Privacy Policy

Aurelius is a home screen that helps you use your phone less. Collecting data about you would go against that, and I have no interest in doing it. That is why Aurelius has no analytics, no advertising, no tracking and no user account, and why almost everything you put into it stays on your phone.

This policy explains, honestly and in full, the few cases in which data does leave your phone, what it is used for, and how long it is kept.

1. Who is responsible

Aurelius Launcher is developed by Stepan Sonsky, an individual developer based in the Czech Republic, who is the controller of the personal data described here. You can reach me at s****ns****y@gmail.com (my first name and surname written together) with any question about this policy or your data.

2. What stays on your phone

Everything you create in Aurelius is stored only in the app's private storage on your phone: thoughts, tasks, comments, attached photos, contacts linked to thoughts, habits and their history, the wheel of life, gratitude notes, your Memento mori profile and the lifestyle questions behind your lifespan estimate, your day rhythm, settings, and the list of apps you open through Aurelius. Your lifespan estimate is calculated on the phone too, and so is the automatic sorting of thoughts into compartments.

Aurelius switches off Android's automatic cloud backup, so this data is not copied to any cloud either. You can delete it at any time inside the app, by clearing the app's storage, or by uninstalling the app.

Permissions

Aurelius asks only for what its features need, and uses everything it reads on the phone:

• Calendar (read only): shows your events in the agenda.
• Contacts: lets you search contacts from the home screen, attach a contact to a thought, and recognise a person the Sage mentions when it saves a thought for you. The match is made on your phone; contacts are never sent anywhere.
• Microphone: lets you speak to the Sage or dictate a thought. See Speech recognition.
• Do Not Disturb access: turns on Do Not Disturb during focus and mindfulness.
• Display over other apps: shows the calming screen at bedtime and during mindfulness.
• Request to uninstall apps: lets you uninstall an app from the home screen. Android always asks you to confirm.
• Internet: used only for the cases described below.

Aurelius does not use your location, does not read your photo library (you pick individual photos, or take one with your camera app), does not read your notifications, and does not collect app usage statistics.

3. Crash reports

To find and fix crashes and keep improving the app's quality, Aurelius uses Firebase Crashlytics, a service from Google. That is its only purpose: no analytics, no profiling, no advertising.

When the app crashes or freezes, or when certain errors occur, it sends a technical report containing:

• where in the code the error happened (stack trace) and the error type;
• the phone model, Android version, free memory and storage, and the app version;
• which screen was open and the names of the last few actions in the app (for example "opened settings"), never their content;
• random identifiers of the app installation, created by Firebase, which let me tell whether a crash affects one phone or many.

Crashlytics also notes when the app starts, so that it can tell what share of sessions end without a crash.

Reports are built so that they contain nothing you have written or saved: no thoughts, no conversations with the Sage, no contacts, no names of apps. Aurelius never attaches your name, e-mail or account to a report, so a report does not tell me who you are. As with any internet connection, Google processes your device's IP address to receive the report.

Google keeps crash reports for 90 days. The legal basis is my legitimate interest in a stable, working app (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can object to this processing at any time by writing to me.

4. The Sage

The Sage is the app's Stoic guide you can talk to. It is powered by Claude Haiku 5.5, a language model made by Anthropic. Your conversation and a short summary of your situation are sent only when you write to the Sage, never in the background. The Sage is for people aged 18 and over (see section 11) and opens only after you agree to its own terms.

Those terms describe in full what the Sage receives and never receives, how a message travels to Anthropic and how long anything is kept, your explicit consent for information about your health, and how to withdraw it: The Sage: terms and privacy.

Speech recognition

When you speak to the Sage or dictate a thought (also on your watch), your voice is turned into text by your device's speech recognition service, usually Google's. Depending on your phone and its settings, Google may process the audio on its servers under its own privacy policy. Aurelius receives only the resulting text and never records or stores audio.

5. Device identity and fair use

The Sage has a weekly allowance of questions, and the server needs to tell devices apart without knowing who you are. When you first use the Sage, the app creates a cryptographic key in your phone's secure hardware. It sends my server the public part of the key, along with a certificate from Android confirming that the key is protected by that hardware and belongs to a genuine copy of Aurelius. The certificate contains technical information such as the Android version and security state, but no hardware identifiers such as IMEI or serial number.

The server stores:

• the public key and its random identifier, the registration date, and the certificate with the result of its check, for as long as the Sage service is provided;
• the number of questions used this week, deleted after 14 days;
• your IP address, only to limit how many devices can be registered from one address per day, deleted within 48 hours.

None of this contains your name, e-mail, Google account or phone number. The legal basis is my legitimate interest in protecting the service from abuse and keeping it affordable (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

6. Purchases

Subscriptions and purchases are processed by Google Play under Google's terms. I never receive your payment details, name or e-mail.

To unlock what you bought, the app sends my server the product and the purchase token issued by Google Play. The server confirms it with Google Play and stores the product, the token, its status and expiry, and the identifiers of up to five of your devices that share the purchase. If you buy a subscription, your device registers with the server as described in section 5, even if you never open the Sage. I keep this record for as long as the purchase is valid and as long as needed to handle refunds and legal obligations. The legal basis is providing what you paid for (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).

7. Your watch

The Wear OS app sends thoughts you dictate on the watch to your phone, and your habits travel between the phone and the watch. This happens over Google Play services' connection between your own devices. None of it reaches me.

8. Other apps

When you tap a link, an address, a meeting link, a phone number or a store page, Aurelius opens it in another app, which is governed by that app's privacy policy. If you use Pastelize, Aurelius can turn its colour muting on and off; only that on/off setting is exchanged.

9. Who processes data for me

I do not sell your data, share it for advertising or pass it to anyone else. These providers process data on my behalf, only for the purposes above:

• Google: crash reports (Firebase Crashlytics) and purchases (Google Play). Privacy policy
• Cloudflare: runs the server that relays the Sage. Privacy policy
• Anthropic: the Claude model behind the Sage. Privacy policy

These companies are based in the United States. Transfers of data outside the European Economic Area are protected by the European Commission's standard contractual clauses or the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.

10. Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to access your data, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict its processing, to data portability, to object to processing based on legitimate interest, and to withdraw consent at any time. You can also lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority; in the Czech Republic that is the Office for Personal Data Protection (Úřad pro ochranu osobních údajů, Pplk. Sochora 27, 170 00 Praha 7).

Most of your data is on your phone, where you can view and delete it yourself. For anything held on my server, write to s****ns****y@gmail.com. Because the server does not know who you are, I may need your help to find the right record.

11. Children and teenagers

Aurelius is intended for people aged 13 and over. The Sage is available only from 18: you confirm it when you agree to its terms, and if the year of birth in your Memento mori profile says you are younger, the app keeps the Sage closed. I do not knowingly process data of children under 13.

12. Changes to this policy

If the way Aurelius handles data changes, I will update this page and the date at the top. Important changes will also be announced in the app.