staticwave

Privacy Policy

Effective 5 August 2026

The short version

Static Wave has no accounts and no server storing your content. Your favourites, listening history, sleep timer and settings stay in storage on your own device. We can't read them, we don't back them up, and we never sell them. If you uninstall the app, they're gone.

The rest of this page explains the exceptions in plain terms — the station directory we query, the stations you stream from, and two anonymous app services.

Who this policy is from

Static Wave is built and owned by Kin Leon Zinzombe, who is responsible for this policy and for how the app handles data.

The app is published to the Apple App Store and Google Play through the developer account of Wyven Technologies (private) limited, so that name may appear as the seller or developer on the store listing. Wyven is the publisher of record only — it does not receive, store, or process any of your data, and it has no access to anything the app keeps on your device.

What stays on your device

The following is written to your device's own storage and never transmitted to us or anyone else:

  • Your saved stations (favourites), including when you added each one
  • Your recently played history — the last 50 stations, with timestamps
  • Onboarding answers: the genres you picked and the country you chose
  • App preferences such as your light or dark theme and any active sleep timer

There is no account to sign into and no sync. Nothing in this list leaves the device, which also means it does not move with you if you switch phones.

What leaves your device

Static Wave is a radio player, so it necessarily talks to the wider internet. Four things receive information. None of them receives an identity, because the app never creates one.

The RadioBrowser directory

Station listings come from RadioBrowser, a free community-run database. When you search, browse a genre or country, or open a station, your device queries their servers directly. Those queries contain your search terms and filters, and — as with any web request — your IP address is visible to them. RadioBrowser is an independent service with its own privacy practices.

Two actions also send a small signal back to RadioBrowser so their public rankings stay useful: playing a station registers an anonymous play count, and saving a station to your favourites registers an anonymous vote for it. Neither carries any identifier for you or your device. If you would rather not contribute these, don't play or favourite stations — there is currently no separate switch for it.

The radio stations themselves

Audio is streamed directly from each station's own servers to your device. We are not in the middle of that connection. This means the station operator can see your IP address and the fact that something connected to their stream, exactly as they would if you opened the same URL in a browser. Their handling of that is governed by their policies, not ours.

Expo Insights (analytics)

We use Expo Insights to understand basic app health — how many people open the app, which app version they're on, and whether it's crashing. This is anonymous and aggregated. It includes technical details like device model, operating system version, and app version. It does not include your name, email, your favourites, or which stations you listen to.

Expo Updates (over-the-air updates)

The app can download bug fixes without a full store update. To check whether an update applies to your device, it sends your app version and platform to Expo's servers.

Payments

The current version of Static Wave is free and contains no in-app purchases, so no payment data is collected or processed at all. If we introduce paid features in a future version, payments would be handled by Google Play or the Apple App Store — we would never see or store your card details — and this policy will be updated before that goes live.

What we never do

  • We don't require an account, email address, or phone number
  • We don't show ads or share data with advertisers
  • We don't sell or rent personal information to anyone
  • We don't track you across other apps or websites
  • We don't access your contacts, camera, photos, microphone, or location
  • We don't record, store, or analyse the audio you listen to

Permissions the app requests

Notifications.Used for one thing: telling you the sleep timer has finished when the app isn't open. The notification is scheduled on your device — there is no push server, and declining this permission doesn't limit any other feature.

Background audio. On Android this appears as a foreground service permission, and on iOS as background audio. It exists so playback continues when you lock your phone or switch apps, which is what a radio app is for. It gives us no access to anything else on your device.

Deleting your data

Because everything lives on your device, you are always in full control. You can remove individual favourites, clear your entire listening history from the Recently played screen, or simply uninstall Static Wave — uninstalling permanently removes your favourites, history, onboarding answers and settings. There is no server-side copy for us to delete, and no account to close.

Since the app is currently free with no purchases, there are no billing records associated with you either.

Content we don't control

Static Wave plays live streams operated by thousands of independent broadcasters. We do not host, moderate, or endorse what any station broadcasts, and station listings come from a public directory we do not curate. If a station in the directory is broken, mislabelled, or objectionable, we encourage you to report it to RadioBrowser, and you can also email us.

Children

Static Wave is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Since the app collects no personal information from anyone, this is largely moot — but note that the app plays live radio from an unmoderated public directory, and some stations broadcast content intended for adults.

Changes to this policy

If we ever start handling data differently, we'll update this page and change the effective date at the top. Material changes will also be noted in the app or its store listing.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or want to know exactly what we hold on you? Email kinzinzombe07@gmail.com.