Timeful privacy
Effective 2026-08-30 · applies to the Timeful apps for iOS and Android (org.erif.timeful), made by Kaolin Fire (erif.org).
Timeful collects nothing about you. There is no account, no sign-in, no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising, and no server of ours anywhere. On Android it goes further than a promise: the app has no internet permission at all, so it is technically incapable of reaching the network.
What Timeful stores
Settings only, on your device: which of the three screens you last used, the last countdown duration, whether you have seen the intro card, the Music Priority setting, and — only while a timer is actually running — a note of when it started, so the count survives the app being closed. There is no history and no log of past sessions.
Two honest exceptions, because “nothing ever leaves your device” would not be quite true:
- On Android, that settings file is eligible for Android’s standard backup, so it may be copied to your Google account and restored onto a new phone. Settings only — screen, duration, intro flag, Music Priority — and it goes to Google, not to us.
- When Music Priority is off, Timeful publishes a media session so your lock screen and Quick Settings can show pause and ±5. Its title and subtitle are the mode and the time (“Timer”, “04:21 elapsed”), and the system may mirror that to paired hardware such as a car head unit or a watch, as it does for any player. That is the operating system, not us.
iCloud is not used. Deleting the app deletes what it kept.
Sound
Timeful never listens. It requests no microphone permission on either platform; its audio is output only.
While a timer runs, the app plays a continuous silent track — actual silence, all-zero samples. That is what keeps the count alive in the background and holds a Bluetooth connection open so the first word of an announcement is not clipped.
The spoken minutes are produced by your device’s own text-to-speech engine — a separate app (usually Google’s Speech Services) with its own privacy policy. Timeful hands it the words to say and plays the result; Timeful itself never connects to anything.
Purchases
Timeful is a one-time purchase, with no in-app purchases and no subscriptions. Payment is handled entirely by Apple or Google Play — we never see, receive, or store payment information.
Network access
Timeful makes no network requests — no version check, no asset download, no remote configuration, no crash upload.
On Android this is enforced rather than promised: the app declares no
INTERNET permission, so the operating system will not let it
connect. Its permissions are the ones a timer needs and nothing else —
running in the background, playing audio, posting notifications, keeping the
device awake, exact alarms, and vibration.
On iOS the app asks for no permissions at all; it declares the background audio mode, which is how the count keeps going with the screen off.
Analytics & crash reports
None, on either platform. No Firebase, no Crashlytics, no advertising SDK, no third-party analytics of any kind. The iOS app declares no tracking and no collected data types in its App Store privacy manifest.
Apple and Google report their own standard install and crash statistics to developers for every app on their stores; that is their collection, not ours, under Apple’s and Google’s privacy policies.
What Timeful doesn’t do
- No selling of data, to anyone, ever.
- No advertising and no tracking identifiers.
- No account, no login, no server of ours.
- No microphone, no listening.
Changes & contact
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted at this address with a new effective date. Questions: kaolin@erif.org.