Privacy Policy

Overbark · Last updated 17 July 2026

Overbark collects nothing — and never will.

No account, no servers, no analytics, no ads, no tracking, no third-party SDKs, no cloud AI. Nothing about you, your voice, your dog, or your home ever leaves the phone — because we care about privacy. Yours, ours, everyone's. In fact Overbark never goes online at all: it sends nothing and receives nothing, and it works exactly the same in Airplane Mode — try it. It's at our core: a brand promise, and a policy we're not going to change.

What the app uses, and where it stays

Camera. Used live, on your device, to see the dog — its presence, posture, and surroundings — so the bubbles and readouts fit the moment. Frames are processed in the moment and are never recorded, saved, or transmitted.
Microphone. Used live, on your device, to analyse the dog's barks (pitch, tone, and tempo) and to recognise everyday ambient sounds around it — a doorbell, a siren, another dog — so the bubbles fit the moment. Audio is processed in the moment and is never recorded, saved, or transmitted.
Speech recognition (optional). Only if you switch on the “Hooman Input Channel” in Settings. It uses Apple's on-device speech recognition — in whatever language your device is set to, so you can talk to your dog the way you naturally do (no need to switch to English unless that's your language) — to spot a small set of dog-directed words. It runs entirely on your device, never uses the network, and stores nothing. It's off by default, and turning it on is the only thing that ever asks for speech permission.

Does it use AI? Yes — and it all runs on your device

Overbark uses machine learning, so it's fair to ask where that happens. The answer: entirely on your device. It relies only on Apple's built-in, on-device frameworks — Vision (to read the dog's posture), Sound Analysis (to analyse barks and everyday sounds), and, if you opt in, Speech recognition — all running on your iPhone or iPad's own hardware, including the Apple Neural Engine.

There is no cloud AI service involved and no large language model — no ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, and not even Apple's own cloud AI (such as Apple Intelligence or Private Cloud Compute). The only Apple technology Overbark uses is the on-device frameworks described above, and they never leave your phone. To do its job, Overbark makes no network requests at all. Your dog's image, its barks, and anything you say are never sent anywhere, never used as a “prompt,” never uploaded, and never used to train any AI model — ours or anyone else's. The lines the app shows are written by us in advance and selected on your device by a small local engine; they are not generated by an AI in a data centre. In short: the app is smart, but the intelligence lives on your phone, and your private moments stay there.

For complete transparency: the only network-related thing Overbark does is note whether your phone is on Wi‑Fi or cellular — a rough “at home vs. out and about” hint for the on-screen readouts. It reads that locally, needs no permission, and still sends and receives nothing. That's why the app runs identically in Airplane Mode.

What we collect

Nothing. There is no account system, no cloud, and no analytics or crash-reporting service in the app. Because no data is gathered, there is nothing to store, sell, share, or delete, and no data breach is possible on our side — there is no “our side.”

Your dog's name(s)

If you enter your dogs' names, they're saved only in the app's own settings on your device (standard iOS preferences) to personalise the on-screen translations. They are not transmitted anywhere.

Children

Overbark does not collect data from anyone — including children, grandparents, and your mother-in-law. It requires no account and gathers no personal information.

Changes

If this policy ever changes, the updated version will be posted here with a new date. The “collects nothing” commitment is the whole point of the app and is not expected to change.

Contact

Questions? Email mike.mcfin@gmail.com.