Privacy Policy

Small Hours is a private journal for tracking moments with your child. This policy explains what information the app handles and how it's kept private to you.

What we collect

Nothing. There is no Small Hours account, no server of ours, and no analytics, ads or trackers in the app. The journal you build never passes through us.

The app stores the entries you create: photos, videos, voice notes, written notes, milestones, growth measurements, scanned artwork, and any places or songs you tag, along with their dates. All of it is written directly to your own iCloud account using Apple's CloudKit framework.

Where your data lives

Your journal entries are stored in your private iCloud database, the same infrastructure Apple uses for Photos and Notes. That means:

• Your entries are tied to your Apple account, not to a Small Hours account or server we operate.
• We do not have a backend, and we cannot see, access, or export your data.
• Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, per Apple's standard iCloud protections.
• Some things never leave the device at all: voice note transcripts, your Face ID or passcode lock, reminders, and the small copy of recent memories the widgets read.

Sharing, and the three ways it works

Nothing is shared until you share it. There are three separate doors, and each one is yours to open and to close.

• A journal shared with a partner. An iCloud share between the two of you. Apple carries the invitation and you can revoke it at any time.
• The Fridge. Only the memories you flag for it, and only for the family you invite by link. Everyone else sees nothing, and taking a memory off the Fridge takes it back.
• The Fridge web page. This is the one place your memories leave your private database. If you create a web page, the photos already on your Fridge are copied to a public part of the app's iCloud container so that family on an Android phone or a computer can see them. The page is protected the way an unlisted link is protected: the address holds a secret 128 bit id, nothing is searchable or indexed, and the photos can only be reached by someone holding the link. Treat the link as the key. Anyone you send it to can open it, and can pass it on. Take Down the Web Page deletes every copy, and publishing again mints a brand new link, so an old one can never come back to life. Taking down the Fridge takes the web page with it.

When you share a single memory out of the app, as a picture or a film, the app strips the location and camera metadata from the file first.

Apple services the app uses

Small Hours runs no servers of its own. It does ask Apple's for a few things, and only when a feature needs them:

• iCloud holds your journal, and syncs it between your devices and anyone you share with.
• Apple Music is used to find a song you want to tag, and to build The Soundtrack as a real playlist in your own Apple Music library. Small Hours reads no other part of your library and writes nowhere else.
• Maps and Weather are used when you tag a place. The app looks up the place name, and records the weather at that spot at that moment. The coordinates go to Apple for that lookup and nowhere else.
• The App Store handles every purchase.

Camera, photos, microphone and location

The app asks for these one at a time, when you first use the feature that needs one, and you can refuse any of them and keep using the rest of the app. The camera takes today's photo and scans your child's artwork. The photo library is read only for the pictures you pick. The microphone records voice notes. Location is used only when you tag a place, never in the background, and never to follow you.

Voice notes are transcribed on your device, using Apple's on device speech recognition. The audio is not uploaded anywhere. The words are cached in the app's own storage on that device, are never written into the entry and never sync.

What we don't do

• No advertising, and no ad networks or trackers of any kind.
• No analytics SDKs collecting your behavior in the app.
• No selling, renting, or sharing of your data with any third party.

Purchases

Small Hours Plus is an optional membership, offered as a yearly subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase, and the Tip Jar is there if you want to leave one. Everything you already have stays free. Payments are processed entirely by Apple through the App Store. We never see or store your payment details, and purchase history stays between you and Apple, per Apple's privacy policy.

A Year Book or an Artwork Book is made into a PDF on your device. If you choose to have one printed, you take that file to a printing service yourself, and what happens there is between you and them.

TestFlight testers

If you're using Small Hours through Apple's TestFlight, Apple separately collects some crash logs, feedback, and usage data to support the beta testing program. That collection is governed by Apple's TestFlight privacy terms, not by us.

Children's privacy

Small Hours is designed for use by parents and caregivers, not by children. While entries may describe or include photos of a child, that information is entered and controlled entirely by the adult using the app. We don't knowingly collect information directly from children, and the app has no features that allow a child to interact with it independently.

Your choices

You can edit or delete any entry at any time directly in the app. Because data lives in your personal iCloud account, deleting an entry removes it the same way deleting a Photos or Notes item would. Uninstalling the app does not automatically delete your iCloud data. You can manage or remove it anytime from your device's iCloud storage settings.

Sharing can be taken back the same way. Stop sharing the journal, take a memory off the Fridge, or take the web page down, and the copies go with it.

This website

The app carries no analytics. This site does. smallhoursapp.com uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts page views without cookies and without building a profile of you. The Fridge web page is part of this site, so a visit to it is counted the same way. What the page shows is never sent anywhere but to the browser asking for it.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we'll update the effective date above. Continued use of the app after a change means you accept the update.

---

Contact