Last updated: 3 September 2026
The short version
Pausely has no account, no analytics, no advertising and no third-party code of any kind. With the AI reflection switched off — which is how every install starts — it makes no network calls at all, and everything it knows is written to your device and stays there.
Switching the AI reflection on is the one thing that changes that, and it changes only one thing: the words you type into that one pause leave your device, together with four small facts about the moment. Your journal never leaves. Your check-ins never leave. Which apps you chose never leaves — Pausely cannot read that even on your own device.
This policy applies to the Pausely app for iPhone and iPad, published by TOPSOL, and to this website. It says the same thing as the privacy label on Pausely's App Store page: User content, not linked to your identity, used only to make the app work — and no tracking. That single label exists because of the AI reflection; every other category is Data Not Collected.
What we collect
"Collect", in Apple's sense and in ours, means transmitting data off the device and keeping it somewhere that is not transient. By that measure Pausely collects one thing, in one case, and only if you asked for it.
| Category | Collected? | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Contact info | No | There is no account, no sign-in and no email field anywhere in the app. |
| Identifiers | No | No user ID, no device ID, no advertising identifier. Pausely never asks for App Tracking Transparency because it has nothing to ask about. |
| Usage data | No | No analytics SDK and no product-interaction events. Nothing is counted anywhere except on your device, for your own progress screen. |
| User content | Only the AI reflection | Your journal, your check-ins and your custom alternatives are stored on the device and nowhere else. If — and only if — you switch the AI reflection on, the words you type into that one screen are sent, so that a question can come back. Nothing else you write is ever sent. |
| Purchases | No | Payment is Apple's, in the App Store sheet. Pausely never sees a card and sends nothing about the purchase anywhere. |
| Location, health, contacts, browsing, search, diagnostics | No | Pausely does not link the frameworks that would read them and has no crash or performance reporter of its own. |
Tracking: none. Pausely does not link anything about you with data from other companies' apps or websites, and shares nothing with data brokers or advertisers. There is no advertising in the app and no SDK that could carry any.
What stays on your device
Pausely stores the following in its own private storage on your iPhone or iPad, protected by your device's passcode and encryption. None of it is uploaded, backed up by us, or visible to us.
- Your app selection — as opaque Screen Time tokens Pausely cannot read (see below).
- Your rules and schedules — the names you give them, their hours and their pause.
- Pause outcomes — that a pause was shown, when, and whether you walked away, went in, or chose an alternative. This is what the progress screen, the streak and the chart are made of.
- What you write — journal entries, the words you type on the pause screen, mood check-ins after a session, and the names of custom alternatives.
- Settings — your chosen pause, strict-mode state, alternatives, your language, and preferences.
- Your Premium entitlement — a tier and an expiry date, so the app knows what to unlock.
If you use iCloud Backup or an encrypted local backup, Apple may include Pausely's data in that backup under your own Apple ID and Apple's privacy terms. We have no access to it.
Screen Time and your app selection
Pausely is built on Apple's Screen Time framework (Family Controls, Managed Settings and Device Activity). You grant it access once, through Apple's own prompt, and can revoke it at any time in Settings → Screen Time.
When you pick apps, Apple's picker returns tokens: values that identify the app to iOS but mean nothing to Pausely and nothing outside your device. Pausely stores those tokens so it can ask iOS to shield the apps you chose. It never receives a bundle identifier or an app name, and it could not report one if it wanted to. Where it needs to compare tokens between its own components it compares one-way hashes of them, never the tokens themselves.
Pausely does not observe your browsing, your messages, or what you do inside any app. iOS itself draws the block screen and enforces the shield. Pausely learns only that its own pause was shown and what you chose on it.
The AI reflection — the one thing that leaves
This is an optional Premium feature. It is off when you install Pausely and stays off until you switch it on, and switching it off again returns the app to making no network calls at all.
With it on, one pause becomes a short exchange: you type why you are opening the app, and a question comes back rather than a lecture. Once a week it also writes a short note about how your week went.
What is sent
- The display name of the app you are opening — the name already on your screen at that moment.
- Three numbers: how many times you have opened it today, the time on the clock, and how long your streak is.
- The words you type into that screen, in that moment.
The weekly note sends less: counts for the week and nothing else. No app names appear in it at all.
What is never sent
- Your journal. It is the one place you write for nobody, and it never leaves the device.
- Your check-ins, moods, or any note attached to them.
- Your app selection — which apps you protect, or how many — and never a Screen Time token, a token hash or a bundle identifier.
- Your rules, schedules or strict-mode state.
- Anything that identifies you. There is no account, no user ID and no advertising identifier to send. The request carries an Apple App Attest assertion, which tells our server that it is talking to a genuine copy of Pausely — it is scoped to the app, not to you, and does not follow you between requests.
Where it goes, and how long it is kept
Your words go to Pausely's own server, and on to Google, which runs the model. Pausely never calls a model vendor's API from your device, and there is no API key inside the app to be extracted.
Pausely's server stores nothing per request — no prompt, no reply, no context. Its logs record the shape of a request (a timestamp, how long it took, whether it succeeded) and never its contents. Google keeps inputs and outputs for up to 24 hours to reduce latency, and may examine prompts to check for abuse, under its standard Cloud terms. Google does not use any of it to train its models.
Settings → AI reflection → What is sent lists every field in the app itself, in the same words as this page.
Purchases
Premium is sold through Apple's App Store using StoreKit. The transaction is between you and Apple, under Apple's privacy policy. Apple tells Pausely whether a purchase is active — nothing else — and Pausely tells Apple nothing about how you use the app. No usage data, no journal, no app selection and no identifier of ours travels with a purchase.
Notifications, widgets and the Lock Screen
Notifications are optional and are generated on your device. Pausely uses them to hand you from the block screen into the pause, and to ask afterwards how a session left you feeling. No notification is sent from a server — there is no push server, no tips, no streak nudges and no marketing.
Widgets and the Live Activity show counts and dates — today's wins, your streak, time reclaimed, and how long an access window has left. They deliberately do not have Screen Time access and never see which apps you blocked. A Lock Screen countdown names the rule you wrote ("Bedtime"), never the app, because a Lock Screen is readable by anyone holding the device.
Third parties
Pausely contains no third-party code: no analytics, no advertising, no crash reporter, no SDKs. Two other parties are involved, and only these two:
- Apple operates the App Store, processes purchases, enforces the Screen Time shield, and — if you have opted in to sharing with developers — may share crash logs with us under its own policy.
- Google runs the model behind the AI reflection, and only for as long as you have that feature switched on. It receives what is listed above and nothing else, and it does not use it to train its models.
We do not sell or rent personal data to anyone, and we share nothing with data brokers or advertisers.
Deleting your data
Everything Pausely holds is erasable from inside the app, without asking us:
Empties every pause, win, rule, journal entry and check-in, takes the shields down, withdraws the schedules and starts you at the beginning. It refuses while strict mode is running — the one commitment you asked the app to hold you to — and it does not touch your subscription, which belongs to your Apple ID.
Deleting the app removes all of its data from the device as well. On our side there is nothing to delete: the server keeps no record of a request once it has answered it. You are welcome to write to us anyway — see the Your data page.
Your rights
Wherever you live — including under the GDPR, the UK GDPR and the CCPA/CPRA — you have rights to access, correct, export, restrict and erase personal data a company holds about you, and to complain to a supervisory authority. Pausely holds no profile of you and keeps nothing after a reflection is answered, so there is nothing on our side to produce or delete; the data on your device is already in your hands, and the app's own controls exercise every one of those rights for you. If you believe otherwise, write to topsol.org@gmail.com and we will respond.
Children
Pausely is a self-directed tool for the person using the device. It is not a parental-control product and does not manage another person's device. It is not directed at children under 13 (or the age of digital consent where you live), and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone — of any age.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as the app changes. The date at the top moves when we do, and material changes will be noted in the app's release notes. The last substantive change was the arrival of the AI reflection, which added the one case in which anything leaves your device. Continued use of Pausely after a change means you accept the revised policy.
Contact
TOPSOL, the publisher of Pausely, is the controller for anything covered here. Questions about privacy: topsol.org@gmail.com.