Cookie Notice
What Hearso stores in your browser, why, and how to change your choice. Last updated .
The short version
Hearso stores what it needs to sign you in, keep your seat in a room, remember your settings, and not show you the same notice twice. Analytics is the one thing that needs your permission, and on the live site it records nothing until you say yes. There are no advertising cookies.
What is stored, and why
A cookie is a small file a site asks your browser to keep; local storage is the same idea without being sent back to the server, and session storage is local storage that ends when you close the tab. Hearso uses all three:
| What | Why | Kind | How long |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sign-in cookies | Keep you signed in, and carry you through signing in | Strictly necessary | Up to 30 days; the ones used only while signing in last from 5 minutes to a day |
| Email sign-in (session storage) | The address you asked a sign-in link for, so you can ask for it again | Strictly necessary for email sign-in | Until you close the tab |
| Room cookie | Proves the seat in a room is yours | Strictly necessary | Up to 24 hours |
| Guest cookie | Proves which guest you are, so you keep your nickname and scores without an account | Strictly necessary for guest play | 180 days from the last time you open a game; removed when you log out |
| Squad cookie | Remembers which of your squads you last had open. Before beta.17 it was called the team cookie, and the old one is still read until the next release | Strictly necessary for the squad pages | Up to a year |
| Player identity (local storage) | The name you play under and your player id, so you keep them between rounds | Strictly necessary for play | Until you clear it |
| Your analytics choice (local storage) | Remembers your answer, including no, so we do not ask again | Strictly necessary to honour your choice | Until you clear it |
| Theme, colours, motion, sound and music (local storage) | Your appearance and sound settings | Preference | Until you clear it |
| Notices and activity (local and session storage) | Which notices you have already seen, when you were last active, and signing you out of every tab at once | Functional | Until you clear it, or until you close the tab |
| Cloudflare Turnstile | Tells people from bots when you sign up or ask for a sign-in email | Strictly necessary | Set by Cloudflare under its own policy |
| PostHog analytics | Which pages and features are used, session recordings and heatmaps | Analytics, only with your permission | Stored only after you say yes; see the Privacy Policy. If you take a yes back, PostHog keeps one note of that answer |
Changing your choice
Use Cookie Settings in the site footer to see the analytics question again and answer it differently. If you are signed in, the same choice is a switch in Settings, under Preferences. Either takes effect straight away, on the page you are on.
You can also clear cookies and local storage in your browser at any time. Clearing them signs you out and forgets your settings and the name you play under.
Two more cookies are set for Hearso staff only, never for players: one for the admin panel, and one that switches a preview build between designs.
More detail
What analytics records and what is masked are set out in the Privacy Policy. Separately from analytics, Hearso keeps simple counts of rounds, players and live rooms that hold no names, emails or room codes; those use no cookies.