Effective date: 10 November 2026. Applies to the iPhone / iPad app 你好Hello (bundle identifier com.pengyao.nihaohello), version 1.2.20 and later.
Overview
你好Hello (“the app”) is developed by PENGYAO as a Chinese–English translation and learning companion. The app is free and has no in-app purchases or ads. We do not sell your data, and we do not run our own servers that receive your translations, saved words, or location. Some features talk only to Apple system services, as described below.
What the app handles on your device
Translations. By default, full-sentence translation uses a neural engine bundled with the app (Opus-MT running in CTranslate2) on your device. If that engine is turned off or unavailable, the app falls back to an on-device dictionary. Source text and translations are not sent to PENGYAO servers.
My words, history, and progress. Saved vocabulary, translation and chat history, review statistics, and similar learning records are stored only on your device (UserDefaults). You can erase them with “Reset all data” in Settings. Uninstalling the app also removes this data.
App settings. Text size, pinyin, night mode, auto-read, date and weather toggles, the fallback city, and the neural-engine switch are stored only on your device.
Photo text recognition. If you take a photo to fill the translation box, the app uses Apple’s Vision framework on your device to read Chinese or English in the picture. The photo is not saved to your library and is not uploaded.
Text-to-speech. Reading translations aloud uses the system speech synthesizer on your device.
Features that use the network (Apple services only)
Daily weather sentence. If “Show weather sentence” is on, the app may request When-In-Use location once (about kilometre accuracy, no background tracking) and reverse-geocode a city name on the device. It then asks Apple WeatherKit for the weather at that coordinate, to write today’s sentence. If location is denied or fails, the app uses the fallback city in Settings. Weather snapshots are cached on the device. After a successful fetch, the app may refresh again 180 minutes later, at most five times per local day. Location and weather requests go to Apple, not to us. You can turn the weather sentence off, change the fallback city, or revoke location access in iOS Settings.
Offline speech input. Microphone and speech-recognition permission are used only when you dictate into the translation box. Recognition always requires on-device processing and does not send your audio to Apple’s servers. The first time you use this, the app may need to download Chinese and English on-device speech models from Apple, which requires a network connection.
In-app Privacy Policy and Support pages. Opening those pages may load the latest hosted copy over the network (China site, then Cloudflare, then here.now), with a copy bundled in the app as the final fallback. This does not upload your translation or vocabulary data.
What we do not do
No account and no sign-in; you are not asked to provide a name, email, or phone number to use the app.
No advertising, no analytics or tracking SDKs, and no use of the advertising identifier (IDFA).
We do not sell or share personal data with third parties for marketing.
Permissions
Location (When In Use): only to pick the city for today’s weather sentence.
Microphone: only for spoken input into the translation box.
Speech Recognition: on-device recognition of the Chinese or English you speak; audio is not sent to a server.
Camera: only when you choose to photograph text for on-device recognition.
You can change or revoke these permissions in iOS Settings at any time.
Retention and deletion
PENGYAO does not keep your app data on a server. Data on the device can be cleared with “Reset all data” or by deleting the app. Temporary files are managed by the system.
Third parties
Weather, location geocoding, and optional speech-model downloads use Apple services and are governed by Apple’s policies. Word meanings in the app are based in part on the bundled CC-CEDICT dictionary (CC BY-SA 4.0). If you email us, we use your address only to reply.
Children
The app does not collect personal information from anyone, including children.
Changes
If this policy is updated, we will post the new version on this page and change the effective date.