Only if you want spoken date markers between days, or AI-generated music beds. Sidebar uses your own keys for whichever providers you choose, so the usage is licensed under your account, not ours. Without a key, you can still record, edit, polish, and export. The date markers will just be silent transitions.

Yes. Sidebar exports a clean .m4a and is rolling out one-tap publishing to popular podcast platforms. Spotify is the simple case: their Spotify for Podcasters product is itself a host, so you can publish straight to it. Apple Podcasts works through your host’s RSS feed (Apple don’t store audio themselves), so once your episode is on a host, Apple picks it up automatically and so do most other directories.

Nothing. Days without a clip are skipped silently. The week assembles itself from whatever you actually recorded. Sidebar isn’t a streak tracker, it’s a release valve.

Yes. Tap any clip to trim the start and end non-destructively, or re-record it. The original audio stays intact until you delete it.

No. Recording, editing, polish, and export all happen on your device, using Apple's on-device intelligence where possible and other on-device neural models for the rest of the audio cleaning. The only time audio leaves your phone is if you choose to publish to a podcast host. Your voice notes are never sent to Sidebar.

Anytime, from your iOS subscription settings. Pro features stop at the end of the current billing period; your recordings stay yours.

Pro is enabled for Family Sharing, so a single subscription covers everyone in your family group.

Everything Pro does, except the export carries a short Sidebar advert at the end and music can’t be embedded into the file. Pro removes the advert, embeds your music bed, and unlocks direct publishing.