Privacy Policy

Last updated: 8 September 2026

Before publishing: replace [LEGAL NAME], [BUSINESS ADDRESS] and [COUNTRY] below with the details of the business that sells BubbleTranslate. Data protection law requires the controller to be identifiable, and payment providers check for it during account verification.

The short version. BubbleTranslate has no accounts and no sign-up. The text you select is sent from your computer straight to the translation service you have chosen, and never passes through our servers. Our licence service exists only to check that a paid licence is valid. It is never on the path of a translation, and it never sees a word you translate.

This summary is here to be useful, not to replace what follows.

1. Who we are

BubbleTranslate is operated by [LEGAL NAME], [BUSINESS ADDRESS], [COUNTRY]. In this policy, "we" and "us" mean that business, and "the app" means the BubbleTranslate desktop application for macOS and Linux.

We are the data controller for the personal data described here. You can reach us at support@bubbletranslate.app about anything in this document.

2. The text you translate

This is the part most people want to know about, so it comes first.

When you select text and the bubble appears, the app sends that text directly from your computer to whichever translation provider is next in your configured chain. It does not travel through any server of ours, and we neither receive nor store it.

The providers the app can use are Google Translate, MyMemory and DeepL. Which of them is used, and in what order, is a setting you control in the app. Each provider handles the text under its own privacy policy, and we would encourage you to read the one that applies to the provider you rely on:

Two optional settings send a little more to a provider, and only if you fill them in:

A DeepL API key, if you have one. It is stored on your computer and sent to DeepL to authenticate your own requests.
A MyMemory email address. MyMemory grants a larger free allowance to requests that carry an email address, so if you provide one it is included with each request to that provider. Leave it blank and nothing is sent.

The app keeps a short list of what you have translated recently, so that re-reading the same sentence does not spend your daily allowance twice. That list is held in memory only, for the length of the session. It is never written to disk, not even in hashed form.

3. What stays on your computer

The app stores three things locally. None of them is sent to us except where section 4 says so.

What	Contains
Settings	Your target language, provider order, bubble behaviour, and the optional DeepL key and MyMemory email described above.
Daily counter	A day number, how many translations you have spent today, and two flags. Nothing derived from anything you selected.
Licence token	Present only if you have activated Pro. A signed statement of what your licence entitles you to, checked locally by the app.

Deleting these files resets the app. They live in the standard configuration and data directories for your operating system.

4. What the licence service receives

If you buy Pro, the app talks to our licence service at api.bubbletranslate.app. It does so when you activate a licence, when it renews the local token roughly once a month, and when you remove a licence from a machine. At no other time, and never to translate anything.

Those requests carry:

Your licence key, on activation.
A device identifier. This is not your hardware ID. The app takes your machine's identifier, combines it with a fixed salt, hashes it with SHA-256 and keeps a truncated part of the result. What reaches us is a short opaque string that is stable for an installation and cannot be turned back into the value it came from.
Your operating system name ("linux" or "macos") and the app version, so that support requests can be answered sensibly.

Against your licence we store the licence record itself: an identifier, a hash of the key rather than the key, the plan and billing cycle, its status and expiry, how many machines it allows, and the payment processor plus that processor's reference for the purchase. If you gave an email address at checkout, it is stored here too.

For each machine you activate we store one row: the device identifier described above, the operating system, the app version, and when it was first and last seen. Removing a licence from a machine deletes that row.

We store a hash of your licence key rather than the key itself, which is why a lost key has to be replaced rather than looked up. That is a deliberate trade: a copy of our database is not a list of working licences.

5. Payments

We do not see or store your card details. Payment is handled entirely by our payment providers.

Outside Turkey: Paddle, which acts as merchant of record for the sale.
In Turkey: PayTR, as payment provider.

Each receives the payment information you enter and processes it under its own privacy policy. What comes back to us is confirmation that a purchase happened, a reference for it, and — where you provided one — an email address to send the licence key to.

6. Email

If you give an email address at checkout, we use it to send you your licence key and to answer you if you write to support. We do not send marketing email and there is no mailing list to be added to.

7. This website

This site carries no analytics, no advertising and no tracking scripts, and it sets no cookies.

It stores one value in your browser's local storage: which of the three site languages you last chose, so the page opens in it next time. That value never leaves your browser and is not personal data in any useful sense. Clearing your browser's site data removes it.

The site is served through Cloudflare, and loads its typeface from Google Fonts. Both receive your IP address as an unavoidable part of delivering a web page, and handle it under their own policies.

8. Why we are allowed to process this

Where the UK GDPR, the EU GDPR or Turkey's KVKK applies to you, our grounds are:

Performance of a contract for everything in sections 4 and 5. Without a device identifier and a licence record we cannot tell whether a licence is valid, which is the whole of what you bought.
Legitimate interests for keeping the operating system and app version against a seat, which is what makes a support conversation possible, and for limiting a licence to the number of machines it was sold for.
Legal obligation for records our payment providers and tax rules require us to keep.

9. How long we keep it

Licence records are kept for as long as the licence exists and afterwards for as long as tax and accounting rules require us to hold records of the sale. Seat rows are deleted when you remove a licence from that machine. Support email is kept for as long as it is useful to answer follow-up questions, and then deleted.

We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it for advertising. It reaches other companies only where they perform part of the service: the translation provider you chose, our payment providers, the email delivery service that sends your licence key, and Cloudflare, which hosts this site and the licence service.

11. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask for a copy of your personal data, to have it corrected or deleted, to object to or restrict how we use it, and to receive it in a portable form. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.

Write to support@bubbletranslate.app and we will answer. Please note that we identify a purchase by licence key, payment reference or the email address used at checkout, so telling us one of those is what lets us find you at all.

Deleting your licence record ends the licence: the entitlement it grants cannot survive the record that proves it. We will say so before acting on such a request.

12. Children

BubbleTranslate is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them.

13. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the new version is posted here with a new date at the top. Material changes to how we handle personal data will be announced on this site rather than made quietly.

14. Contact

Questions, requests and complaints all go to support@bubbletranslate.app, and reach [LEGAL NAME], [BUSINESS ADDRESS], [COUNTRY].