Privacy Policy

Effective October 4, 2026

Cadency ("Cadency", "we", "us") is a time-awareness app for Mac and iPhone made by Joe Cowles. This policy explains what data Cadency handles, why, and the choices you have. The short version: screenshots are analyzed in memory and never stored on our servers, there are no ads or third-party trackers, and we never sell your data.

How tracking works on your Mac

• About once a minute, the Mac app checks whether you are idle or your screen is locked. If so, it records the time as "Away" and takes no screenshot.
• If the frontmost app or website is on your never-capture list (password managers, banking apps, private browser windows, plus anything you add), Cadency records the app name only and takes no screenshot.
• Otherwise it captures only the display that has your active window. Before anything leaves your Mac, on-device text recognition (Apple Vision) looks for secrets such as card numbers, API keys, tokens and passwords and pixelates them.
• The screenshot is sent over an encrypted connection to the Cadency server, which holds it in memory only for the duration of the request. It is never written to disk, a database, or logs on our server.
• To classify the screenshot, the server sends it to OpenRouter, which routes the request to an AI model provider (for example Google). These providers process the image to return a short classification (such as the activity category, whether it matches your plan, and a nudge). We do not ask them to store it, and we choose settings that do not allow it to be used for training where the provider offers that option.
• If the model decides a moment is worth keeping, the "Moment" (screenshot and description) is stored only on your Mac, excluded from backups, and deleted automatically after 30 days.

iPhone: Screen Time and Apple Health

• Screen Time. iPhone usage is read through Apple's Screen Time (DeviceActivity / Family Controls) frameworks. Which apps you use, your pickups and your notifications stay on your device inside Apple's privacy-protected extensions and never leave your iPhone. If you turn on phone-time sync, Cadency uploads only your total phone time for each day and how it was spread across the hours, so your other devices can show it. It never includes app names or what you did in them.
• Apple Health. With your permission, Cadency reads sleep, workouts, mindful minutes, caffeine, alcoholic beverages, resting heart rate and heart rate variability. It does not write to Apple Health. These values are used only to fill in your own daily journal and insights (for example sleep and exercise), which are synced to your account so they appear on your other devices. Health data is never used for advertising or marketing, never sold, and never shared with accountability partners. You can turn off access at any time in the Health app or iOS Settings.

Data stored on our server

To sync between your Mac and iPhone and run accountability features, the Cadency server stores:

• Account information: your sign-in identifier from Sign in with Apple, Google, or your phone number (for SMS sign-in), your email address if provided, display name, optional avatar, and time zone.
• Activity classifications: for each tracked period, the category (such as deep work or social), app name and bundle identifier, website domain, a short AI-generated description, whether it was on track, any nudge text, and durations. Never the screenshot itself.
• Plans and settings: your focus hours, daily intentions, work description, never-capture list and preferences.
• Daily summaries: focus, drift and balance scores and minutes per category; focus sessions; and AI-written daily debriefs.
• Phone time (if you turn on phone-time sync): each day's total iPhone screen time and minutes per hour. No app names or usage details.
• Journal entries: sleep, caffeine, exercise and similar values you enter, plus the Apple Health-derived values you permit.
• Accountability partners: who you are connected with and partner alerts.
• Device push tokens so we can send notifications.
• Subscription status: verified App Store transaction details (product, purchase and expiry dates). We never receive your payment details.
• AI usage records: model name, token counts and cost per request, used to enforce a daily spending cap. These contain no image or content.

Daily debriefs are generated by sending a summary of your day (focus scores, minutes per category, short highlights such as top apps and off-track moments, and your plan and intentions) to an AI model via OpenRouter. Health data is not sent for this.

Accountability partners

If you add accountability partners, they only ever see your display name, the activity category, how long you have been on it, and the label of your plan (for example "Jordan has been on social for 20 min during Work"). Partners never see screenshots, window titles, websites, descriptions, or health data.

What we don't do

• No advertising and no ad networks.
• No third-party analytics or cross-app tracking.
• We do not sell or rent your data, or share it for marketing.

Service providers

We use a small number of providers to run Cadency: our hosting provider (server and database), OpenRouter and the AI model providers it routes to (classification and debriefs), Apple (Sign in with Apple, push notifications, App Store subscriptions), Google (optional Google sign-in), and Twilio (optional SMS sign-in codes and partner texts). Each receives only what is needed for its function.

Retention and deletion

• Screenshots: not retained on our server at all; kept Moments are deleted from your Mac after 30 days.
• Account data is kept while your account is active. You can delete your account at any time in the app under Settings → Delete account and data. This permanently deletes your account and all associated data on our server (activity, plans, sessions, journal, partners, devices, subscription records) and the Moments saved on that device.
• Expired sign-in codes and stale invites are purged automatically.

Subscriptions

Subscriptions are purchased and managed through Apple. Apple handles payment; we only receive a signed record of the transaction to unlock Pro features.

Security

All traffic uses HTTPS. Sign-in tokens are short-lived and refresh tokens are stored only as hashes. Request bodies are never logged, and our logs are scrubbed of image data and credentials.

Children

Cadency is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us data, contact us and we will delete it.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export or delete your data. You can delete everything from the app, and you can contact us for any other request.

Changes

If we change this policy, we will update the effective date above and, for material changes, let you know in the app.

Contact

Joe Cowles · joe.cowles03@gmail.com