Privacy Policy
Winston is a personal goal tracker. It has no ads, no analytics about you, no trackers, and nothing to sell. This page describes exactly what it collects, where that goes, and how to get rid of it.
The short version
- Winston stores what you write into it (your focus periods, books, courses, sessions, habits and schedule) so it can sync between your devices.
- It stores those against an anonymous account id, not against your name.
- If you choose Sign in with Apple, Winston also holds whatever Apple gives it: usually a name and an email address, which may be a private relay address.
- Which apps you block is never uploaded. It stays on the device.
- You can delete everything from inside the app, permanently.
What Winston collects
Your content
Everything you create in Winston (focus periods and their times, books and reading progress, courses, weekly sessions, daily habits, and your daily schedule) is stored on your device and synced to Winston's cloud database so it is not lost with the phone.
An account id
The first time you open Winston it creates an anonymous account for you. You are not asked for anything and nothing identifies you: it is a random id. Everything you write is stored under that id.
Your name and email, only if you sign in
Signing in with Apple is optional. Its purpose is to let you reach your data from another device, or recover it if you lose this one.
When you sign in, Apple gives Winston your name and email address. Apple returns the name
only on the very first sign-in, so it is either stored then or never. If you chose
Hide My Email, the address Winston receives is an
@privaterelay.appleid.com address and Winston never sees your real one.
Name and email are held on the account record and shown back to you on the About you screen. They are not written into the database that holds your goals. That database continues to hold nothing but the anonymous id and the words you typed.
What Winston does not collect
- No analytics about how you use the app. Winston contains no analytics SDK, no advertising SDK and no crash-reporting SDK. Nothing measures your behaviour.
- No tracking. Winston does not track you across other apps or websites, and does not ask for permission to, because it has nothing to ask for.
- No location. Winston has no location code and never requests it.
- No contacts. Earlier versions could store a list of contact names for focus periods. That feature was removed, and any names stored by those versions are deleted from the database when the app updates.
- No advertising identifier, and nothing is ever sold or shared with data brokers.
App blocking stays on your device
Winston can block apps during a focus period. This uses Apple's Screen Time system, and it works in a way that is worth being specific about:
- When you choose which apps to allow, that choice is made in Apple's own picker. Winston never sees which apps you have installed, and never sees which apps you picked. Apple hands it opaque tokens that mean nothing outside your device.
- Those tokens are stored only on your device. They are never uploaded, never synced, and never leave it.
So Winston's cloud database contains no record of which apps you block or use.
Where the data goes
Winston uses Google Firebase (Firebase Authentication and Cloud Firestore) to store your account and sync your content. Firebase acts as Winston's data processor and is subject to Google's terms.
Firebase also collects a small amount of technical diagnostic information about its own operation. That data is not linked to your identity and is not something Winston reads, asks for, or receives.
Security rules restrict your data so that it can only be read or written by your own signed-in account.
Winston sends data to no one else. There is no other server, no third-party service and no integration that receives your information.
How long it is kept
Your content is kept until you delete it. Deleting an individual entry removes it from every device you use.
Deleting everything
Open About you from the icon on the Today screen, and choose Delete all my data. This permanently removes your content from the cloud database and destroys the account itself. It cannot be undone, and Winston keeps no copy.
You do not need to contact anyone or wait for a reply to do this.
A warning about anonymous accounts
If you never sign in, your anonymous account is tied to that installation. If you delete Winston, or lose the device, that data cannot be recovered by anyone, including us. There is no name or email attached to it, so there is nothing to recover it with. Signing in with Apple is what makes recovery possible.
Children
Winston is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export or erase your personal information. The app itself provides the strongest of these directly: everything Winston holds about you is visible inside the app, and deletion is immediate and complete. For anything else, get in touch at the address below.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected, the date at the top of this page changes with it and the updated policy is published here before the change ships.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or about your data: contact@unnustudios.com.