Privacy Policy

1. The short version

Every session you run, every note, mood, tag, streak and badge is written to storage on your own iPhone and stays there. There is no account to create, nothing to sign into, and no copy of your session history on any server we control.

Two things leave the app, and only two: anonymous usage counts sent to our purchase provider so the paid tier can be priced and supported, and the purchase itself, which is handled entirely by Apple. Both are described in full below.

2. What stays on your device

The following is stored locally on your iPhone, inside the app's own container and a shared app group that lets the widgets read it:

• Every focus session: its length, when it started, whether you finished it.
• Anything you attach to a session — a mood, tags, and a free-text note in your own words.
• Your streak, streak freezes, badges and achievement progress.
• Your settings: theme, sounds, haptics, daily goal, reminder times, and the tags you have created.
• The patterns the app derives from all of the above — your peak hour, your strongest weekday, the words that recur in your notes.

None of it is uploaded, backed up to a server of ours, or readable by us. If you back up your iPhone to iCloud or a computer, that backup is made and encrypted by Apple under Apple's privacy policy, not ours.

3. What the app sends off your device

RevenueCat

Just 5min uses RevenueCat to manage purchases and to understand how the paid tier is being used. RevenueCat receives:

• An anonymous app user ID generated on your device. It is not your name, email, Apple Account, phone number or advertising identifier.
• Purchase and subscription state from the App Store — what was bought, whether it is active, when it renews — so the app can unlock Plus and restore it later.
• Aggregate usage attributes: whole numbers and yes/no flags summarising how the app has been used. The complete list the app can send is: total_sessions, sessions_today, total_minutes, avg_session_minutes, days_active, days_since_install, current_streak, longest_streak, daily_goal, badges_unlocked, badges_total, productivity_score, notifications_enabled, app_version, paywall_views, last_paywall_source, paywall_variant, paywall_arm, experiment_id and experiment_name.

Those attributes are counts and settings. They never include the text of a note, the name of a tag, a mood, or anything else you typed. RevenueCat processes this data on our behalf under its own privacy policy.

Price testing

The experiment_*, paywall_variant and paywall_arm attributes exist because Just 5min runs price and layout tests: different people may be shown a different price for the same Plus tier. Which group you fall into is decided once, on your device, and recorded with your anonymous ID. The price you are charged is always the price shown in Apple's purchase sheet before you confirm.

Apple

Purchases, subscriptions, renewals and refunds are handled by Apple. We never see your payment method, card details or billing address. If you have turned on Share With App Developers in iOS Settings, Apple may also give us aggregated, anonymised crash and usage reports — we cannot identify you from them, and they are governed by Apple's privacy policy.

4. This website, and the beta invite

Everything above is about the app. This section is about just5min.app, which is a separate thing and does collect one piece of personal data.

The website has no App Store button. Instead there is a form on the home page that gets you into the TestFlight beta. If you use it, this is exactly what happens:

• We receive the email address you type. Nothing else — no name, and no field asks for one.
• It is stored as a row in a private Notion database that only we can read. Notion acts as our processor and does not sell it. If you submit the same address twice, the second one is discarded rather than stored again.
• One email is sent to you straight away, containing the TestFlight link. It is sent from a personal Gmail account through Google's mail servers, so Google handles it as it would any other message we send. There is no mailing-list provider, no tracking pixel, and no record of whether you opened it.
• After that, at most one more email — when Just 5min reaches the App Store. No sequence, no drip, no marketing series.
• Your IP address is used, briefly, to rate-limit the form — five submissions per ten minutes — so it cannot be flooded. It is held in memory only, for ten minutes, and is never written to disk or attached to your address.

That is the whole of it. The site sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and embeds no third-party scripts or trackers. Nothing you do on the site — including the answers you give in the procrastination test, which are scored entirely in your own browser and never transmitted — is recorded anywhere.

Giving your email is entirely optional: the app is also reachable by searching Just 5min in the App Store, and installing it that way tells us nothing at all.

5. Purchases and subscriptions

Just 5min is free to download and the five-minute timer is free forever. Just 5min Plus is an optional upgrade sold as a monthly subscription, an annual subscription with a free trial, or a one-time lifetime purchase. All of it goes through the App Store.

Your entitlement is tied to your Apple Account, not to an account with us. That is what makes Restore Purchases work on a new device without us ever holding an identity for you. The commercial terms are in the Terms & Conditions.

6. Permissions you can grant

Every permission below is optional. The timer works fully without any of them, and iOS will ask you before the app can use any.

Notifications

Used for the daily reminder, the evening streak alert, and the alert that tells you a session has finished when you have left the app. All notifications are scheduled and delivered locally by iOS. There is no push server, so no notification content leaves your device.

Calendar

If you turn on calendar logging in Settings, the app can write a finished session into your calendar as an event, including its length and any note or tags you attached. It only writes events it creates — it does not read, analyse or transmit your existing calendar. Once an event is in your calendar it is governed by whatever calendar account you saved it to (iCloud, Google, Exchange), not by this policy. You can revoke access in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Calendars at any time.

Screen Time / Family Controls

Focus Shield blocks the apps you choose for the length of a session. It uses Apple's Family Controls framework, which is designed so the selection of apps you pick never becomes readable by us: iOS hands the app opaque tokens, not app names or usage data, and the selection stays on your device. We never see which apps you block or when a block is active. You can turn Focus Shield off, or change which apps it covers, at any time in Settings.

Sharing

Sharing a streak or a badge opens the standard iOS share sheet. Nothing is posted anywhere until you choose a destination, and what happens after that is up to the app you shared into.

7. What we never collect

• Your name or phone number, ever. Your email address only if you type it into the form on this website, or write to us yourself — see sections 4 and 13. The app never asks for it and never sends it.
• Your precise or approximate location.
• Your contacts, photos, microphone, camera or health data.
• The IDFA, or any other advertising or cross-app tracking identifier. The app displays no ads.
• The content of your notes, the names of your tags, or your moods.
• Your payment details.

We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it for advertising or cross-context behavioural advertising. We have never done so.

8. Your controls

• Delete everything. Settings → Data & Privacy erases every session, note, tag, streak and badge on the device. It is immediate and permanent, and it cannot be undone.
• Delete the app. Removing Just 5min removes its local storage with it. No account survives, because there was never one.
• Turn off any permission in iOS Settings without breaking the timer.
• Email us. If you have written to jaydoshi.iosdeveloper@gmail.com we hold that email thread, and only that. Ask and we will delete it. Say which address you wrote from so we can find it.
• Purchase records. To have the anonymous purchase record held by RevenueCat deleted, email us — we will need enough detail to identify the record, and Apple will still keep its own transaction record independently of us.

9. How long anything is kept

• On your device: until you delete it, or delete the app.
• Purchase and usage attributes at RevenueCat: for as long as the app is available and the record is needed to honour or support a purchase.
• Support emails: as long as needed to answer you and to keep a record of anything that mattered, then deleted on request.
• An address given to the beta form: kept in our Notion database until the launch email has gone out, or until you ask to be removed — whichever comes first. Removal is immediate and unquestioned. The IP address used to rate-limit that form is held in memory for ten minutes and never stored.

10. Children

Just 5min is a general-audience productivity app. It is not directed at children under 13 (or the equivalent minimum age where you live), it is not distributed through Apple's Kids Category, and it does not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has sent us personal information by email, contact us and we will delete it.

11. Your rights, by region

Because the app holds your data locally and we hold none of it, most data-subject requests are satisfied by the controls in section 8 — deletion is in your hands and is instant. Where law gives you further rights, we honour them.

EEA, UK and Switzerland (GDPR)

You have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict and object to processing, and to data portability. The lawful bases we rely on are performance of a contract (delivering and restoring a purchase you made) and legitimate interests (understanding aggregate usage so the app can be maintained and priced). You may complain to your local supervisory authority.

California (CCPA/CPRA)

We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined, and we do not use sensitive personal information for inferring characteristics. You have the right to know, delete, and to be free from discrimination for exercising those rights.

Everywhere else

Write to us and we will apply whichever of the above gives you more, regardless of where you live.

12. Changes to this policy

This policy will change when the app does — the most likely reason being new insight features. When something material changes we will update the effective date at the top of this page and, where the change affects what leaves your device, describe it in the App Store release notes for that version. This page always describes the current App Store version.

13. Contact

Just 5min is made by Jay Doshi, an individual developer. For anything privacy-related — a question, a deletion request, or a correction to this page:

jaydoshi.iosdeveloper@gmail.com

We answer privacy mail first, usually within two working days.