DriveSonic and DriveSonic Lite · Last updated 20 August 2026
The short version. DriveSonic plays music from a server you run yourself. There is no DriveSonic account, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking of any kind.
One exception is worth stating plainly: to spare you typing a password on a car touchscreen, our pairing service briefly relays your server details from your phone to your car. Those details are held for a maximum of five minutes and are deleted the moment your car collects them.
DriveSonic and DriveSonic Lite are published by Aardvark Hosting (trading as Code-418), Netherlands. For anything in this policy, including data access or deletion requests, contact imateapot@code-418.com.
For the purposes of the GDPR, Aardvark Hosting is the data controller for the pairing service described below. Your music server is operated by you, and we are not a controller or processor for anything stored on it.
The following is written to app-private storage on your vehicle's head unit. It stays on the vehicle and is not transmitted to us.
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your music server address, username and password | To authenticate with your server on each request |
| Playback queue and position | So playback resumes where you left off |
| Album artwork and a media cache of up to 5 GB | To avoid re-downloading the same audio and images |
This data is held in the app's private storage area, which Android isolates from other applications and from other driver profiles on the vehicle. Removing it is described under Deleting your data.
Entering a server address and password on a car touchscreen is slow and unsafe, so DriveSonic uses a short-lived pairing exchange instead. This is the only part of the app that involves a service we operate, and this is exactly what happens:
A pairing code and any credentials attached to it live for a maximum of five minutes. They are deleted immediately once your car has collected them, and codes that are never used are deleted when they expire. We do not archive, log or back up the credentials, and we do not retain any record of which server you connected to.
We never see your music library, your listening history or your playback activity — the pairing exchange carries connection details only, and only for those few minutes.
Pairing data is processed exclusively on servers located in the European Union. We do not transfer it outside the EU.
If you would rather not use the pairing service at all, do not enter your details on the pairing page. Nothing is transmitted to us unless you complete that form.
Everything else the app does — browsing your library, streaming audio, fetching artwork, and (in DriveSonic Pro) starring tracks and updating play counts — goes directly from your vehicle to the server address you supplied. It does not pass through us. What that server records is governed by whatever software you run and by your own configuration.
DriveSonic Pro is a paid application. Payment is processed entirely by Google Play under Google's own terms; we receive sales reporting from Google and never see your payment card or billing details. DriveSonic Lite is free and contains no purchases.
Because we hold no account and retain nothing after pairing completes, there is normally no data of yours left for us to delete. If you believe otherwise, write to imateapot@code-418.com and we will respond within 30 days.
If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom you have the right to access, correct, erase, restrict or object to the processing of your personal data, and to lodge a complaint with your national supervisory authority. In the Netherlands this is the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens. Given how little we process, most such requests will simply confirm that we hold nothing.
DriveSonic is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children.
If the way the apps handle data changes, this page is updated and the date at the top changes with it. Material changes will also be reflected in the app's Data Safety declaration on Google Play.