Privacy

Without an account we hold nothing about you. With one, we hold your email and your Practice record; your files only if you are a Supporter. We use them only to run Fretfall for you.

In force since November 2, 2026.

Who is responsible

Fretfall, an independent project. For anything about your data, write to us at hello@fretfall.com.

If you just play

You need no account to play. A file you open is read by your browser and is never sent to us. Your Library (the files you opened), your Practice record (Plays, Statuses, Setlists) and your preferences are stored in your browser, on your device, and nowhere else. Clearing the browser's data removes them.

Like every website, our host keeps a technical log of requests (IP address, time, the page asked for, the browser's name) to keep the service running and secure. We read it only for that, never to build a picture of you, and our host keeps it for the limited period our hosting plan sets.

If you have an account

An account is free and exists from the moment you sign in. We then hold:

Your email address: To sign you in with a one-time code (there are no passwords) and to send the few emails listed below. Each sign-in session records the IP address and browser it was started from.
Your Practice record: Your Plays (when, how long, which Version, or which kind of practice), each Song's Status and your Setlists, with the titles and artists of the Songs they belong to, so they follow you to every device, and your device's time zone, so your days begin when yours do. From these we count your Fame, Level, Streak and Achievements. Not the files: your Library stays on your device unless you are a Supporter.

If you join the Boards

You are not on the Boards, and nobody sees anything of your practice, until you choose a name and say so. From then on anyone can see that name, your place on the Boards, and your Profile: your Level and Fame, the Achievements you earned, your places in past Seasons, how many minutes you practised on each day of the last year, and the titles and artists of the Songs you marked Can play. Never your email, your files, your Setlists or anything you did not mark. Taking yourself off hides all of it again at once. We may change a name that should not be on a Board.

Pictures, videos and the feed

You may choose a picture of yourself. Your browser cuts it square and re-draws it at 256 pixels before anything is sent, so what reaches our storage is that small image and nothing else the file held. You may also link a video of yourself playing a Song, which lives wherever you put it: we store the link, cleaned of what it carried for whoever handed it out, and we never embed it, so no other service learns that you visited us. Both are shown with your name, both can be taken down by you at any moment, and both can be reported by other Musicians. Lately, the list on the Ranks page, is made of what you already chose to show: Songs you marked Can play, runs the ear scored, videos you linked. Nobody can write anything about you anywhere on Fretfall.

Reporting and blocking

If you report something, we store what was reported, which of the fixed reasons you picked, and that it was you, so that the same thing is not counted twice. Nothing you write is stored, because a report has nothing to write in it. The Musician reported is not told who reported them. If we take something away, we email the Musician it belonged to and keep a record of what was removed and why. Blocking is yours alone: the Musician you block is never told, and nothing of theirs is deleted — their rows simply leave the Boards and the feed you see.

If you are a Supporter

We also hold:

Your payments: Whether you are a Supporter, when the paid period ends, and Stripe's reference numbers for you and for your payments. We never see or store your card.
Your Library: The files you upload (tabs, Frett files, Recordings), their names and sizes, and the facts your browser read from them: title, artist, album, year, Parts, tuning and length. Our servers never open a file. Nobody but you can play or download it; our admin area shows titles and sizes only, for support and for copyright notices, and has no way to open a file.

Other things we keep

The desktop waitlist: your email and the date, until the desktop app ships or you ask us to remove you.
Takedown records: when we remove a file after a copyright notice, decide on something Musicians reported (removed or kept), change a name that should not be on a Board, or lift a bar or a strike, we record what it was (a removed name included), why, who asked for it, when, and the email of the Musician it concerned (once they delete their account, its internal number instead), to be able to show what we did.
Our admin log: every change made from our admin area, whether it worked or not, and every time we looked a Musician up there, with the internal number of the account it concerned, why it was made and what was sent, a name it replaced included until the Musician deletes their account, but never an email address. It is how we can show who changed what.
Payment records: for each payment Stripe tells us of, for Gems, as a Supporter or a month given to a bandmate, the amount, the date and Stripe’s reference (and for a given month, who gave it to whom), for our accounts. If you delete your account they stay, no longer linked to you.
Backups: our host copies the whole database once a day, so that we can recover it after a failure. We use a copy for nothing else.

Cookies

One, and only once you sign in: the session cookie that keeps you signed in. It is strictly necessary, which is why there is no cookie banner. There are no advertising cookies and no cookies from anyone else.

Analytics

We use PostHog, hosted in the EU, in its cookieless mode: it stores nothing on your device, records no sessions and captures no clicks on its own, and we ask it to discard your IP address. We send a handful of named events, and only these:

song finished: its format, and whether it was your own file or a Catalog piece, never its title
keep prompt shown and keep prompt clicked: the offer of an account, shown and taken, and whether it was made after a Song or at the end of the first visit
ask shown and ask answered: which of Home’s two questions (reminder emails, or becoming a Supporter) was asked, and the answer
registered: a sign-in made an account, or first used one on this device
supporter surface reached, supporter plan picked and checkout started: the way to becoming a Supporter, step by step
shop opened, gems checkout started (with how many Gems) and gems bought: the way to buying Gems, step by step
locked toast dismissed: the notice about a locked Library, put away
catalog search no results: a Catalog search that found nothing
waitlist signup: someone joined the desktop waitlist
first run step and first run skipped: the first visit’s steps, which one was seen or left, whether it began on this site or from a band link, and guitar or bass
first run ear: whether the first visit let Fretfall hear it, said not now, or the browser said no (the answer only, never the sound)
first run done: the first visit’s first Play of two minutes or more, with how long it was, its speed and whether it was scored, never the Song
$pageview: which page of the app you opened, by its address without anything after the ?, and which part of the app it belongs to
$exception: something broke in your browser: the kind of error, where in our code it happened, and which build of the site it was. Never the error’s own words, so never a Song’s title or file name. The same error is sent once, and at most ten a visit

Nothing is sent while a Song plays. Events carry your account's internal number only once you have an account; before that they are anonymous.

You can object, and nothing is counted from then on. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, we never load PostHog at all. Otherwise, turn off the switch below: this device then remembers that one choice (and nothing else), and if you are signed in, your account remembers it too, so every device you sign in on stops counting.

Count my visits

Emails

Sign-in codes, a welcome when you become a Supporter, a notice when you are no longer one (with the dates your Library locks and its files are deleted), a warning seven days before deletion, a notice if a file of yours was taken down, and for the desktop waitlist a confirmation with a link to leave and one email when the app ships. No newsletter. Stripe sends its own receipts and failed-payment notices.

Who else handles your data

Divio hosts the site, the database and the file storage. Its servers, the database and the file storage are in North America (the United States).
Stripe takes payment as the seller of record: it is the company on your receipt, and it handles your payment details, tax and receipts under its own privacy policy. Your statement shows a charge beginning LINK.COM*.
PostHog (EU cloud) receives the events above.
Our email provider delivers the emails above. It is Resend (Resend, Inc., in the United States), which sends our emails from Ireland, in the European Union.
Google Fonts: when the Player starts, your browser fetches the Player's typefaces from this public network, which therefore sees your IP address. It gets nothing else from us. The notation library, its instrument sounds and its music font come from this site.

Some of these companies process data outside Switzerland and the EEA, notably in the United States. Where they do, they rely on the safeguards the law provides, such as the EU and Swiss standard contractual clauses or the Data Privacy Framework.

How long we keep it

Your account, Practice record and, as a Supporter, your Library: until you delete your account.
The files of a Locked Library: 30 days after you stop being a Supporter, then they are deleted. The Practice record stays.
Sign-in codes: minutes. Sessions: until you sign out or they expire.
Takedown records: as long as we need them to show what we did about a notice and to apply our rule about repeated infringement, and in any case no more than six years. A decision to keep something that was reported: twelve months.
Our admin log: two years, or as long as a takedown record about you is kept.
Payment records: ten years from the end of the year of the payment, as Swiss accounting law asks, then they are deleted.
Backups: up to a year, then they are deleted, the daily copies by our host and the few we take by hand (for instance to check that a backup restores) by us. Something you delete, your account included, stays in the copies made before that until they are deleted in turn.
Your picture and your video links: until you take them down, or we do after a report.
Reports: twelve months after we decide one, or sooner if the Musician who sent it deletes their account, which takes their reports with it. A report about you outlives your account only as the record of what we decided.

Your rights

You can ask what we hold about you, have it corrected, get a copy, or have it deleted. Most of it you can do yourself: Everything we hold about you, on your account page, gives you a file of all of it, each part explained, leaving out only what would expose someone else or your account: who reported or blocked you, who bought what you sold, who reacted to your rows of the feed, who sent a copyright notice, which of us acted, the secret parts of your sign-ins and where your files are stored. Every file you uploaded can be downloaded unchanged at any time; and deleting your account from your account page removes your files, your Practice record and your sign-in, and cancels your payments as a Supporter. For anything else, write to us at hello@fretfall.com.

Where the GDPR applies, we process your data to perform our contract with you (your account and Practice record, and as a Supporter your Library and payments), and on our legitimate interest in running a secure service and understanding how it is used (logs and the cookieless analytics). You may object to the latter, with the switch under Analytics. You can complain to the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner or to the data protection authority where you live.

Fretfall is not meant for children under 16.

Changes

If what Fretfall does with data changes, this page changes first, and every Musician with an account hears about it by email. See also the terms.