dear diary - Privacy Policy

Effective date: 2026-07-22

View the app on the App Store.

dear diary is a voice journal with one rule: every word stays on your device. This policy is short because there is almost nothing to disclose.

What we collect

Nothing.

dear diary has no accounts, no sign in, no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising, no third party SDKs, and no server of its own. We do not collect, receive, transmit, sell, or share any data about you, because the app never sends any.

Where your journal lives

• Your audio recordings and their transcripts are stored only on your device, in the app's private storage.
• Transcription happens on your device, using Apple's on device speech frameworks. Your voice is never uploaded for transcription.
• On devices that support Apple Intelligence, the optional reflection prompt is generated on your device from your own words, using Apple's on device model. On other devices the prompt is a fixed one from a built in list. In both cases nothing leaves your phone.
• Search runs over your local entries, on your device.

The one download

iOS downloads Apple's speech model assets once, from Apple, so the app can work with no internet afterward. That download is inbound only and contains none of your data. Apple's handling of that system download is covered by Apple's own privacy policy, not by anything we operate. dear diary itself makes no network requests.

Microphone permission

The app asks iOS for microphone access so it can hear you while you record. Audio captured with the microphone is turned into text on your device and stored on your device. It goes nowhere else. You can revoke the permission at any time in iOS Settings, and the rest of the app keeps working.

Backups and exports

You can export your journal as a single backup file. That file is created on your device and saved where you choose. What you do with it after that (for example, moving it through iCloud Drive, AirDrop, or email) is under your control and outside the app. The app never uploads backups on its own.

If you use iOS device backups (iCloud Backup or a computer backup), your journal may be included the same way any app's local data is. That is an iOS feature you control, governed by Apple's privacy policy.

Deleting your data

• Delete a single entry inside the app and its audio and words are erased from the device. Nothing was ever uploaded, so there is no copy anywhere else.
• Use "Wipe everything" in Settings to erase the whole journal.
• Deleting the app deletes all of its data.

We cannot delete your data for you, and we cannot recover it either, because we never have it.

Children

dear diary does not collect data from anyone, including children.

Changes to this policy

If the app ever changes in a way that touches this policy, the policy will be updated here with a new effective date before that version ships. Given the app's one rule, do not expect that to happen.

Contact

Questions: dear-diary@karoslabs.dev