Last updated 25 September 2026
Privacy Policy
Crate has no accounts, no servers, no ads and no analytics. Your library, your crates and your listening stay on your devices and in your own iCloud. This page lists every place Crate sends anything, and why.
What stays with you
- On your iPhone and iPad: Crate's copy of your library, your play history, your crates, mixtapes, notes and pins, what it has learned about how your songs sound, and the requests you give the Clerk.
- In your own iCloud: your crates, mixtapes, notes, pins and play history sync between your devices through your iCloud account. It's Apple's storage, tied to your Apple Account. We can't see it.
- Nothing comes to us. The developer never receives your library, your listening, your requests, your location or anything else. There's no Crate server for it to go to.
Services Crate talks to
To do its job, Crate asks a handful of services for information. Each request comes straight from your device. Like any request on the internet, it shows that service your IP address. Crate never sends your name, email or Apple Account to any of them.
| Service | When | What Crate sends |
|---|---|---|
| Spotify | If you use Crate with Spotify | You sign in with Spotify. Crate reads your saved music, playlists and recent plays, and controls playback. Spotify's own privacy policy applies. |
| Apple Music | If you use Crate with Apple Music | Crate reads the Music library on your device and asks Apple's catalogue for covers, previews and records you don't own. Apple's privacy policy applies. |
| Apple Intelligence | When you ask the Clerk for a playlist | Your request is read on your device. Harder requests may go to Apple's Private Cloud Compute, which Apple designs so that no one, including Apple, can keep or see them. |
| Last.fm | Only if you connect it | Your Last.fm username, to read your scrobbles. With your permission, the songs you play in Crate are scrobbled to your Last.fm account. Crate also asks Last.fm how listeners describe songs and artists (their moods and genres). |
| MusicBrainz | Artist pages and covers | Artist and album names, to sort a discography and find who wrote a song. If you add a contact email in Settings, it's sent to MusicBrainz only, as their rules ask. |
| ReccoBeats | Learning how your songs sound | Song identifiers (Spotify IDs or the song's ISRC code), to look up tempo, key and energy. |
| Pitchfork and Wikipedia | The Back Room | Nothing about you. Crate reads Pitchfork's public review feed and Wikipedia's public review scores. |
| LRCLIB | When you open lyrics | The song's title, artist and length. |
| Open-Meteo and Apple Maps | Only if you let Crate use where you are | Your location, rounded to about a kilometre, for the weather. Apple Maps tells Crate what kind of place you're in (a park, a beach), so Home can suggest music for it. You can turn location off at any time in Settings. |
What Crate doesn't do
- No tracking across apps or websites, and no advertising identifiers.
- No analytics or crash-reporting services.
- Your information is never sold, rented or shared for marketing.
- No account to create, and nothing to delete on our side, because we hold nothing.
Your choices
- Location, Apple Music and Siri access are Apple permissions you can change in the iPhone or iPad Settings app.
- You can sign out of Last.fm or Spotify in Crate's Settings. To stop syncing through iCloud, turn Crate off under your name, then iCloud, in the Settings app.
- Deleting Crate removes everything it kept on that device. What's in your iCloud can be removed in Settings, under your name, then iCloud.
Children
Crate is a general-audience music app. It doesn't knowingly collect anything from anyone, children included.
Changes and contact
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes too, and the new version is posted here before it applies. Questions are welcome on the Help & Support page.