Privacy Policy

The one thing to know

Glaus has no servers of its own and no account with us. Your family's chores, points, photos, and notes are stored on your device and synced through your own iCloud account, which is controlled by you and governed by Apple's Privacy Policy. We cannot read any of it.

• No analytics, no tracking, no advertising, and no third-party SDKs. The app contains no analytics or crash-reporting libraries of any kind.
• No selling or sharing of data with anyone.
• No profile of you. We have no account system, so there is nothing for us to build a profile on.

There are exactly three things that leave your private iCloud, and you control all three. They are listed under "What we can see" below.

What information the app stores

You and your family enter this information so the app can work. It is stored on your device and synced through your own iCloud to the family members you invite:

• Profiles: each family member's name and role (parent or child), an optional profile photo, an optional profile color, and an optional birth date (used to show ages and birthday reminders).
• Family activity: chores, rewards, goals, point balances, allowance and savings amounts, swear-jar adjustments, household rules, achievements, and the in-app notification feed.
• Calendar events you create in the app (titles, dates, optional notes and photos), and, only if you enable it, events the app adds to your device calendar.
• Documents and photos you attach: chore "evidence" photos and permission-slip images or PDFs, which sync to your family. A parent's saved signature is kept separately, on that parent's own account only, and is never visible to other family members or to children.
• Free-text you type (notes, descriptions, reasons). Please avoid entering sensitive personal details you don't want stored.
• When the app is opened: a list, kept on this device only, of which days each family member opened the app and roughly what time, for up to about 400 days. It powers the activity heatmap, streaks, and achievement badges, and is never sent to us.
• Sign in with Apple identifier: if you sign in, Apple gives the app an identifier (and, if you allow it, your name/email) used only to link you to your family. It is stored in your device's Keychain and is never sent to us.

Information we do NOT collect

• No location. The app does not request or use your location, and contains no location code at all.
• No phone numbers, no contacts, no address book.
• No advertising identifiers, no cross-app tracking, and no usage analytics reported to us or to anyone else.
• No browsing history.
• No access to your family's chores, points, allowance, photos, calendar, or signatures. Those never leave your own iCloud.

What we can see

We want to be exact about this, because "we don't collect your data" is easy to say and easy to get wrong. There are three ways information reaches us or becomes public, and each is listed here in full.

1. Feedback you choose to send. If you tap "Send Feedback" and submit, that submission goes to a database only we can read, and we do read it. A submission contains the message you typed, the category you picked (bug, idea, or other), the app version and build, your iOS version, your device model (for example "iPhone17,2"), whether you were using the app as a parent, your language and region setting, the name of the screen you launched feedback from, a random identifier for your app installation, the time you submitted, and a screenshot only if you attach one. The install identifier is not your Apple ID, your name, or your device's hardware ID, and it is not used to track you anywhere: it only lets us tell that two feedback messages came from the same install, and a factory reset in the app replaces it. Feedback is available to parents only and never to a child profile. If you attach a screenshot, check what is on it first: a screenshot of the app will normally contain your family's names, and attaching it means sending those names to us. We keep feedback only as long as we need it to act on it. To have your submissions deleted, email us at the address below.
2. A sealed invite pointer, while an invite is open. When you create an invite code for a child's device, the app stores one small record in a shared lookup area so the other device can find your family. That record is named after a one-way hash of the invite code, not the code itself, and the only meaningful thing in it is your family's invitation link encrypted with a key derived from the invite code. We can see that a pointer exists and when it expires. We cannot open it, because we do not have your code. If you revoke the invite, the record is deleted straight away. If you simply let it expire, it stops working immediately, and the record itself is cleared the next time you open the invite screen.
3. A Game Center score, only if a parent turns it on. Game Center is off until a parent opts in, and consent belongs to that parent rather than to the device. Once on, the app submits a single number (that parent's all-time parent-engagement points) to a global leaderboard, under that parent's own Game Center nickname. It is never a child's point balance, and no names, chores, or family content are ever submitted. The leaderboard is public, so other Game Center users can see the nickname and the number. Turning the setting off stops any further scores being sent, but a number already on the leaderboard stays there: Game Center gives developers no way to remove a published score.

Nothing else in the app reports to us. There is no telemetry, no error reporting, and no background call home.

Children's privacy

Glaus is designed for families. A parent or guardian sets up the household and controls it. Any information about a child is entered by, and visible to, the family. It is stored in the family's own iCloud, is never sold or shared, and is never used for advertising or analytics. Parents can edit or delete a child's information, or remove the child, at any time inside the app.

Children cannot send feedback, cannot turn on Game Center, and cannot invite anyone. Links out to other websites are behind a parental gate for child profiles.

If you believe a child's information has been stored in a way you didn't intend, a parent can delete it in the app, or contact us using the details below.

Permissions the app may ask for

Each permission is optional and used only for the feature it powers:

• Photos / Camera: to take or choose a profile photo, and to add a picture to a chore, a request, or a permission slip.
• Calendar: only if you choose to sync family events to your device calendar.
• Notifications: to send chore reminders and family updates.
• Face ID / Touch ID: only if you turn on the optional app passcode lock.

You can change any of these at any time in the iOS Settings app.

Network activity

This is the complete list of times the app causes anything to travel over a network.

1. iCloud sync (Apple). Keeps your family's data in step across your family's devices, through your own iCloud account. This is continuous and automatic while sync is on. Apple's push service wakes the app when something changes; those wake-up messages carry no readable content.
2. Feedback, invite pointers, and Game Center, exactly as described in "What we can see" above.
3. Reward link previews (Amazon and Walmart only). If a reward has an Amazon or Walmart link on it, the app fetches that product page to show a title, price, and picture, and then loads the picture from whatever image host that page names. This happens automatically when the reward is opened. Nothing about you or your family is included, but the request itself tells that retailer's site that a device at your IP address looked at that product, the same as if you had opened the link in a browser. The app only fetches pages from links that look like Amazon or Walmart web addresses, and never goes looking for any other site on its own.
4. Links you tap. Opening a product link, a birthday-wish link, or this policy hands the address to your browser, and from there the destination site sees an ordinary visit. Child profiles hit a parental gate first.
5. Sharing you initiate. Sharing an invite link, or sharing a family progress report, sends whatever you chose through whichever app you picked. The progress report contains your children's names and their totals, so consider where you are sending it.
6. Your Apple Watch. If you have one paired, a small summary goes to your own watch over Apple's device link: today's chores, your points, and, for a parent, the approvals waiting on you and which child asked. It does not go to the internet.

Search and Siri

So that you can find a chore or a family member from iOS search, the app adds family member names and whether each is a parent or a child, open chore titles with their point value and the name of the child they are assigned to, reward names with their point cost, open family requests, and available bonus tasks, to your device's built-in Spotlight index, and offers them to Siri and Shortcuts. This index is part of iOS and stays on your device; it is not visible to us. How iOS itself handles search and Siri data is covered by Apple's privacy settings, under Settings ▸ Apple Intelligence & Siri. Deleting the app removes what it added.

How your data is stored and protected

Your data is stored on your device and in your iCloud account, where it is protected by Apple's encryption and your device passcode. The app also offers an optional passcode/Face ID lock for an extra layer of protection, and, on by default, it hides family names and photos behind redacted placeholders while the screen is being recorded, mirrored, or shared. That shield cannot cover a plain screenshot, which is why the feedback section above asks you to check one before attaching it.

An invite code is the key to joining your family, so treat it like a password. The link carries the code after a # sign, a part of a web address that never leaves the device: if it is opened on a device that does not have Glaus installed, the browser loads a short instruction page from the same site that hosts this policy and shows the code on the device itself, without sending it to us or anyone else. Links made by versions before the August 2026 update were ordinary web addresses with the code written into them; each one stops working at most 48 hours after it was made. Either way, a link travels through whatever app you share it with, and the code is copied to your clipboard when you tap it in the app. Revoke an invite you did not mean to send.

Keeping, exporting, and deleting your data

Because the data is yours and lives in your own storage:

• Export: you can export your family's data from the app. The export is a plain, unencrypted file containing your whole family history, saved wherever you choose. If you pick a cloud drive, it goes to that provider under your account with them. Keep it somewhere you trust.
• Calendar: if you turn on calendar sync, events are written to a calendar account on your device. If that account belongs to a non-Apple provider, those events live with that provider under their privacy policy.
• Delete: delete individual items, remove a family member, or use Delete Account in Settings, Profile and Family. If you are the only adult in your family, Delete Account deletes your family's data from your iCloud; otherwise it removes you from the family and erases this device's copy. Either way it signs you out. Deleting the app removes its local data, though iOS may keep the small Sign in with Apple item in its Keychain until you use Delete Account or Sign Out.
• Sign out clears the Sign in with Apple identifier from your device.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll update the effective date above and post the new version at this URL.

Contact

Questions about privacy? Contact us at: appletimemacDEV@icloud.com

See also the Terms of Service. Both pages are readable inside the app under Settings ▸ About ▸ Legal.