Privacy policy

Updated 13 October 2026

Dawnbook is a private diary for a child's life. This page explains, in plain words, what happens to what you put in it.

The short version

Your memories live on your phone. They only leave it if you turn on encrypted backup, or if you share a storybook or an export yourself.

Backups are encrypted on your phone with a key only you hold. We cannot read them, and nobody else can.

There are no ads, no tracking, no analytics and no selling of data.

What stays on your phone

Everything you add (words, voice notes, photos, video, milestones and letters) is stored on your phone. Voice notes are turned into text, and handwriting is read from images, on the phone itself. If a phone can't do this on the phone, the feature is simply switched off and the voice note is saved as audio only; nothing is sent to an online service to transcribe it.

Optional encrypted backup

If you turn on backup you create an account with your email address and a password. We store your email address, your account password (kept only in scrambled form by our sign-in provider), and your diary in encrypted form: scrambled records and files, plus the technical details needed to unlock them with your passphrase.

The key that unlocks your diary is made on your phone and is protected by your backup passphrase. It is never sent to us in readable form. We can see how many encrypted records and files you have, their sizes and when they changed, but not what they contain.

Because we cannot read your backup, we cannot recover it for you. If you lose both your passphrase and your recovery code, the backup cannot be opened by anyone.

Family and friends who add memories

You can invite relatives and friends to add memories. They do not need an account and they never see your diary. Each memory they send is encrypted on their phone so that only your phone can open it. We store only the scrambled data, the size, the time it arrived, and a fingerprint of the invitation (not the invitation itself).

Nothing is added to your diary until you approve it. You can stop an invitation at any time. A contributor keeps nothing after sending, except the invitation and the name they chose to use, which stay on their own phone so they can add more.

A contributor can also use the invitation link on our website, without installing anything. The page locks their memory inside their own browser before it is sent, in the same way the app does. The page sets no cookies, keeps nothing in the browser after the visit, and has no analytics or advertising. Photos are re-saved without their location details before they are locked.

If you invite someone, you are responsible for asking them first and for approving only what you are happy to keep.

What we do not do

We do not show ads, sell or rent data, build profiles, or use tracking or analytics tools. We do not collect your location, contacts or advertising identifiers.

We do not receive crash reports automatically. If something goes wrong you can choose "Report a problem", read the short report, and send it yourself. It contains no memories, names or photos.

Permissions the app asks for

Microphone and speech recognition, to record voice notes and turn them into text on your phone. Camera and photos, to add pictures and video. Face ID or fingerprint, to lock the diary. Notifications, only if you turn on the weekly reminder. You can change any of these in your phone settings.

Children's information

Dawnbook is used by parents and carers. It stores whatever you choose to record about your child, and nothing about them is shared unless you share it. The app is not for children to use. The diary is meant to be passed to your child when they are older, and you decide when.

Who helps us run it

Our backup service is hosted by Supabase, which stores the encrypted data and handles sign-in. App updates are delivered through Expo. The Apple App Store and Google Play handle downloads and payments. Each of them receives the technical information any online service needs to work (such as your network address) under its own privacy policy.

Keeping and deleting your data

You can export your whole diary as open files at any time (Settings, then "Export Dawnbook").

To delete your online account, go to Settings, then "Encrypted cloud backup", then "Delete my account". This removes your backup, your sign-in and all invitations and contributions waiting for you. Your diary on your phone is not touched; deleting the app removes it.

Copies held in our hosting provider's routine backups may remain for a short time before they expire.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to see, correct, export and delete your data, and to complain to your data protection authority. Most of this you can do yourself in the app. For anything else, Write to us at support@dawnbook.app.

Changes and contact

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will say so in the app. Write to us at support@dawnbook.app.