Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

2. Information We Collect

• Sign In with Apple

  If you choose to sign in, we collect your Apple User ID, name, and email address provided by Apple. Your Apple User ID is stored securely in the device Keychain. Your name and email are stored locally on your device only.

• Screen Time Data

  With your explicit permission, we access device usage data through Apple's Screen Time API and DeviceActivity framework to provide usage tracking, app limiting, and shield features. Raw usage data is processed locally on your device and never uploaded. If you enable AI Reminders (premium), aggregated statistics derived from it (e.g., average daily minutes, peak hours, unlock counts) are included in AI generation requests — see Section 5.

• User Preferences & Progress

  Settings such as your selected app limits, meditation preferences, ambient sound choices, quiz progress, reward tokens, achievements, and streak data are stored locally using UserDefaults and App Groups.

• Question Bank (Premium)

  On Premium, quiz questions come from a public question bank that the App downloads to your device (where it is downloaded from is described in Section 5). On Free and Starter, quizzes use only the questions built into the App, and nothing is downloaded. Downloaded questions are kept in the App's own storage on your device. Shortly after you answer a downloaded question, its text is deleted from the downloaded files; only its number is kept, so that the question is not shown to you again. The App also keeps the topic tags of the questions in your last 5 rounds, so that the next round picks other topics. If iCloud is on, this list of answered question numbers is also kept in your own iCloud (see Section 4), so your other devices skip those questions too. The list holds question numbers only: no question text, no answers, and nothing about whether you were right.

• Question Reports (Optional)

  After a quiz in which you answered a downloaded question wrong, you can tell us that it has a problem (“Problem with a question?”). Each report saves one record to our CloudKit public database. It contains only the question's language and number, the App version and build number, the label “Question Report”, and the time of the report; the other fields are left empty (the star rating is 0). It does not contain your name, email, Apple ID, a device identifier, your archetype code, your answer, or any text you typed. Because only questions you answered wrong can be reported, a report does show that this question was answered wrong on some device; it does not say which option was chosen. As with every record saved to CloudKit, Apple also attaches a random identifier for the iCloud account that saved it; this identifier exists only for Aquora and does not reveal your Apple ID, name or email, but records saved from the same iCloud account share it. The App never reads it. One device sends at most 5 reports a day; the count is kept only on the device. A report that cannot be sent (for example, while offline) is discarded, not retried.

• User-Generated Content

  Journal entries, manifestation goals, mood tracking, and meditation notes you create are stored locally on your device. We do not access, read, or transmit this content.

• Behavior Logs

  To power personalized features (AI Reminders, Personality Archetype, monthly reports), the App stores the following behavior logs locally with a 90-day retention period:

  • Quiz answers (question ID, category, correctness, response time, hour of day, app context)
  • Reflection responses (selected options, app context, timestamp)
  • App unlock events (app group name, unlock method, optional user-stated reason, day/hour)
  • Post-session feeling check-ins (worth it / neutral / regret, with timestamp)

  This data stays on your device and is used only for local analysis.

• Personality Archetype Data

  Your responses to the personality questionnaire and your derived 4-letter archetype code are stored locally. Monthly archetype snapshots are kept for trend tracking. To compute rarity statistics, a record (random device UUID + your archetype code only) is uploaded to Apple's CloudKit public database. As with every CloudKit record, Apple also attaches a random identifier for the iCloud account that saved it; this identifier exists only for Aquora and does not reveal your Apple ID, name or email, but records saved from the same iCloud account share it.

• Referral Information

  When you generate or redeem a referral code, the code along with SHA-256 hashed identifiers is stored in Apple's CloudKit public database to validate redemptions and award rewards. We never store plaintext identifiers in CloudKit.

• Subscription Information

  Subscription and tip purchase status is managed through Apple's StoreKit framework. We do not have access to your payment information or credit card details.

• Photo Library (Optional)

  If you choose to save or share personality cards or achievement badges, the App requests permission to write images to your Photo Library. We do not read existing photos.

• Scroll Forecast Personalization (All Optional, Device-Only)

  The first time you open the scroll forecast, the App offers three optional inputs so the forecast can be phrased for you. Every one of them can be skipped, and every one of them stays on this device: none is ever sent to us, to any AI provider, to CloudKit, or to iCloud, and none is carried over to another device.

  • Year of birth — the year only. We never ask for or store a full date of birth. It is used on-device to place you in an age band so the forecast can show the band's figures, and to apply a more conservative presentation if you are under 18.
  • Nearest city — chosen by you from a short list. If you tap the location button in the forecast intro or forecast settings, the App asks for your approximate location once and matches the nearest city on your device. It is used only to pick which city's weather line to show.
  • Your frequent apps — a confirmation of which apps you use most, pre-filled from the limits you already created. It is stored on-device as category shares and display names.

• Mood Check-Ins & Mood Report

  If you tap through the mood check-in on the forecast page, the App records what you chose (how pleasant, how activated, and an optional category) and combines it over time with your post-session feelings, post-meditation mood, and journal mood into a private estimate of your own emotional pattern. That estimate and the report built from it are computed and stored entirely on this device. They are never included in any network request, never placed in an AI prompt, never written to CloudKit or iCloud, and are not carried over to another device. Deleting your account clears them along with everything else in the App's local storage.

3. How We Use Your Information

• To provide screen time tracking and usage reports
• To enforce app usage limits and shield blocked apps
• To track your meditation, journal, and quiz progress
• To manage reward tokens, achievements, and streaks
• To download quiz questions on Premium and avoid showing you a question you have already answered
• To receive reports of questions that may have a problem (question language and number only)
• To deliver in-the-moment AI reminders based on your usage patterns
• To compute your personality archetype and produce monthly reports
• To validate referral codes and award referral rewards
• To detect habit patterns and suggest helpful interventions

4. Data Storage & Security

The vast majority of user data is stored locally on your device. Data shared between the main app and extensions (Shield, Device Activity Monitor, Shield Action) uses secure App Group containers.

iCloud Key-Value Store

Token balance, subscription status, and transaction history may be synced via Apple's iCloud Key-Value Store to restore your data across devices or after reinstallation. On Premium, the list of question-bank question numbers you have answered is synced the same way, so your other devices do not show you those questions again; it holds question numbers only. This data is encrypted by Apple's iCloud infrastructure. You can disable iCloud sync in your device settings.

CloudKit Public Database

Four types of records are stored in our CloudKit public database:

• ReferralCode — referral code string with hashed (SHA-256) owner and redeemer identifiers
• Redemption — one record per code redemption: the code, hashed (SHA-256) redeemer and owner identifiers, and a timestamp
• ArchetypeUser — anonymous device UUID paired with your personality code and an update timestamp, used to calculate archetype rarity (rarity is computed from a random sample of up to 400 records)
• Feedback — when you submit feedback via the in-app form, your message, feedback category, star rating, optional email, app and iOS version, current archetype code, and the time you sent it are saved as a CloudKit record. The App adds no device ID or user ID to it (the identifier Apple attaches to every CloudKit record is described below); only the developer reads them via the CloudKit Dashboard. Question reports (see Section 2) are also saved as Feedback records, with only the fields listed there.

Besides what is listed above, Apple attaches to every CloudKit record a random identifier for the iCloud account that saved it. That identifier exists only for Aquora and does not reveal your Apple ID, name or email, but records saved from the same iCloud account share it. Feedback includes your email only if you typed one.

Keychain

Your Apple User ID is stored in the device Keychain with encryption and is not accessible to other apps.

5. Third-Party Services

The App uses the following third-party services:

• Apple Sign In
  — for authentication (Apple User ID verification)
• Apple StoreKit 2
  — for subscription and tip purchase management
• Apple Family Controls / DeviceActivity
  — for screen time management
• Apple iCloud Key-Value Store
  — for syncing token and subscription data, and the list of answered question-bank questions
• Apple CloudKit
  — for referral code validation, anonymous archetype rarity statistics, and storing feedback submissions and question reports
• Google Gemini API
  — used to generate AI reminder content. AI Reminder generation sends a behavior summary derived from your local usage data — including up to your three most-unlocked group names with unlock counts (plus any groups in active no-unlock challenges), recurring habit-window times, average daily screen time and trend, peak-hour and night/morning usage ratios, your most frequent reflection answer choices, your strongest and weakest quiz categories, and your derived personality code — so Gemini can write reminders that reference your actual patterns. Under Google's Gemini API terms for paid services, Google logs prompts and responses for a limited period solely to detect and prevent violations of its usage policies, does not use them to improve its products, and may store or cache them transiently in any country where it has facilities. Quiz questions are no longer generated on request: none of your data is sent to any AI provider to make quiz questions. Never transmitted to Google: contacts, message contents, photo library contents, location, or any journal / meditation entries.
• DeepSeek API
  — an alternative AI provider used for the same AI Reminder requests with the same payload as described for Gemini above. Requests are routed to DeepSeek by default for users on the mainland-China App Store using Chinese, and temporarily for any user while Gemini is unreachable (automatic failover, up to 6 hours). The same never-transmitted list applies. Under DeepSeek's open-platform privacy policy (effective November 11, 2026), DeepSeek keeps API inputs and outputs only as long as its stated purposes require and, unless otherwise agreed in writing, may use them, after encryption and de-identification, to develop, train and improve its models.
• GitHub Pages
  — hosts the scroll forecast data file and the question bank. For the forecast, the App downloads a single public JSON file from aquora-app.github.io. This is a plain GET: the request carries no user data, no account identifier, no query parameters and no custom headers, and nothing is uploaded. As with any web request, GitHub's servers see the standard connection information (such as your IP address and user agent) in their own access logs. This request is made on every tier, including Free, because the same file also decides whether an emotional weather alert is due. On Premium, the App also downloads the question bank from aquora-app.github.io/question-bank/: it checks the list of question files about once a day while the App is open (if a check fails, again the next time the App is opened at least 10 minutes later), then downloads the question files it needs, both then and when you pick new quiz categories. These are the same kind of plain GET requests, sent without cookies, and nothing is uploaded. Which question files are requested depends on your App language and the quiz categories you picked.
• aquora.cn
  — our own website, which holds a second copy of the question bank at aquora.cn/question-bank/. On the China mainland App Store, the App tries aquora.cn first and GitHub Pages second; everywhere else, and whenever the App cannot read the App Store country within 2 seconds, it tries GitHub Pages first and aquora.cn only when GitHub Pages does not answer or its files cannot be downloaded. The App reads your App Store country on the device only to choose this order; the country is not sent. The requests are the same plain GETs described above. Which files are requested depends on your App language and the quiz categories you picked, so the access logs show which language and categories an IP address downloaded. The server is in mainland China. Like any web server, it records standard connection information (IP address, time, requested file and user agent) in its access logs, which are kept for 14 days and then deleted.

One addition to the AI reminder payload described above: the request also carries a short block describing today's public mood climate. Everything in it comes from the published forecast file: two macro figures, a few band labels, and the category codes of the day's active events. Your year of birth, your city, your frequent apps, and anything derived from your mood check-ins are never part of it — and neither is which age band you fall into: that choice is made on the device, used to pick which band's figure to read, and then discarded.

6. Tracking & Advertising

7. Notifications

With your permission, Aquora sends local notifications including:

• Shield-opened reminders when you launch a blocked app
• Daily limit reached alerts
• No-Unlocking Challenge warnings
• AI in-the-moment reminders (at usage thresholds)
• Trial expiry warnings
• Welcome messages and meditation reminders
• Emotional weather alerts on days when the public mood surges — at most one per day. On Starter and above it can be switched off on its own under AI Reminder Settings; on any tier you can turn off all Aquora notifications from the Me tab
• Monthly evolution report notices
• Occasional nudges to come back — for example on your first day, or when your archetype has shifted

On days the App recognizes as days of public mourning, the notifications Aquora generates on its own initiative — the daily AI reminders, in-the-moment reminders, trial-expiry notices, monthly reports and come-back nudges — are withheld for that day. Alerts that fire because you opened an app you had limited are immediate feedback on a limit you set yourself, and are not withheld.

All notifications are generated entirely on your device. We do not use remote push notification servers.

8. Children's Privacy

Aquora does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Aquora is designed for personal self-management and does not provide parental controls over other users' devices. If we learn that we have collected data from a child under 13 without parental consent, we will take steps to delete that information.

9. Data Retention & Deletion

Local data: You can delete your account and all local data directly in the App (Me tab). Uninstalling the App also removes on-device data. Behavior logs (quiz answers, reflections, unlock events) are automatically purged after 90 days.

iCloud Key-Value Store: Token balance, subscription status, and transaction history may persist in your iCloud account until you manually remove it from Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud > Manage Storage. The list of answered question numbers is removed from iCloud when you delete your account in the App. If another device on the same iCloud account still has Aquora on Premium, it writes its own list back to iCloud the next time a downloaded question is answered there; to remove it for good, delete your account or the App on that device too.

CloudKit records: Deleting your account in the App removes your referral code record from our CloudKit database. Archetype statistics, feedback and redemption history are retained. Question reports are deleted once we have reviewed them, and are kept for at most 12 months. Besides what is listed in Sections 2 and 4, each of these records carries, as with every CloudKit record, a random identifier for the iCloud account that saved it. That identifier exists only for Aquora and does not reveal your Apple ID, name or email, but records saved from the same iCloud account share it. Feedback includes your email only if you typed one. You may also contact us at the email below with any questions about CloudKit data.

10. Your Rights

You have the right to:

• Revoke screen time, notification, and photo library permissions at any time via device Settings
• Delete all locally stored data by uninstalling the App
• Remove iCloud Key-Value Store data through your iCloud settings
• Request deletion of CloudKit records (referral codes, archetype) by contacting us
• Revoke Sign In with Apple credentials via Settings > [Your Name] > Sign-In & Security
• Delete your account and all associated data directly within the App (Me tab)
• Request information about data processing by contacting us

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of significant changes through the App or by updating the effective date above.

12. Contact Us

If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at aquora.apps@gmail.com.