What Dinged Privacy Policy
Effective 22 October 2026
The short version: What Dinged keeps your sound history on your own computer, never records audio, and sends us nothing about you or your sounds. The app goes online only to check your license key with Polar, our payment provider, and to check our website for a newer version.
This policy covers the What Dinged app and its browser extensions, made by Sean Bjers, doing business as ANQA Systems ("ANQA Systems", "we").
What the app records, on your computer only
| Information | When | Where it stays |
|---|---|---|
| The time a sound started | Every sound | Your computer |
| The name of the app that made it, and the kind of sound (alert, notification, playback) | Every sound | Your computer |
| The browser tab's title and website name (for example "youtube.com") | Only for browser sounds, only with the extension installed | Your computer |
The app keeps the 50 most recent sounds in memory and a running history in a text file, in your user Library folder under Application Support, then WhatDinged. You can open, clear or delete it at any time; deleting the app and that folder removes everything. On Windows, settings, the trial start date and the license key are stored in your user registry, and the sound history is kept in the WhatDinged folder in %APPDATA%; uninstalling removes them.
What Dinged does not record or store audio, listen to what is said or played, read the contents of web pages, messages or notifications, track your browsing, or collect anything about you for advertising. It contains no analytics, tracking or advertising code.
How What Dinged for Windows identifies sounds
To credit notification sounds to the right app, What Dinged for Windows reads only the sending app's name and the arrival time of the newest entry in Windows' notification list on the PC. It never reads notification text, and nothing leaves the computer. It reads only each app's current loudness level from Windows' audio system, never the audio itself.
What the browser extensions do
The extensions talk only to the What Dinged app on the same computer, never to our servers or anyone else. When a tab starts playing sound, the extension passes that tab's title and website name to the app. Tab marks are optional and stay off until you turn them on in What Dinged's Settings. With tab marks on, it adds a ♪ to the start of the tab's title until you visit the tab; it changes nothing else on the page. The Safari version also notices when an audio or video player on a page starts, so it can tell which tab is playing; it reads nothing else on the page.
When the app goes online
When you activate a license, and about once a week after that, the app sends your license key and a generic label ("What Dinged for Mac", or "What Dinged for Windows" on Windows) to Polar to confirm the key is valid and to count how many computers it is active on. It never sends your computer's name. Nothing about your sounds or browsing is included. During the trial, no license check is made.
To see whether a newer version is out, the app also reads a small public version file on our website, anqasystems.com/what-dinged/latest.json. It sends nothing about you, your computer or your sounds; like any web request, our website host sees your computer's internet address.
Purchases
Purchases are handled by Polar (polar.sh), our reseller and merchant of record. Polar collects your name, email address, billing details and payment details to process the sale, prevent fraud, handle tax and send your order email, which has an "Access purchase" link to the page that shows your license key. You can see your license keys and manage the computers a key is active on in Polar's customer portal, linked from your order email. We can see your name, email and order details in our seller dashboard so we can help with support and refunds. We never see or store your full card details. See Polar's privacy policy for how it handles your information.
If you email support, we keep your email address and messages only to reply and to tell you about the thing you asked about. We don't sell or share them.
This website
The website counts page visits and downloads in aggregate, by platform and campaign link, without cookies or personal data. It has no advertising pixel or chat widget and sets no cookies. The pages are static files. The company hosting them keeps ordinary server logs, which include the address of the computer that asked for the page. Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, so your browser requests those files from Google and Google sees that request. Clicking Buy takes you to Polar's checkout page.
Children
What Dinged is not directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect information from them.
Your choices and rights
Your sound history is under your control on your computer. For anything we hold (purchase records, emails), you can ask us to show, correct or delete it by writing to support@anqasystems.com. Depending on where you live, you may have further rights under laws such as the GDPR or California's CCPA; we will honor them.
Changes
If this policy changes, we will update it here with a new effective date, and point out significant changes on the What Dinged page.