Privacy Policy

Information We Collect

The App does not require an account, email address, or any sign-in to use any of its features.

• A first name, if you give one: when you first open the App it asks what you would like to be called, and you can decline. If you give a name it is stored on your device and used to write your name on a few screens and on your daily verse. It is never sent to us or to anyone else, and deleting the App deletes it. (A reading partner, below, is asked for a first name separately, and that one is sent.)
• Anonymous device identifier: a random identifier generated on your device the first time you open the App. It is not linked to your real-world identity, is not derived from your device hardware, and is used for these things: keeping track of whether you have an active subscription, joining up the usage information described below so that we can tell one person’s path through the opening screens from another’s, and, if you arrived from an advertisement, joining your subscription up with the fact that an advertisement was what brought you, and, if you pair with a reading partner, keeping your partnership apart from everyone else’s.
• Subscription information: if you subscribe, the purchase is processed by Apple. We use RevenueCat to check whether a subscription is active, and RevenueCat receives the IP address of your device when the App contacts it and the identifier Apple gives our apps on your device (Apple’s “identifier for vendor”, which is not the advertising identifier and resets when our apps are deleted from the device). We never receive or store your payment card details; Apple handles those. When you start a free trial or a subscription begins, we report that it happened — which plan, the amount, the country the purchase was made in, an IP address the App connected from, and that identifier for vendor — to Singular, the advertising measurement provider described in the next bullet, against the same random identifier.
• How far you get through the opening screens: when you first open the App it shows a short sequence of screens ending with the subscription screen. The App records which of those screens you reached, in what order, how long it took, whether you allowed notifications, and whether you started a free trial or closed the screen without subscribing. This is sent to PostHog, an analytics provider, along with the random identifier above and the App’s version number. We use it for one thing: to see which screen people stop at, so we can fix it. It does not include your answers to the questions we ask, the number of hours you tell us about, or the name you typed. For the questions, we record only that you answered one — not which answer you chose.
• A recording of the opening screens, if you are shown them: while you are going through those first screens, the App records a masked screen recording so we can see where people get stuck. All text and images are blanked out — including anything you type — so it shows the shape of the screen and where you tapped, not what it said or what you wrote. It stops for good the moment you reach the verse feed and never runs again on that device. The Bible feed itself is never recorded.
• Which verses are opened: when you open the study notes for a verse, your device asks our server for that range of verse numbers. The request carries no identifier, and our server records only a count of how many times each verse has been asked for, so we know which parts of the Bible to write notes for next. That count cannot be traced to a person or a device.
• If you pair with a reading partner: the App lets you invite one person to read alongside you, and nothing in this paragraph happens unless you do. While you are paired, the App sends our server, with the random identifier above: whether you have read each day, your current streak, the book and chapter you are in (never how long you read), your device’s time zone so that reminders arrive at a sensible hour, and a first name if you choose to give one. Your partner sees that name, your streak, whether you have read today and your book and chapter, and you see the same about them. If you put a name on an invitation, anyone who opens that invitation’s link sees the name. The person who accepts your invitation is given a one-time App Store offer code for a free month.
• Whether an advertisement brought you here: we run advertisements for the App, and we need to know which of them work. The App uses Singular, an advertising measurement provider, which records that the App was installed and opened on a device, along with the random identifier above, the App’s version, and ordinary technical details of the device itself — its model, its iOS version, its language and country, its IP address, and the identifier for vendor described above. Together with Apple’s own SKAdNetwork system, this lets us tell that an advertisement led to an install without either us or the advertising network learning who you are.

What We Do Not Collect

We do not receive the name you type into the App when it first opens, your answers to the questions in the opening screens, or the number of hours you enter there. A first name you give a reading partner is different, and is sent as described above. We do not ask for your phone number, contacts, photos, location, or any health or biometric information, and we never collect them. There is no way for you to send us content from inside the App: the App has no message box, and its Support link opens a page on our website. We do not have your email address unless you write to us and give it — see “Writing to Us” below.

The App never shows you the “Allow tracking” prompt, so Apple never gives it your device’s advertising identifier and we have never had one. We do not follow you across other apps or websites, we do not build a profile of you, and we do not combine anything from the App with information about you from anywhere else. The advertising measurement described above works the other way round: it tells us that one more person who saw an advertisement installed the App, not which person you are.

Writing to Us

The support page on our website has a form. It is the only place in anything we run where you can send us words, and using it is entirely your choice — the email address printed next to it does exactly the same thing.

What you type is put into an email and delivered to our support mailbox, and that is the whole of it: it is not saved to a database, not added to any profile, and not used for marketing. The email address you give is attached as the reply address so that a person can answer you, and it is used for nothing else. Our email provider (Resend, in the United States) carries the message on our behalf and does not use it for anything of its own. The message then lives in our mailbox for as long as the correspondence is useful, in the same way any email you send anyone does.

The form is on the website, not in the App. Nothing you read, and no identifier the App holds, is attached to what you send — the page has no way to see any of it. Please do not include health information, payment details, or passwords in a support message; we never need them.

Notifications

If you allow it, the App can send you a verse once a day at a time you choose, a reminder a day before a free trial ends so that you are never charged by surprise, and, if you leave the App at the subscription screen without subscribing, up to two reminders over the following three days. All of them are scheduled by the App on your own device, from verses that ship inside it, and no server is involved in making them happen. If you open one, the App records that it was opened, in the same way it records any other screen you open (see Information We Collect above). You can turn them off at any time in your device’s Settings.

If you allow notifications, the App also sends our server a push token — a random address that Apple and Expo issue for delivering notifications to your device — together with the random identifier above, the App’s version and the hour you chose for your daily verse, so that we can send you a single message if you cancel a free trial early. That message is delivered through Expo’s push service; we record that it was sent and, if you open it, that it was opened, and the token is deleted from our server if it stops working.

If you pair with a reading partner, our server also uses that push token to send you a few notifications about the partnership: when your partner joins; when your partner has read today and you have not yet, no earlier than the hour you chose for your daily verse; the day after a shared streak ends; and if your partner ends the partnership. At most one partner reminder is sent on any day. We record that each was sent and, if you open it, that it was opened.

Sharing a Verse, and Our Website

When you share a verse card, the App hands the image and a link to your device’s own share sheet, and you choose where it goes. The App does not tell us that you shared anything, does not tell us who you shared it with, and sends nothing to our server at that moment.

The link points at a page on our website that shows that verse. Like any website, our server receives the ordinary technical details of a request when someone opens one of these pages or when a messaging app fetches a preview of it: an IP address, the type of browser, and which page was asked for. This is handled by our hosting provider, Vercel, is used only to serve the page and to keep the service working, and is not combined with anything from the App. The pages are the same for everyone, carry no advertising or analytics scripts, and set no cookies. People who open these links are usually not App users, and we have no way to connect a visit to a person who is.

How AI Is Used

The study notes in the App are written in advance by an artificial intelligence model (from Anthropic) reading the scripture passage itself, reviewed against a fixed set of quality and accuracy rules, and stored on our server before anyone opens them. Nothing about you is sent to an AI provider, because there is nothing about you to send: the model sees a Bible verse, not a person.

When you are the first person ever to open a verse that has no notes yet, your device asks our server to write them, and the server sends that verse’s scripture text to the AI provider. Again, this is the verse, not you — the request carries no identifier of any kind.

The notes are commentary produced by a model. They are intended to explain scripture in plain English. They are not the voice of God, not authoritative teaching, and can be mistaken.

Where Your Reading Stays

The Bible itself ships inside the App and is read from your device, so scrolling, reading, your position in the text, your answers to the opening questions, and the name you chose never leave your phone. Your reading position and streak stay there too, unless you pair with a partner, in which case your daily read status and current chapter are shared with that one person and stored on our server. What we receive about the opening screens is that you reached them, not what you said on them, and the masked recording described above stops before the feed begins. Study notes you have opened are cached on your device so they work offline. Deleting the App deletes all of it.

Data Sharing

We do not sell your information, and we do not share it for advertising. If you pair with a reading partner, what is described above is shared with that one person, because you asked for it. The service providers involved in running the App are Apple (payments and app distribution), RevenueCat (subscription status), PostHog (the opening-screen usage described above), Singular (advertising measurement, described above), Anthropic (the AI that writes the study notes), and our hosting and database providers (Vercel and Neon). We may disclose information if required by law.

Data Retention

Subscription status is kept for as long as your subscription is active and as required for accounting and Apple’s records. The record of which opening screens you reached is kept for up to two years, after which it is deleted; it exists to compare one version of those screens against the next, and it stops being useful long before that. The masked recordings of those screens are kept for no more than 30 days and are then deleted automatically. Verse request counts are aggregate numbers with no identifier attached and are kept indefinitely to decide which parts of the Bible to write next.

If you pair with a reading partner, your daily read status, streak, chapter, time zone and partner name are kept only while the partnership lasts. They are deleted when either of you ends it, or after 30 days in which one of you has not opened the App. An invitation nobody accepts is closed after 30 days. What remains of an ended partnership is a record that two random identifiers were paired and when, with nothing about either reader.

Children

The App is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Apart from a first name given to a reading partner, nothing anyone types into the App is sent to us, so there is usually nothing about a child for us to delete — but if you believe a child has provided us information, contact us and we will act on it.

Your Choices

You can stop all data collection by deleting the App. You can manage or cancel your subscription at any time in your Apple account settings. To ask what we hold about you, or to ask us to delete it, email us at the address below — note that without an account there is usually nothing to look up.

Changes

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of this page and, where the change is significant, tell you in the App.

Contact

Write to us through the form at scrolls.bible/support. A real person reads everything and replies.