Data retention and permanent deletion

Cloud productivity suites often implement soft deletion policies where documents marked as deleted remain in vendor database backups for 30–90 days. Because Oyma operates entirely on your Mac’s filesystem, data deletion follows native macOS APFS mechanics.

The audio buffer lifecycle

During active call capture:

1. Audio Ingestion: CoreAudio writes raw PCM audio chunks into a protected application temporary directory in $TMPDIR.
2. Transcription: On-device Whisper processes audio chunks in memory.
3. Markdown Generation: The final transcript and summary are written to your selected vault .md note.
4. Buffer Purge: The temporary audio buffer files are immediately unlinked from disk upon session completion.

If you click Cancel Recording, temporary buffers are purged immediately without leaving residual audio fragments.

Deleting notes and vaults

• Deleting a Note: Moving a note to trash uses macOS’s NSFileManager.trashItem API. The document lands in your Mac Trash folder.
• Permanent Deletion: Emptying the macOS Trash permanently clears the APFS disk blocks.
• Vault Deletion: If you drag your vault folder to the Trash, all notes, templates, and transcripts are removed from your machine completely.

Compliance and data retention audits

For legal, healthcare, and enterprise compliance audits:

• No Cloud Shadow Copies: Zero data copies exist on third-party servers.
• No Telemetry Logs: Application logs contain no customer conversation snippets.
• Instant Compliance: Deleting files locally fulfills the right to erasure under international privacy frameworks.

Related guides

• Local-only mode in Local-only mode.
• Audit network traffic in Egress log.
• Compliance posture in GDPR and local data compliance.