Why our apps never ask you to make an account

Open any of our apps for the first time and you will not see a sign-up screen. There is no email to confirm, no password to invent and no “continue with” button. You go straight to the thing the app does. This is a deliberate choice, and it shapes how every app we make stores your data. Here is why we made it, what it means in practice, and how to keep your data safe and take it with you.

What an account costs you

An account looks free, but you pay for it in a few ways. The first is time. A sign-up screen stands between you and the reason you downloaded the app, and for a small tool that fixes one problem, that screen is often longer than the job itself.

The second is another password to keep track of. Every account you make is one more set of details that can be reused, forgotten or exposed. If you have never checked, the free service Have I Been Pwned lets you search for your email address in known data breaches and see which old sign-ups have been exposed.

The third cost is the one you cannot see: your data now lives on someone else's server. That server has to be secured, paid for and kept running for as long as the company exists. If the company is sold, changes its terms or shuts down, your data goes with it.

What we do instead

Our apps store what you make on your iPhone, in the app's own storage. Invoices, recipes, tasks, tones and settings stay on the device you made them on. We do not run a server that holds them, so there is no copy of your data for us to read, lose or sell.

iOS is built for this. Apple's platform security guide explains that all third-party apps are sandboxed: each app gets its own home directory, and one app cannot read another app's files. On top of that, iPhone's Data Protection gives every file its own encryption key and encrypts it as it is written to storage. Your data is kept separate and encrypted without you having to do anything.

Not every byte stays on the phone, and we would rather say so plainly. Apple handles every purchase, and some apps use a service called RevenueCat to confirm that a purchase is active. Each app's privacy policy, on its own website, lists exactly what it stores and which outside services it talks to. You can find every app and its site on our apps page.

What you give up, and how to cover it

An account usually gives you two things: sync between devices and a copy of your data if your phone is lost. Without one, you need another way to get the second. The good news is that your iPhone already has one.

iCloud Backup makes a copy of the information on your device, and Apple states that it “includes app data for the apps that you've downloaded on your device.” That means the data stored inside our apps is part of your regular backup. To check that iCloud Backup is on, open Settings, tap your name, tap iCloud, then tap iCloud Backup. A backup to your computer works too.

The one thing to remember: deleting an app deletes the data it stored on your phone. If you want to start over, that is the quickest way. If you do not, keep the app installed or make sure you have a recent backup first.

Moving to a new iPhone

When you set up a new iPhone, you can bring everything across in one go. Quick Start transfers data directly from your old iPhone to the new one when you hold them near each other, and Apple's setup also lets you restore from an iCloud or computer backup. Either way, the app data comes with it, so our apps open on the new phone with your data in place.

Your purchases follow your Apple Account, not an account with us. Subscriptions and one-time unlocks you bought on your old phone can be restored on the new one from inside the app, as long as you use the same Apple Account.

Taking your data somewhere else

Data that lives on your phone should also be easy to take out. Where it makes sense, our apps hand your work back to you in a standard format. Paper Invoice, for example, turns every invoice into a PDF that you can send by email, Messages or AirDrop, or keep in your email or files. Recipe Keeper, coming soon, lets you export your whole recipe collection at any time, so the recipes you saved are never locked inside the app.

What this means for you

• You can start using any of our apps the moment it opens.
• There is no password of ours to remember and no account of ours that can be breached.
• Your data sits on your iPhone, sandboxed and encrypted by iOS, and is included in your backups.
• Moving to a new iPhone with Quick Start or a backup brings your data with you.
• Subscriptions and unlocks belong to your Apple Account and can be restored on a new phone.

We think this is how small, focused apps should work. You came for the result, not for a relationship with our servers. If you have a question about how a specific app handles your data, its privacy policy has the details, and you can always write to us.