What does SimplePractice's Note Taker do with your session transcripts?

Yes, SimplePractice is HIPAA compliant, HITRUST certified, and signs a Business Associate Agreement with every account at creation. Its AI documentation tool, Note Taker, deletes session audio immediately after generating a transcript and does not create or store a recording. What happens to the transcript is the part that changed in 2026: clinicians who enable Note Taker on or after June 17, 2026 are opted in by default to having a de-identified copy of each transcript retained by SimplePractice to improve its AI features. The clinician can opt out. No opt-out operated by the client directly is described anywhere in SimplePractice's documentation (clients can ask their clinician to opt out for them), and there is no practice-wide setting.

Everything on this page comes from SimplePractice's own published documents, read on September 24, 2026, and quoted directly. Where their documents disagree with each other, both are quoted. This is written for therapists and practice owners deciding whether to enable Note Taker or Care Aide, and for anyone whose clients ask what happens to their words.

TL;DR

Audio: deleted immediately after the transcript is generated. No recording is stored. Parity with the best practice in the category.

Transcript: available for 7 days or until the note is signed and locked, then deleted (if opted out) or de-identified and retained (if opted in).

Default: opted in for anyone who enables Note Taker on or after June 17, 2026. Opted out for anyone who used it before.

Control: the clinician can opt out per clinician, client, or session. There is no practice-wide setting, and no client-operated control for changing the retention setting directly is described. Clients can request an opt-out through their clinician. Once a transcript is retained, SimplePractice says it cannot locate the specific de-identified and de-coupled transcript to fulfill a deletion request.

Documents: SimplePractice publicly provides its Terms of Service, BAA, Privacy Policy, and AI Addendum. The detailed transcript-retention rules are described in its support documentation.

What SimplePractice does with session audio

SimplePractice's Note Taker deletes session audio immediately after generating a transcript and does not create or store a recording. In their words, from the Preparing to use Note Taker article (accessed September 24, 2026): "Note Taker uses audio to generate a transcript in real time and doesn't create or store a recording for your session." And from the Transcript retention FAQs: "The audio is deleted immediately after the transcript is generated."

That is the right default and it matches what the best tools in this category do. Nothing below changes it. The questions that follow are about the transcript, which is the whole session in text and outlives the audio.

Live capture works only inside SimplePractice Telehealth on the web or through the SimplePractice for Clinicians mobile app for in-person sessions. It does not work with an external telehealth platform, per their FAQ. Recording limits are 4 hours for telehealth and 2.5 hours for in-person capture. A clinician can also upload a recording made on their own device, or a document, on the web or in the mobile app, and Note Taker drafts a note from it. Per their Uploading files for Note Taker article, the upload is deleted as soon as the draft note has been created.

What happens to the transcript after your note is signed

After a session, the transcript stays available to the clinician for up to 7 days or until the progress note is signed and locked, whichever comes first. If the note is not signed within 7 days, SimplePractice deletes both the transcript and the draft note and you write the progress note manually. What happens at the end of that window depends on one setting, and the default for that setting depends on when you enabled Note Taker.

Their stated reason, from the Transcript retention FAQs: "Transcript retention is enabled by default for new Note Taker users as it supports ongoing improvements to the Note Taker experience." Existing users were left opted out "[t]o avoid automatically changing the experience clinicians originally signed up for."

What is retained is the text transcript only. SimplePractice states that retention does not include draft or finalized notes, pre-session summaries, assessments, chart data, or psychotherapy notes. Retained transcripts are de-identified using HIPAA's Safe Harbor method (all 18 identifiers removed) and "de-coupled," meaning separated from the client, clinician, and practice they came from. You can read HHS's description of the Safe Harbor standard here: HHS, De-identification of Protected Health Information.

Who can turn transcript retention off, and who cannot

The clinician can opt out of transcript retention at three levels: for themselves, for a specific client, or for a single session. SimplePractice's Note Taker FAQ says "you and your clients have the right to opt in or out of using AI tools for care at any time," and every mechanism it then describes is operated by the clinician; no direct client-side control appears in the Transcript retention FAQs, the Note Taker FAQs, the consent form templates, or the Client Portal Privacy Policy. The practice cannot set a policy for all its clinicians. From the Transcript retention FAQs:

• Clinician level: Settings > Profile > Profile and security > "Retain de-identified data to improve features" off. "Opting out at the clinician level overrides client- and session-level settings."
• Client level: the clinician opens the client's profile and toggles the same setting. This is performed by the clinician, not by the client.
• Session level: "Don't store this transcript" in the Session content panel.
• Practice level: "There is no practice-wide transcript retention setting. In group practices, each clinician can manage their own transcript retention preferences independently... Account Owners and practice managers can't manage retention preferences on behalf of clinicians."

Two further points from their own pages matter to anyone gathering consent. During a recorded session, "[t]here won't be any noticeable changes on the client's end when using Note Taker to record audio. Only clinicians will be able to see the ability to Record audio in the tool bar of the Telehealth session." And once a transcript has been de-identified and retained, it cannot be removed: "we can't fulfill deletion requests for transcripts that have been de-identified and de-coupled." SimplePractice's reasoning is that no one can locate a specific transcript once it is de-coupled, which is also why they state retained transcripts cannot be subpoenaed.

Opting out does not affect Note Taker itself. SimplePractice states that opted-out clinicians still get live transcription, draft notes, and the 7 day review window; the only difference is what happens after.

Is SimplePractice training AI on session transcripts?

No, and SimplePractice draws this line explicitly. From the Transcript retention FAQs: "SimplePractice is not training an AI model with retained transcript data, and we are not building an AI therapist." They distinguish model training, which they say they do not do, from product improvement, which they do: "We adjust how we instruct the AI model to generate progress notes and other AI-generated content so that the results are more accurate." Retained transcripts are used to evaluate Note Taker's output and refine the prompts given to the underlying model.

The underlying model is provided by Anthropic, running on AWS Bedrock, per the same FAQ, and SimplePractice states those providers "do not receive customer or client information to use for their own purposes, including training their AI models or product development." SimplePractice also states it does not compensate clinicians for participation in transcript retention, and that it will "never sell transcript content."

Anyone who tells you SimplePractice trains AI on your sessions is contradicted by SimplePractice's own document. The accurate statement is narrower and, for a client deciding whether to consent, still material: a de-identified copy of the session is kept with no stated retention period, used to improve the product, and cannot be recalled.

Which documents describe this, and which do not

SimplePractice describes the operational details of transcript retention principally in its support-center materials. Its Terms of Service and Addendum to the Terms of Service for Add-On AI Products should be read together with those support materials.

All documents read September 24, 2026. To be fair to the 2025 blog post: it promised retention would not start until an opt-out feature existed, and SimplePractice delivered the opt-out before retention began. However, the live post still contains statements that do not reflect the June 2026 retention program described in SimplePractice's current support documentation. A therapist who reads it today, or who reads the Terms of Service, the client privacy policy, or the BAA, will not find the current policy in any of them.

The Terms of Service also grant SimplePractice a broad licence over user data. Section 9.2 grants "a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid-up, perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable (through multiple tiers), and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, perform and display such User Data," for "providing you the Services and further developing, improving, and marketing SimplePractice's products and services." The same clause limits that use: "it being understood that the results generated from use for purposes other than providing the Services are not identifiable with the Organization or any natural person." Broad data licences are common in software terms and the de-identification limit is real.

The two consent forms in every SimplePractice account

SimplePractice provides consent form templates inside every account, and as of September 24, 2026 two of them describe the same event differently. Both are in their Default consent form templates support article.

The older form, "Consent for Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools in Therapy Services," tells the client: "Transcripts that are created through Note Taker are only retained for the shorter of 7 days or when the progress note is signed and locked by your therapist. After that, they are permanently deleted." It gives the client two tick boxes, consent or decline.

The newer form, "Consent for Use of AI Tools with De-Identified Transcript Retention," says instead: "After that period, SimplePractice may de-identify and retain transcripts to improve its platform... If you do not wish to have deidentified versions of your transcripts retained, please notify us [me] and we [I] can select for your sessions to be opted out of retention." There is no tick box for retention. Consent is by signature, and the opt-out runs through the clinician.

SimplePractice's Note Taker FAQ acknowledges both: "Prior to June 12, 2026, you may have shared the Consent to Record Audio form and/or the Consent for Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools in Therapy Services form with your clients. Both forms are still available within your account. However, only the updated Consent for Use of AI Tools with De-Identified Transcript Retention form encompasses all Care Aide functionality."

The practical consequence: a client who signed the older form was told transcripts would be permanently deleted. If their clinician enables Note Taker on or after June 17, 2026 and does not opt out or update the form, that is no longer what happens. SimplePractice's own guidance on updating consent forms is to consult "your licensing board and/or legal counsel."

Questions to settle before enabling Note Taker

None of the above makes Note Taker a wrong choice. It makes it a choice that should be made with the documents in hand. Five questions, each answerable from SimplePractice's own pages:

1. Which retention default applies to me? If you enable Note Taker on or after June 17, 2026, you are opted in until you opt out.
2. Have I opted out at the clinician level, if that is my intent? It overrides client and session settings, and in a group practice each clinician has to do it themselves.
3. Which consent form have my clients signed? If it is the older one, it promises permanent deletion. Reissue the newer one or opt out.
4. Do my clients know they cannot opt out directly? The consent conversation should say the opt-out runs through you.
5. Have I read the AI addendum? Read it together with the current Note Taker and Transcript Retention FAQs before enabling the add-on.

For the general version of these questions, applied to any vendor, see the HIPAA BAA checklist for an AI therapy scribe and the AI therapy note consent form guides.

How Upheal handles the same questions

Upheal, an AI-native EHR and note-taking platform for mental health clinicians, is designed with different defaults and controls around consent, transcript retention, and use of session data. As of September 24, 2026:

• Upheal has published its Business Associate Agreement in full, last updated on March 25, 2026, and it’s accepted during signup, so you can read every clause before sharing anything.
• Session audio is deleted by default once your notes are generated.
• Upheal does not use session data to train AI unless you and your client both choose it. Clients who never see the request are opted out. Consent can be withdrawn and the data is deleted, and therapists on paid plans can switch the request off for every client. Re-identification codes are kept in a separate repository and used only to delete de-identified data on request.
• Transcripts and whole sessions can be deleted manually or set to delete automatically after a timeframe you choose, for your whole practice at once.
• You can dictate or type a session summary instead of recording, including on the free plan, so a client who declines recording can still be documented with the tool.
• Upheal is HIPAA compliant, PHIPA and PIPEDA compliant, GDPR and DPA compliant, has completed a SOC 2 Type II audit, and is continuously externally tested.

Two places where SimplePractice's published documents say something Upheal's do not, stated so this page is not a one-way comparison: SimplePractice holds HITRUST certification, which is a broader attestation than SOC 2 Type II. And SimplePractice's BAA sets an outer limit for reporting security incidents, "in no case later than fifteen (15) business days," where Upheal's BAA says "as soon as practicable" and does not state an outer limit. A reader weighing the two should weigh those too. The full side by side comparison of features and pricing is in our Upheal vs SimplePractice article.

If you want the consent and retention defaults that do not need configuring, try Upheal free.

FAQ

Is SimplePractice HIPAA compliant and what does it do with session recordings?

Yes, SimplePractice is HIPAA compliant and HITRUST certified, and Note Taker deletes session audio immediately after the transcript is generated. The transcript is kept for up to 7 days or until the note is signed, then deleted or, for clinicians opted in to transcript retention, de-identified and retained to improve SimplePractice's AI features.

Does SimplePractice retain session transcripts by default?

Yes, for clinicians who enable Note Taker on or after June 17, 2026. Clinicians who used Note Taker before that date are opted out by default. Either group can change the setting at the clinician, client, or session level.

Can I opt out of SimplePractice transcript retention?

Yes, at the clinician level (which overrides everything), the client level, or the session level. There is no practice-wide setting, so in a group practice each clinician must opt out individually. Opting out does not change how Note Taker works.

Can my clients opt out of transcript retention themselves?

No. Every opt-out described in SimplePractice's documentation is performed by the clinician. The client's route is to tell you, and you toggle retention off for them. SimplePractice's newer consent template is written that way: "please notify us [me] and we [I] can select for your sessions to be opted out."

Does SimplePractice use my sessions to train AI?

SimplePractice states it does not train an AI model on retained transcripts. It uses de-identified transcripts to evaluate Note Taker's output and refine the instructions given to the underlying model, which is provided by Anthropic on AWS Bedrock. Once a retained transcript has been de-identified and de-coupled, SimplePractice cannot locate that specific transcript to fulfill a deletion request.

Can I read SimplePractice's AI terms before I buy?

Yes. The Addendum to the Terms of Service for Add-On AI Products is publicly accessible. The public Terms of Service, dated August 2, 2023, do not mention AI, so read the AI addendum together with the current Note Taker and Transcript Retention FAQs before enabling the feature.

The bottom line

SimplePractice deletes session audio promptly and says so clearly. The more important decision is what happens to the transcript. For clinicians who enable Note Taker on or after June 17, 2026, transcript retention is enabled by default unless the clinician opts out. SimplePractice may then retain a de-identified and de-coupled copy of the transcript to improve Note Taker and related AI features. Its current FAQ does not state how long those retained transcripts are kept, and SimplePractice says that once a transcript has been de-identified and de-coupled, it cannot locate that specific transcript to fulfill a deletion request. Clients can ask their clinician to opt out, but the retention controls described by SimplePractice are clinician-operated. Whether to allow that is a legitimate choice either way. What it should not be is a default you discover after the fact, which is why the retention setting and the consent form are worth checking on the day you enable the feature.

Upheal takes a different approach to consent, retention, and data controls, including opt-in consent for certain uses of session data and configurable deletion settings. Its relevant agreements and privacy materials are also publicly available. Start free, no credit card required.

What this page is based on: SimplePractice's Transcript retention FAQs, Note Taker FAQs, Preparing to use Note Taker, Uploading files for Note Taker, and Default consent form templates (support center), Terms of Service, Addendum to SimplePractice Terms of Service for Add-On AI Products, Business Associate Agreement, Privacy Policy, Client Portal Privacy Policy, Trust Center, and the blog post "Navigating AI in therapy: A guide for clinicians and clients," all read on September 24, 2026. If SimplePractice updates any of these, the relevant line here will be corrected and dated.

Last updated September 24, 2026.