Privacy

Last updated: 26 October 2026

Chiaro is a studio management app for small creative businesses. This page says what we collect, why, who helps us run Chiaro, and how you can see or remove your information.

Who we are

Chiaro is made by Louise May, trading as Gaintime Apps, in the UK.

Email: hello@chiaro.studio

Two kinds of information

Studios using Chiaro. When you sign up, you're our customer. We decide how your account information is used. In data protection terms, we're the controller.

A studio's clients. When a studio adds its clients to Chiaro, the studio decides how that information is used. The studio is the controller, and we're the processor: we hold it and work on it only to run Chiaro for that studio. If you're a client of a studio, ask the studio first about your information. You can also email us, and we'll pass your request to them.

What we collect

From studios:

• Your name, email address and password. We store the password in a scrambled form we can't read.
• If you sign in with Google: your name and email address from Google. Nothing else.
• Your studio's details: name, address, logo, brand colours, prices, packages, templates and settings.
• How you use Chiaro, so it works: for example, what you last opened and your saved choices.

From a studio's clients, entered by the studio or by the client:

• Names, email addresses, phone numbers and postal addresses.
• Job details: dates, places, what's booked, notes and answers to forms.
• Proposals, contracts and signatures, invoices and payment records.
• Messages between the studio and the client, including email replies sent to a Chiaro reply address.
• Files and pictures shared on a job.

If a studio connects other services:

• Gmail: Chiaro reads the studio's emails with its clients, so they show on the right job. It doesn't read other emails for any other purpose.
• Timing: the hours the studio tracks on its projects.

If you join the waitlist, we keep your email address only to tell you when Chiaro opens. Ask to come off it at any time, and we delete it.

We don't take card details. We don't sell information to anyone, and we don't use it for advertising.

Why we use it

• To run Chiaro: to keep your account, show your jobs and send the emails you ask Chiaro to send. The legal basis is our contract with you.
• To keep Chiaro safe and working: to find faults and stop misuse. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in a working, secure service.
• To answer you when you email us.
• Because the law requires it: for example, keeping invoices for tax.

Drafting with AI

Some studios can switch on drafted replies. When they do, the words needed for the draft are sent to Anthropic, which provides the AI. Anthropic doesn't use this information to train its models. A drafted email is never sent without the studio's say-so.

Who helps us run Chiaro

These companies hold or handle information for us, only to run Chiaro:

Where information goes outside the UK, we rely on the UK's approved safeguards, such as the International Data Transfer Addendum or the UK–US data bridge.

Cookies

The Chiaro website, chiaro.studio, uses Google Analytics to count visits, only if you accept it in the cookie banner. The Chiaro app uses only the cookies it needs to keep you signed in and remember your choices. It has no advertising or tracking cookies.

How long we keep it

• Your account: while you use Chiaro. If you close it, we delete your studio's information within 30 days, except what the law makes us keep.
• A studio's client information: for as long as the studio keeps it in Chiaro. The studio can delete a client at any time.
• Our own invoices to studios: 6 years, for tax. A studio's invoices to its clients belong to the studio and are deleted with its account, so export them before closing.
• Backups: they roll over and are gone within 7 days.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

• show you the information we hold about you
• correct it
• delete it
• stop or limit how we use it
• give it to you in a file you can take elsewhere.

Email hello@chiaro.studio. We'll answer within one month. If you're a studio's client, we may pass your request to the studio, because they decide about that information.

If you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office: ico.org.uk or 0303 123 1113.

Changes

If we change this page in a way that matters, we'll tell studios by email before it takes effect.