player and the small ▶ previews on tune cards — is made on your device. Nothing is downloaded to play a tune.
Sign out and your data stays only on your device. To delete your account and cloud data entirely, send us a message via the in-app feedback form and it's done within a few days.
Tap the ? button in the app — feedback goes straight to the maker.