Privacy Policy

The short version

• There is no account and no sign-up. We never learn your name or email unless you write to us.
• Your entries, dreams, photos, streak and terrarium are stored on your device.
• We operate no server and hold no copy of your journal. Nobody at Mind Terrarium can read what you write.
• What you write is never sent away to be processed. There is no service reading your entries.
• If you switch on iCloud backup, it goes to your own private iCloud — Apple storage on your Apple Account. We have no access to it.
• We collect anonymous usage and crash data, so we can see which screens people give up on and which builds crash. It never contains your journal.

What the app handles

Mind Terrarium is a journal. Nearly everything it touches is something you typed, tapped or photographed, and nearly all of it never leaves the phone you made it on.

What stays on your phone

Everything you write. Entries, notes, dreams, photos, your streak, your species and the arrangement of your terrarium live in the app's own storage on your device. There is no Mind Terrarium account, no Mind Terrarium server, and no copy of your journal anywhere we can reach.

Deleting the app deletes all of it. An iCloud backup is the one exception, because surviving a deleted app is the whole point of one — see below.

You can take your journal with you at any time from Settings → Export Journal, which writes a file and hands it to the share sheet. Where it goes after that is yours to decide.

iCloud backup

On iPhone and iPad the app can keep a backup in your own iCloud. It stays off until you switch it on in Settings → Back Up & Restore.

The backup is written into a private container belonging to the app on your Apple Account. It is not a shared folder, it is not published, and it does not pass through us. We hold no credentials for your iCloud and have no way to read, list or recover that backup — which also means that if you lose access to your Apple Account, we cannot get it back for you.

Photos are a separate switch, and it is off by default. With it off the backup carries your text, your terrarium and your progress, and no images. Switching it off again clears the photos already up there on the next sync.

While it is on, the app re-uploads shortly after your data changes. Switching it off stops that. Deleting the backup itself is done in iOS, under Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Manage Account Storage.

What Apple does with data sitting in your iCloud is covered by Apple's privacy policy, not this one.

Analytics and crash reports

The app uses Firebase Analytics and Firebase Crashlytics, both from Google. Analytics records that something happened — a screen opened, a check-in finished, a purchase screen dismissed — so we can see which parts of the app people abandon. Crashlytics records the technical details of a crash so it can be fixed.

What analytics never contains:

• the text of anything you wrote — no entries, notes, dreams or names;
• your photos;
• your name, email or contact details.

Where the length of something you wrote is useful to us, the app sends a bucket instead of the writing — short or long, never the words.

Firebase assigns an app instance identifier so repeat sessions count as one device rather than many. It is not tied to your name, and deleting and reinstalling the app resets it. Analytics is switched off entirely in development builds.

Permissions

• Photos — only when you attach one to an entry, and only the images you pick. The app does not browse your library.
• Notifications — only if you turn reminders on. Declining costs you nothing but the reminder.

The app asks for no microphone and no camera access, and never requests your location, contacts, calendar or health data.

Who else is involved

• Apple — holds the iCloud backup described above, in storage that belongs to you, and handles the payment if you buy Terrarium+.
• Google — Firebase Analytics and Crashlytics, described above.
• RevenueCat — tells the app whether you have bought Terrarium+. It receives an anonymous identifier and the store receipt. It never receives your journal, and we never see your card details: the payment itself is handled entirely by Apple or Google.
• Expo — the app checks for over-the-air updates. That request carries the app version and platform, not your data.

There is no advertising in the app and no ad network in it. Nothing about you is sold or shared for marketing.

Keeping and deleting

Your journal is kept for exactly as long as you keep it. Deleting an entry deletes it. Deleting the app removes everything it stored on that device.

An iCloud backup outlives a deleted app. Remove it through iOS as described above.

Analytics and crash data sit with Firebase under Google's retention settings. Because they carry no name or contact details, we cannot pick one device's events out of them on request — there is nothing in them that identifies you to us.

Children

Mind Terrarium is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. If a child has been using the app, what it stores sits on that device: deleting the app removes it, and there is no account for anyone to close. If iCloud backup was turned on, that copy sits in the Apple Account it was made with until it's removed separately — see Keeping and deleting above.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export or delete personal information a company holds about you. The honest position here is that we hold almost nothing to act on — no account, no server, no copy of your journal.

Your journal is already in your hands: readable in the app, exportable from Settings. If you email us, we keep that correspondence to answer you and for nothing else. Write to support@mind-terrarium.com with any request and we will do what we genuinely can.

This website

This site sets no cookies, runs no analytics and loads nothing from a third party. The typeface, the images and the scripts are all served from this domain. Our host keeps ordinary web-server logs, including IP addresses, to serve the pages and defend against abuse.

Changes

If the app's handling of your data changes, this page changes with it and the date at the top moves. Material changes will be flagged in the app as well.

Contact

Mind Terrarium is made by Will Sutherland, a sole developer in Alberta, Canada. Chilly Dawg Studios is a brand name, not a company.

Questions about this policy: support@mind-terrarium.com.