Last updated 11 August 2026
Bard is a podcast player. It needs an account so your listening position follows you between devices, and it needs to talk to podcast publishers to fetch shows. This page describes everything it collects and everyone it sends data to. There is no advertising network in Bard, and nothing here is sold.
| Your account | Your email address and an account identifier. If you use Sign in with Apple and choose to hide your address, Apple gives us a relay address instead and we never see the real one. |
|---|---|
| Your listening | Which episodes you have played, how far into each one you are, and when. This is the feature — it is what lets you pick up where you left off on another device. |
| Your library | Shows you subscribe to, episodes and shows you shelve, and shows you dismiss from Discover. |
| Your ratings | The thumbs ratings you give shows. Aggregate counts are shown to other listeners; your individual ratings are not attributed to you publicly. |
| How you use Discover | When you play a show's trailer from a Discover card, and whether you then subscribed or shelved it. This is internal measurement — it tells us whether the trailer is useful — and it is never shown to anyone else or used to target you. |
| Your subscription | Whether you have a paid subscription and what tier. Bard never sees or stores your card details — Apple handles payment. |
Bard uses a small number of service providers. Each one receives only what it needs to do its job.
| Supabase | Hosts the database and handles sign-in. Everything in the table above is stored there. |
|---|---|
| Apple | Handles sign-in and payment. Search terms you type are also sent to Apple's podcast search service to find shows that aren't yet in Bard's own index. |
| RevenueCat | Tracks subscription status so your paid features stay unlocked. |
| Rollbar | Receives crash reports so bugs get fixed. A report includes your account identifier, the app version, and the platform. Feedback you send through the in-app “Send feedback” form is delivered this way too, so please don't put anything sensitive in it. |
| Gravatar | Supplies your profile picture. Bard sends a one-way cryptographic hash of your email address — never the address itself — and Gravatar can see the request's IP address. If you have no Gravatar account, Bard shows your initial instead. |
| Podcast publishers | Episode audio and show feeds are fetched directly from whoever hosts them, exactly as any podcast app does. Those servers can see your IP address and that you requested a file. Bard has no control over what they log. |
Bard does not track you across other companies' apps or websites, does not use advertising identifiers, and does not sell your data. Where Bard promotes a show — always labelled “Promoted” or “Ad” — the placement is chosen on the server from aggregate listening activity, not from a profile of you.
You can delete your account from inside the app, under Profile → Delete account. It removes your account and every row of the data described above, permanently and immediately. It cannot be undone.
One thing it cannot do: cancel a subscription bought through the App Store. Apple owns that relationship, so cancel it in your Apple account settings, otherwise billing continues after your Bard account is gone.
Bard is not directed at children under 13, and accounts are not knowingly created for them. Podcasts in the index are made by third parties and some carry mature themes.
If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected, the date above changes and the app will say so. Questions, or a request for a copy of your data: michael@schoeyfield.com.