privacy

last updated 23 october 2026

your journal is saved on your phone. there’s no account, no analytics, and no ads. sharing a project with other people is optional. while a project is shared, the anyways server stores its title, an optional description, your display names, the note, next step, and photo from each person’s latest checkpoint and from every checkpoint saved on it after it was shared, any progress you choose to share, an optional shared goal, and an optional card background. if you buy a plan, apple or google takes the payment and revenuecat keeps the subscription record under a random id.

on your phone

projects, checkpoints (last note, next step, and photo), goals, milestones, streaks, reminders, and card backgrounds are saved by anyways on your phone. they aren’t uploaded to us, except what a shared project sends (below), and there’s no cloud sync. if you back up your phone with icloud, google, or a computer, those backups can include anyways data, under apple’s or google’s terms.

photos

photos you add are copied into anyways, resized to at most 1,600 pixels on the long edge, and saved without their location or camera details. if a project is shared, the photo from its latest checkpoint, and from each checkpoint you save on it while it’s shared, is also sent to the anyways server (see below).

widgets and apple watch

anyways widgets read your projects on your phone. on iphone, if you install the apple watch app, your active projects and short excerpts of their latest checkpoints are sent to your paired watch, without photos.

reminders

“pick this up when?” schedules one notification on your phone. your phone delivers it; nothing is sent to us.

sharing a project (optional)

you can invite people to share a project. depending on the host’s plan, it holds up to 2, 5, 10, or 30 people including the host, or up to 3, 6, 12, or 110 with extra seats. nothing is shared until an invite is created, and nobody can join without a link. once you’re in, anyways automatically shares the note, next step, and photo of your latest checkpoint on that project and keeps them up to date. each checkpoint you save on it from then on is also added to the project’s shared timeline. your earlier checkpoints and their photos are never sent. the anyways server stores:

• the project title, which can’t be renamed while the project is shared.
• an optional description, up to 2,000 characters. anyone in the project can edit it.
• each person’s display name, up to 40 characters.
• the note (up to 8,000 characters) and next step (up to 2,000 characters) from each person’s latest checkpoint.
• the shared timeline: for each checkpoint saved on the project while it’s shared, who saved it, its note and next step, its photo if it has one, when it was saved, and when it was shared. there’s no age or count limit; an entry stays until its author leaves or the host stops sharing.
• the photos from those checkpoints. the server re-saves each one as a jpeg that fits within 1,600 × 1,600 pixels and removes its location and all other metadata. only the people in the shared project can view them; there are no public links. a photo is deleted once no latest checkpoint or timeline entry uses it.
• up to two photos uploaded for checkpoints that haven’t finished saving, and up to two card backgrounds that haven’t been applied yet. only you can view them, and they’re deleted when you remove them, stop sharing, or leave.
• each person’s progress, if they share it.
• an optional shared count goal (a title, a total, and a unit) and how much each person has counted toward it. anyone in the project can change or remove the goal; removing it clears everyone’s counts.
• an optional card background: a photo or gif, how it’s cropped and dimmed, and its text color. anyone in the project can set, change, or remove it, and only the people in the project can view it. the server re-saves it within 1,600 × 1,600 pixels and removes its metadata; a gif keeps its frames and timing. replacing or removing it deletes the old image, and past backgrounds aren’t kept.
• random ids, timestamps, timeline order numbers, and hashed keys and invites that keep the shared project working.
• for a paid hosting plan: the plan, its limits, its status and when it was last checked, a reference to the revenuecat customer, and the people who can host with it. someone who joins another person’s plan to host can add an optional display name (up to 40 characters), which isn’t sent to revenuecat.

• what’s never shared: checkpoints from before you shared or joined, other than the latest one, and their photos; your project’s own goal; and your other projects.
• there are no accounts. each phone gets a random key for that shared project. we don’t ask for an email address, phone number, or sign-in.
• each invite link works once. the first person to use it joins, so send it only to the person you mean.
• on pairing, group, and club, up to 2, 5, or 10 people share one subscription (3, 6, or 12 with extra seats), and each of them can host their own shared projects. on club plus, up to 5 people can host, or 9 with extra packs. each host’s shared projects stay separate, and the person who pays manages who’s on the plan but can’t see anyone else’s projects, notes, or photos.
• if a hosting plan lapses or is downgraded, or a host is removed, people in the project can still read what’s already shared, timeline and photos included, but new changes and joins pause until hosting is active again. after a downgrade, the person who pays and the longest-standing hosts keep hosting up to the new limit. nobody is removed from a project and nothing is deleted.
• the host can stop sharing at any time. that clears the title, description, names, notes, next steps, the timeline, photos, progress, the shared goal, and the card background, and ends it for everyone. anyone else can leave, which clears their name, their latest checkpoint and timeline entries, all their photos, their progress, and their count. everyone else’s entries, the description, the goal, and the current card background stay, even if the person leaving added that background.
• after a shared project ends, or someone leaves, the server keeps only random ids, hashes of keys, images, and timeline entries, image dimensions, frame counts, and file sizes, timeline order numbers, timestamps, an ended flag, and the plan and host records, so old invites, images, and entries can’t be reused. a replaced photo or background keeps the same kind of record, without the image. cleared details, images included, can linger in database files and server backups until they’re overwritten or expire.
• to limit abuse, the server keeps short-lived request counters, which may be keyed to a hash of your ip address. they expire within an hour. raw ip addresses and browser details aren’t stored with shared projects.
• deleting anyways from your phone doesn’t end a shared project. stop sharing or leave first if you want its shared data cleared.

purchases

paid plans are sold through the app store on iphone and google play on android. apple or google takes the payment; we never see your card details.

anyways uses revenuecat to manage subscriptions. when you buy or restore a plan, the app sends revenuecat the store’s transaction details, the product, purchase and expiry dates, and basic device and store information. they are filed under a random id made from a private key kept in your phone’s secure storage. revenuecat doesn’t receive your name, email address, journal, or photos. it stores this data in the united states, and its privacy policy covers how long it keeps it.

the anyways server asks revenuecat whether a hosting plan is active and keeps the plan, its status and limits, and the related ids. when revenuecat tells the server about a change, the server keeps only that event’s id and time, for 90 days. if you restore purchases on another phone, the subscription moves to that phone’s id.

analytics and ads

anyways has no analytics, advertising, or tracking. revenuecat records are used only to run subscriptions. if you’ve allowed your phone to share diagnostics with app developers, apple or google may pass crash reports and usage statistics to us. on iphone, you can turn that off in settings › privacy & security › analytics & improvements; on android, in google’s usage & diagnostics setting.

this website

soanyways.app doesn’t use cookies, analytics, or trackers. like most websites, its hosting may keep standard access logs, such as ip address, time, and the address requested (invite links included), for security and operations. invite pages ask search engines not to index them.

your choices

• export a backup from settings at any time. you choose where the file goes.
• deleting anyways deletes the data it keeps on your phone.
• cancel a plan in your apple account settings or in google play subscriptions.
• stop sharing or leave a shared project whenever you like.

changes

if this policy changes, this page and the date at the top will change with it.

contact

email hey@ryanaque.com.