Last updated: 9 October 2026

This policy covers the Pragmatic Audio PEQ apps for iPhone and iPad (listed on the App Store as PragmaticAudio PEQ), Android, macOS and Windows, and the pragmaticaudio.com website. The app is published by Pragmatic Audio, Ireland (“we”). The PragmaticAudio Lossless apps have their own privacy policy.

The short version

The app has no accounts, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking. Your EQ profiles and settings stay on your device. Audio processed by the app is never recorded, stored or sent anywhere. We never receive any of it.

Pragmatic EQ app

Audio

When you select Pragmatic EQ as an output in Control Center, iOS passes the music you are playing to the app’s extension. The extension hands it to the app over a connection that stays inside your device (localhost), the app applies your EQ, and the result plays through your speaker, headphones or DAC.

  • Audio is processed in memory, in real time, and discarded immediately.
  • It is never recorded, saved to storage or transmitted off the device.
  • The app does not use the microphone. iOS lists microphone access because the audio session type the app needs for routing (playAndRecord) includes it. The app has no audio input and records nothing.

Data stored on your device

The app keeps the following in its own storage on your device:

  • your EQ profiles and edits
  • the measurement databases you have added or chosen
  • a short diagnostics log of audio-routing events (for example, whether audio is being received and which output is in use), so problems can be investigated on the device. It contains no audio and is never sent to us.

None of this leaves your device unless you choose to share it yourself, for example through iOS backups that you control. Deleting the app deletes all of it.

OPRA presets (optional)

OPRA presets are off by default. If you turn them on in Settings, the first time you open them the app downloads the public OPRA database of headphone EQ presets (about 1 MB) from opra.roonlabs.net, a mirror run by Roon Labs on Cloudflare. It then refreshes it at most once a day.

  • The request carries no account, device identifier or listening data. As with any web request, the server sees your IP address.
  • The database is kept in the app’s cache on your device. Turning OPRA off in Settings deletes it.
  • Presets are shown with their creators’ names, as OPRA’s licence (CC BY-SA 4.0) asks. The presets you load are stored on your device like any other.

Measurement websites

The app includes a browser for loading measurement databases, such as squig.link, graph.hangout.audio, and the headphone and IEM graph tools on pragmaticaudio.com, plus any site you add yourself. These pages are loaded directly from those websites, which may use cookies or analytics under their own privacy policies. The app only reads the EQ filter file you export from the page, and only to import it into your profile.

The pragmaticaudio.com graph tools use Google Analytics, as described in the website section below.

What we do not do

  • We do not collect personal information through the app.
  • We do not use third-party analytics, advertising or crash-reporting SDKs in the app.
  • We do not track you across apps or websites, and we do not sell or share data.

The Android, macOS and Windows apps

These apps work the same way in the ways that matter for privacy: no accounts, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking. Audio is processed in memory in real time and is never recorded, stored or sent anywhere. Your profiles and settings stay on your device, and deleting the app deletes them. The OPRA presets and the measurement websites work as described above.

Android

  • The app applies your EQ as an Android audio effect on the audio of the music players on your phone. It keeps a notification showing while the EQ is applied.
  • The optional microphone permission (RECORD_AUDIO) exists only because Android requires it for the system Visualizer, which gives the app a short waveform of the sound your phone is playing so it can draw the live spectrum and level meters. The app does not record from the microphone, and nothing is stored or sent. If you decline it, everything else still works.
  • On a phone that supports it, the app can talk over USB to a DAC that keeps a PEQ of its own, to read it or send it your profile.
  • The app uses the internet for the OPRA preset database (when you turn it on) and for the public table of supported USB devices on pragmaticaudio.com. No user, device or usage data is sent.

macOS

  • The app installs an audio driver that appears as an output called Pragmatic EQ. Audio is passed through it, processed in memory, and played to the device you were using.
  • Once a day the app asks GitHub (the public releases page of the app) whether a newer version exists. The request carries no account or listening data; as with any web request, the server sees your IP address.

Windows

  • The app works as a Windows audio effect that you switch on for the playback devices you choose. It stores its settings and the levels it shows in a shared folder on your PC (C:\ProgramData\PragmaticAudioPEQ), together with a short diagnostic log that contains no audio. A crash log may be written to your user profile. None of this is sent to us.
  • The uninstaller removes the shared folder.

pragmaticaudio.com website

The website uses:

  • Google Analytics, to understand how many people visit and which pages they read. Google may set cookies and process your IP address and device information. See Google’s privacy policy.
  • Google AdSense on some pages, to show advertising. Google may use cookies to personalise ads. You can control this in Google’s ad settings.
  • Disqus, for comments where they are enabled. If you comment, Disqus handles that data under its own privacy policy.

Children

The app and website are not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them.

Your rights

If you are in the EU, UK or elsewhere with similar laws, you have rights to access, correct or delete personal data about you. The app holds no personal data on our side, so there is nothing for us to access or delete. For website data handled by Google or Disqus, use their tools linked above, or contact us and we will help.

Changes

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted on this page with a new “Last updated” date.

Contact

Questions about privacy: jerome.oflaherty@icloud.com