Privacy Policy

smart nudges for iPhone and iPad · Effective 1 October 2026

smart nudges is designed so that your data stays yours. The app has no accounts of its own, no analytics, no advertising and no third-party tracking.

Tasks and notes

Your tasks, notes, tags, reminders and attachments are stored on your device. If iCloud sync is enabled in the app's settings, they are also stored in the private database of your iCloud account through Apple's CloudKit service, so that your own devices can share them. The developer has no access to this data.

Email import

If you connect a mailbox, smart nudges reads your inbox directly from your device. Only emails sent from your own address to your own address are turned into tasks: the subject becomes the title, the text becomes notes, and files attached to those emails are copied into the app's own storage as task files, the same way as files you attach to a task yourself. If iCloud sync is enabled, those files are also stored in the private database of your iCloud account. Small images that the message body embeds, such as signature logos, are skipped. smart nudges never marks, moves, deletes or sends emails, and no email content, address or credential is ever sent to the developer or to any server operated by the developer.

Gmail and Outlook. These mailboxes are connected by signing in with your Google or Microsoft account in a browser window. smart nudges only asks for read access (Google: gmail.readonly; Microsoft: Mail.Read and User.Read) and receives an access token, never your password. The token is stored in the iOS keychain on your device and, when iCloud Keychain is enabled in iOS, synchronised by Apple between your devices. Disconnecting the mailbox in smart nudges deletes the token; you can also revoke smart nudges' access at any time in your Google or Microsoft account settings.

iCloud Mail and other IMAP servers. These are read over an encrypted IMAP connection with your email address, server details and an app-specific password or password, stored in the iOS keychain in the same way.

Google API Services User Data Policy. smart nudges' use of information received from Gmail APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Gmail data is used only to show you the emails you sent to yourself as tasks inside smart nudges. It is not used for advertising, is never sold, is never transferred to humans or to other parties, and is never used to train models. Gmail data stays on your device and, if iCloud sync is enabled, in the private database of your iCloud account.

How your data is protected

In transit. Every request to the Gmail API is made over HTTPS with TLS. IMAP mailboxes are read over an implicitly TLS-encrypted connection; connections without TLS are refused.

Sign-in tokens and passwords. Google and Microsoft access tokens, and IMAP passwords, are stored in the iOS keychain as generic password items marked kSecAttrAccessibleWhenUnlocked, so they can only be read while the device is unlocked, and they are protected by the device's hardware-backed encryption. If you have iCloud Keychain enabled in iOS, Apple synchronises them between your own devices under Apple's end-to-end encryption. They are never written to a file, a log or a server.

Email content on the device. Tasks created from your email, their notes and any files that came from an attachment are written with iOS Data Protection at the completeUntilFirstUserAuthentication level, which means they are encrypted on disk with a key derived from your device passcode and are unreadable until the device has been unlocked after a restart. They live inside the app's own container, which iOS keeps isolated from other apps.

In iCloud. If you turn on iCloud sync, tasks are stored in the private database of your own iCloud account, encrypted and controlled by Apple under your Apple Account. The developer has no access to that database and no ability to read it.

No server. There is no backend. smart nudges talks to Google and to your mail server directly from your device, so no email content, address, token or password is ever transmitted to, processed by or stored on any system operated by the developer.

Duplicate-import records. To avoid importing the same message twice, the app stores a one-way SHA-256 hash of your address combined with the message's identifier. It holds no subject, no body and no address in readable form, and the original email cannot be reconstructed from it.

Retention and deletion of Google user data

Gmail data is kept only for as long as you keep the task made from it. There is no separate copy, archive or backup, and no retention period set by the developer, because no system operated by the developer ever holds the data.

• Delete a task and the title, notes and any files that came from the email are deleted from your device and, if iCloud sync is on, from your iCloud database.
• Disconnect the mailbox in Settings, Email import, Disconnect account, and the stored access token is deleted from the keychain immediately.
• Revoke access at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions, which ends the app's access to your Gmail account independently of the app.
• Delete the app and all Gmail-derived data held on the device, including the keychain items and the duplicate-import hashes, is removed with it.
• Delete your iCloud copy in the app, or through iCloud settings on your device, if you had sync enabled and want the cloud copy gone as well.

Because the developer holds none of your Google user data, there is nothing further to request the deletion of. If you have a question about this, write to hello@smart-nudges.net.

Contact form

If you write through the contact form on the support page, your email address and your message are transmitted to Form.taxi (Norman Bauer, Germany), which forwards them by email to smart nudges and acts as a processor under a data processing agreement. The provider also records technical data such as the time of the submission and the IP address in order to filter abuse. This data is used solely to answer your enquiry, on the basis of Art. 6 (1) (b) and (f) GDPR, and is deleted once the exchange is finished and no retention period requires otherwise. Writing directly to hello@smart-nudges.net avoids the form service entirely.

Reminders

Reminders are scheduled as local notifications on your device. No notification content leaves the device.

Purchases

The nudge pro subscription is handled entirely by Apple through the App Store. The app receives only a confirmation of the subscription status. It does not receive your name, address or payment details.

Photos and files

Photos or files you attach to a task are copied into the app's own storage and, if iCloud sync is on, into your private iCloud database. The app only accesses the items you pick.

Data you control

Deleting a task deletes it from your devices and your iCloud database. Turning iCloud sync off keeps data on the device only. Deleting the app removes all local data; your iCloud data stays until you delete it in the app or through iCloud settings.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes, the new version will be published on this page with an updated date. Questions can be raised at github.com/dsahm/nudge-site/issues.