Privacy Policy

Dause is an iPhone app that turns the steps you walk into screen time. You walk, you earn minutes, and you spend those minutes to open apps you decided to lock. This page explains what data the app touches, where that data lives, and what happens to it. If you only read one line, read this one: your health data and your screen time data stay on your phone. We don't collect them, we don't sell anything, and there are no ads.

1. Data that stays on your phone

Your steps. When you allow it, Dause reads your step count from Apple Health. That number is used for one thing: working out how many minutes you've earned. It is read on your phone and stored on your phone. We never upload it, never share it with anyone, and never use it for advertising. Apple has strict rules about Health data and we follow them.

Your screen time and the apps you lock. Dause relies on Apple's Screen Time technology (the Family Controls, Managed Settings and Device Activity frameworks) to let you pick the apps you want to lock, to show you how much you use your phone during setup, and to lock and unlock those apps. Apple built this so that the list of apps you pick and your usage numbers are processed inside a protected area of iOS that we cannot read. In plain terms: we don't know which apps you locked or how long you spend on them, and we couldn't find out if we wanted to.

Your settings. Your difficulty level, your daily step goal, the goal you picked during setup, your Time Bank balance, your streak and your activity history are all saved locally on your device.

2. Data that leaves your phone

Two things do: your subscription, and anonymous usage data (see section 3).

Your subscription. Payment goes through Apple. We never see your card or your Apple ID. To know whether your subscription is active, the app uses a service called RevenueCat. It receives a random identifier generated by the app (not your name or email), the purchase receipt from Apple, and basic device details such as the iPhone model, the iOS version and your country. You can read RevenueCat's own policy at revenuecat.com/privacy.

Notifications. If you allow notifications, the app schedules them locally on your phone (for example when a boost window opens). There is no notification server on our side.

3. Anonymous usage data

Dause can send anonymous usage events to TelemetryDeck, an analytics service, so I can see where people get stuck and improve the app. This is on by default and you can turn it off at any time in Profile, under "Share anonymous usage data". Once it is off, Dause sends no usage events.

What the events say: how far you got in the first-time setup and whether you finished it; whether you allowed or refused the Screen Time and notification permissions, and that Health access was requested (never your answer); whether the paywall was shown, a free trial or a purchase started (with the name of the subscription product), or a purchase was restored; which entry you used to open the unlock screen (for example the lock card, a widget or a notification); how long an unlock lasted, rounded to a range such as "up to 15 minutes"; and whether you re-locked early.

With every event, TelemetryDeck's software adds technical details about your device and the app: the device model, iOS and app version, language and region, time zone, screen size, light or dark appearance, some accessibility settings (such as bold text or reduce motion), and the day and hour of the event. It also adds a random-looking identifier derived from your device and scrambled (hashed) before it leaves your phone, so that events from the same installation can be counted together. It does not contain your name or anything that identifies you directly, and Dause has no account.

TelemetryDeck processes this data on servers in Germany and the Netherlands and never stores IP addresses.

4. What we don't do

• There is no account. We don't ask for your name, email or phone number.
• We don't sell data. There is nothing to sell.
• We don't show ads and don't work with ad networks.
• We don't track you across other apps or websites.

5. What you control

• Permissions. You can turn off Health, Screen Time or notification access at any time in the iOS Settings app. Keep in mind that the app can't work without Health and Screen Time access, since that's how it counts steps and locks apps.
• Subscription. You manage or cancel it from your Apple account (Settings, then your name, then Subscriptions).
• Deleting your data. Deleting the app removes everything stored on your phone. If you also want the anonymous subscription record held by RevenueCat deleted, write to hello@dause.app and we'll take care of it. You can also turn off anonymous usage data at any time in Profile.

6. Children

Dause is made for adults. It is not intended for anyone under 16 and we don't knowingly collect anything from children.

7. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete or export your personal data, or to object to how it's used. Since almost everything stays on your phone, most of this is already in your hands. For anything else, email us at hello@dause.app. If you live in the European Union, you can also contact your local data protection authority. In France that's the CNIL.

8. Changes to this policy

If we change something meaningful here, we'll update the date at the top of this page and let you know in the app when it matters.