The Whole HornThe Whole HornThese apps are designed to respect your privacy. We do not require an account, and we do not collect, sell, or share personal information.
Everything the app saves is kept on your own device, in local storage. Nothing is transmitted to us or to anyone else. That includes:
You may download your practice log as a file to share with your teacher if you choose, and you can reset any exercise's counters in-app or by clearing your browser data.
One ear-training game, Sing it, listens to your voice so it can show you how close your pitch is. The microphone is used only while that game is open, and only after iOS has asked your permission. The sound is analysed live on your own device to read its pitch — it is never recorded, never stored, and never sent anywhere. There is no recording function anywhere in these apps. Every other exercise works with the microphone switched off, and you can decline the permission and still use the whole app apart from that one game.
We do not use your camera.
In the apps: no name, no email, no account, no location, no advertising identifiers, no analytics, and no third-party behavioural tracking.
Everything above is about the apps. This website, thewholehorn.com, does one thing the apps do not: its pages load Vercel Web Analytics, a visit counter run by Vercel, the company that hosts the site. When a page opens, the counter sends Vercel the page's address, the time, and the address of the site that sent you, if there was one. On a practice link, the page's address includes the assignment your teacher put in it. From the request itself, Vercel works out an approximate location (country, region and city) and your type of device, operating system and browser. We see totals, not individual visitors.
The counter sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device. Vercel tells visitors apart with a code calculated from each request; the code is valid for one day and is then reset, so it cannot follow you from one day to the next or from this site to another. Vercel describes what it records as anonymous and not tied to any person or IP address; its own description is on Vercel's Web Analytics privacy page. The apps do not contain this counter, and The Whole Horn's App Store label, Data Not Collected, describes the app, not this website.
The app's fonts and music-notation library are bundled with the app itself — nothing is loaded from a font or notation CDN. Two things are fetched over the network when you use them, and both work this way by design:
Neither of these sends us anything about you. Requesting a file from a web server does reveal your device's IP address to that server, as it does for any web page.
The gear page links to instruments and accessories on Amazon and on a few retailers' own sites. The Amazon links are Amazon Associates affiliate links, marked as sponsored in the page's own code: if you buy something after following one, the purchase costs you nothing extra and I may earn a small commission. That is the only commercial relationship in the app. There are no ad networks, no banners, and nothing that follows you around.
The core trainer is free. A one-time purchase, Full Studio, unlocks the remaining modules. The transaction is handled entirely by Apple — we never see your payment details, and no payment information is stored in the app. Refunds go through Apple.
If we ever add privacy-respecting, anonymous usage analytics to the apps, this page will be updated to say so before it goes live.
These apps are suitable for learners of all ages, including children, and are appropriate for use under a teacher's or parent's guidance. The apps collect no personal information from anyone — no name, email, account, location, or advertising identifiers — and everything they save stays on the child's own device. The microphone, used only in the Sing it ear-training game, is analysed live for pitch and is never recorded, stored, or transmitted, so no voice data is ever collected. On that basis these apps do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 (US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, COPPA) or under 16 (EU GDPR-K). No registration or parental-consent flow is required, because no personal data is collected. Parents and teachers who would rather the microphone were not used at all can simply decline the permission; every other exercise is unaffected. Parents and teachers with any question can reach us below.
Questions about privacy, or about any of the apps? Email the creator, Prof. Thomas Hornig, at tomhornig@gmail.com — or see the support page. More about his work at tomhornig.blog.