What is collected
Nothing. Singularity Codex does not collect, receive or store any personal data. There is no sign-up, no login, no profile, no email address on file and no device identifier sent anywhere. The app contains no analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising and no third-party SDK of any kind.
This is not a promise about how carefully data is handled. It is a statement about architecture: there is no server belonging to us for anything to be handled on. On the App Store the app is listed as Data Not Collected, and that listing is accurate.
Where the archive lives
Everything you send yourself — messages, photos, files, voice recordings, links, reminders and the labels the app works out — is stored on your iPhone, in the app's own storage, and is covered by the device's own encryption.
iCloud, if you switch it on
iCloud sync is off until you turn it on in Settings. Turned on, the archive — its messages and their photos, recordings and documents — is kept in your own private CloudKit database inside your Apple Account, so it appears on your other iPhones. That database belongs to you: we have no access to it, no console for it and no way to read it. The files count towards your iCloud storage.
Apple stores that database, and its handling is governed by Apple's own privacy policy. By default iCloud data is encrypted with keys Apple holds; with Advanced Data Protection turned on in your Apple Account, it is end-to-end encrypted and Apple cannot read it either.
Turning sync off again stops this device from syncing. What has already reached iCloud stays there until you remove the app's data in your iCloud settings.
Device backups
The archive is part of your iPhone's own backups — to iCloud or to a computer — like any app's data, under whatever protection you chose for those backups.
Taking it out, and deleting it
Settings → Export Archive writes a zip holding your messages as JSON, the same messages as plain text, and every photo, recording and document — readable without this app. Deleting the app removes its local storage; removing its iCloud data removes the synced copy. There is nothing left over for us to delete, because we never had a copy.
When the app uses the network
The app never contacts a server of ours, because there is none. It goes online in these cases, each one following something you did, and none of them carries the contents of your archive.
- A link preview. When you save a link, the app asks that page for its title and image, so the message can show a card instead of a bare URL. Switch previews off in Settings and a link simply stays a link.
- A source you follow in Today. Opening Today asks each source you subscribed to for what it has published, directly from your phone. See Today, and the sources you follow.
- A page you open. Tapping a link opens it in Safari's in-app browser, which is Safari's, not ours: it behaves like any visit you make in Safari.
- iCloud, if you turned it on. Messages and files travel between your devices through your private iCloud database, as described above.
- The App Store. Starting the trial, buying, and restoring go to Apple through StoreKit.
A site the app asks for a preview, or for its posts, sees what any site sees when it is visited: your IP address, the address being requested and the name of the system asking. Nothing about you or your archive is added to those requests, and nothing you write is sent to any of them.
Today, and the sources you follow
Today is a reader. You add sources — a website's feed, a podcast, a YouTube channel, a Mastodon account or hashtag, a Bluesky account or feed, a subreddit — and the app asks each one for what it has published, in the order it was published. There is no algorithm, no ranking and no recommendation, because there is no service of ours between you and them.
Where the requests go
Straight from your phone to the service you followed: to that Mastodon server, to Bluesky's public API, to Reddit, to YouTube's feed, to the site itself. They are ordinary web requests, made only for sources you added, and only when Today is open or you pull to refresh. Each service sees what it would see from any visitor: your IP address and what was asked for. We are not in the middle, so we see none of it.
No account, and nothing about you
Codex signs into nothing. Every source it reads is one that is public without an account, so there is no token, no profile and no way for a service to know that a particular reader is you rather than anyone else asking for the same public page. Nothing from your archive — not a message, not a search, not a label — is ever attached to these requests. Liking, reposting and replying do not exist here: Today can only read.
What is stored, and for how long
Posts that arrive are cached on your phone so the timeline can be read offline, in a store of their own that is never synced to iCloud: what other people published is not part of your archive. Read items older than thirty days are dropped on the next refresh. Removing a source removes what it brought with it, and the whole cache goes when the app does.
What you choose not to see
Today shows other people's writing, so it lets you refuse some of it: mute a word or phrase and posts containing it never appear, hide someone and their posts stop arriving. Both lists live on your phone, in Settings and in Today's own menu. Nobody is told, and the source stays followed. A post can also be reported — which opens it on the service that published it, where a report can actually be acted on, or writes to us at [email protected].
What happens on the device
Labels and dates
The app reads your messages to work out what they look like — a task, a question, a date it names — so that Now and the Timeline have something to show. That reading happens on the device, is never sent anywhere, and never changes a word of what you wrote.
Voice
Voice messages are transcribed with on-device speech recognition only. The app asks the system for offline recognition explicitly, which means recognition either happens on the phone or does not happen at all — a recording made in this app cannot be uploaded to be read, even by accident. If your language has no offline recogniser, the recording stays audio, which is the correct outcome for a private archive.
Photos, microphone and files
The app asks for these permissions only when you use the feature that needs them, and what you pick or record goes straight into your archive on the device. Declining a permission costs you that one feature and nothing else.
Notifications and reminders
Reminders are local notifications scheduled by your own device. There is no push server, so no reminder — and no part of a message — is transmitted in order to be delivered. If you would rather a reminder did not put your words on the lock screen, Settings → “Show message in notification” turns that off and the notification says only that there is something to look at.
Buying the app
Singularity Codex is bought once, through the App Store, and the purchase is handled entirely by Apple. We never see your payment details, your name or your Apple Account. There is no licence server: StoreKit signs the receipt, the device verifies it, and that is the whole chain — the app never asks anyone whether the person holding the phone is allowed to use it.
The 14-day trial is dated by the App Store rather than by this app: starting it acquires a free item on your Apple Account, and the date Apple stamps on that is what the fortnight is measured from. Nothing about you or your archive is attached to it. Reading, searching, organising and exporting never expire, whether you buy or not.
Children
The app is not directed at children, but it collects nothing from anyone, of any age. There is no account to create, no content shared with anyone else, and no message sent anywhere but your own devices and, if you turn it on, your own iCloud.
Your rights
Laws such as the GDPR and the CCPA give you the right to see the personal data a company holds about you, to correct it, to have it deleted and to take it elsewhere. We hold none, so there is nothing to request from us — and the app answers those rights directly instead:
- Access and portability — Export Archive, in an open format, at any time.
- Correction — edit or delete any message in the app.
- Erasure — delete the app, and remove its iCloud data if you had sync on.
Your data is never sold or shared, because it is never received in the first place.
If you would like any of this confirmed in writing for your own records, write to [email protected] and you will get a written answer.
Changes to this policy
If the app ever changes what it does with your data, this page changes first, and the date at the top of it changes with it. A change that made the app collect anything would be announced in the app itself before it took effect — not left here to be discovered.
This website
This site is served by Cloudflare Pages and has no cookies, analytics or tracking scripts of ours. Like any web host, Cloudflare handles your IP address and the pages you request in order to deliver them. The typefaces come from Google Fonts, so your browser also requests them from Google, which sees your IP address when it does.
Contact
Singularity Codex is made by Tiny Serious. If you write to us, we receive your email and use it only to answer you. Questions about this policy, or about anything the app does with what you write: [email protected].
✉️ [email protected]