Privacy Policy
App: Ultimate Diary Effective: 29 August 2026 Last updated: 16 October 2026
Ultimate Diary is run by an independent developer. You keep a diary in it, so this policy tries to be plain about what happens to what you write — including the parts that aren't flattering.
Contact: support@deardiarys.com
1. Where we stand
- No advertising, no profiling, and we never sell or share your personal information for marketing.
- No advertising or tracking SDKs, and no analytics of our own. The third-party libraries in the app are
supabase-swift, to reach our own servers, andswift-markdown-ui, which formats text on the device — neither collects anything — plus Google's Sign-In component, which runs only if you choose Sign in with Google and collects some information under Google's own policy (see §5). - We do not read the body of your entries. It is encrypted before it leaves your device and the database holds ciphertext — but the key is on our server too, so this is a promise rather than a technical impossibility (see §3).
- We collect only what running the app requires.
2. What we collect
2.1 What you give us
| Category | What it is | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Account | Email address, password, display name | Sign-up, sign-in, password reset, syncing across your devices |
| Sign in with Apple / Google | That account's unique identifier, its email address (or, if you chose to hide your email from Apple, the relay address Apple provides), and your name | Signing you in and recognising your account; the name becomes your default display name. We never receive your Apple ID or Google password, and access nothing else in that account |
| Entries | Titles, body text, tags, checklist items, photos | The app's core function |
| "Firsts" | Event name, date, place name, notes, photo | Same |
| To-dos | Project / milestone / task names, notes, dates, effort estimates | Same |
| Birthdays | Names and dates | Reminders |
| Countdowns | Event names and dates | Working out the days to or since each one |
| Calendar events | Title, start and end time, repeat rule | Scheduling |
| Sharing | Email addresses of people you invite | To share a book with them |
| Feedback | The text you write and the pictures you pick in Send Feedback, sent together with your account email, user ID, app version, iOS version, device model, app language, service region and whether you have Pro | Replying to you and tracking down problems. Feedback is emailed to support@deardiarys.com; its content is not stored in our database, which records only when and how often you sent feedback, to prevent abuse |
2.2 What we collect with your permission
| Category | When | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Location | You turn on auto-location for a book, or tap the locate button in a "first" | Labels the entry with a place, fetches local weather, and places a pin on your Footprints map |
| Photos | When you pick one | Read through the system picker, which hands us only the images you select. The app has no access to your library as a whole |
| Face ID / Touch ID | When you enable the app lock | Verified on the device only. We never receive or store biometric data |
| Notifications | When you set a reminder | Birthday, anniversary and calendar reminders |
2.3 What the system generates
- Sign-in times and account creation time
- Network request logs produced by our cloud providers, including IP address, kept for troubleshooting and abuse prevention
- Your language, text size, and region preferences — stored on the device only, never uploaded
2.4 What we never collect
Contacts, call history, messages, clipboard contents, advertising identifiers (IDFA), your list of installed apps, or sensor data. The app does not request background location.
3. Encryption: what is protected and what isn't
Please read this section. It determines what is safe to write where.
Encrypted:
- The body of an entry. Each book has its own AES-GCM key. The body is encrypted on your device before upload; the database stores ciphertext.
But note: that key is also kept on our server. That is what lets you decrypt your entries on a new phone, after a reinstall, or in a book shared with someone else. So the encryption protects the bodies against the database leaking or being browsed directly — not against us: we are technically able to decrypt them. We don't, and nothing automatically reads or analyses entry bodies. If you need encryption that even we cannot undo, this app does not offer it today; decide what to write accordingly.
Not encrypted — stored in plain text on the server:
- Entry titles
- Tags and checklist text
- Place names and coordinates
- Photos and their thumbnails
- Birthdays, calendar events, projects and tasks
- Your email address and display name
So: don't put in a title anything you would not want us to be able to see. If something is sensitive, write it in the body.
We restrict access to that plaintext data through access controls and least privilege, but we will not claim it is technically impossible for us to read it, because it isn't. That is a more useful thing to know than "bank-grade encryption".
Backups you make are plain text. The file from Backup & Export, and the Automatic iCloud Backup that Pro members can turn on, both write your entries out decrypted — so that your diary stays readable even if this app and our servers are gone. The automatic backup goes to your own iCloud Drive (the "Ultimate Diary" folder in the Files app), stored by Apple under your iCloud account; we cannot see or receive that copy. Keep it as carefully as the diary itself.
4. Where your data lives
Ultimate Diary runs two entirely separate deployments. Which one your device talks to depends on where you are:
| You are in | Data is stored in | Provider |
|---|---|---|
| Mainland China | Hong Kong SAR | A server we deploy and operate ourselves on Alibaba Cloud (Hong Kong region) |
| Everywhere else | United States (Oregon) | Supabase, running on Amazon Web Services |
The two hold separate accounts and separate data, with no synchronisation between them. An account created on one does not exist on the other.
For users in mainland China this means personal information is transferred out of the mainland to Hong Kong. That transfer, the recipient, its purpose, and your rights are described in the Chinese-language version of this policy, and your separate consent is requested in the app before it happens.
5. Who else sees your data
We do not sell personal information. This is the complete list of third parties that touch any of it:
| Third party | What reaches them | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase (users outside mainland China) | Account details, encrypted entry bodies, the remaining plaintext content | Database, authentication, file storage, realtime sync |
| Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong (mainland China users) | The same | The cloud host and network our own server runs on |
| Google Cloud (users outside mainland China) | A daily backup of the database (encrypted as a whole before upload, with a key only we hold) and backup copies of photos | Disaster recovery — restoring data if the server's copy is ever lost. Stored in the United States |
| Apple | Your subscription purchases; the coordinates sent for reverse geocoding and the address text sent for forward geocoding; if you use Sign in with Apple, the sign-in request itself | Processing in-app purchases; turning coordinates into place names and back; verifying who you are |
| Google (only if you choose Sign in with Google) | The sign-in request itself — Google learns that you signed in to this app. The Google Sign-In component built into the app also collects device identifiers and usage information, under Google's own privacy policy, for Google's analytics of its service (not for tracking you across apps) | Verifying who you are. Not offered to users in mainland China. The component only runs when you tap Sign in with Google |
| Resend | Your email address; feedback you send (text, pictures and the details sent with it) | Verification codes and password-reset emails; delivering feedback to our support mailbox |
| ImprovMX, Google (Gmail) | Email you send to support@deardiarys.com, and feedback you send in the app | ImprovMX forwards mail without storing it; messages are kept in our Gmail mailbox so we can reply |
| Open-Meteo | The coordinates of your location, with no account identifier attached | Local weather for the entry's context line |
| Nager.Date | A year and a country code — no personal information | Public holidays shown in the calendar |
Beyond these, we disclose information only when required by law or when necessary to protect someone's vital interests.
About shared books
Once you share a book, everything in it is visible to the people you shared it with — bodies included, since they hold that book's key — along with photos, titles and places. Removing someone ends their future access; it cannot recall what they have already read or saved. Choose carefully.
6. Retention and deletion
- Deleted entries go to the trash and are permanently removed after 30 days. You can also empty the trash immediately.
- Deleting your account — profile menu → Delete Account — permanently erases your account and every book, entry, photo, to-do, birthday, countdown and calendar item you own. This cannot be undone. If you used Sign in with Apple, we also ask Apple to revoke this app's access to your Apple ID.
- In the Automatic iCloud Backup, earlier versions of changed entries and anything deleted are kept in its History and Deleted folders for 90 days, then cleared by the app. Deleting your account does not delete that backup from your iCloud Drive — it is in your own account and we have no access to it; delete it in the Files app if you no longer want it.
- Feedback, and email you send to support@, is kept in our support mailbox and is not removed automatically when you delete your account. Email us and we will delete those messages. The record of how often you sent feedback is deleted with your account.
- Leaving a book someone shared with you removes only your own access; the book itself is untouched.
- We keep no post-deletion copies for our own purposes. Deleted content and deleted accounts do remain in disaster-recovery backups for a while and are cleared as those backups rotate: up to 7 days in our database provider's backups, and up to about 60 days in our own backup on Google Cloud (users outside mainland China only). Those backups are used only to restore the service, never read on their own.
7. Your rights
Wherever you are, you can:
- Access and export — everything is visible in the app. Contact us for a copy in another form.
- Correct — edit any content, and your display name, in the app.
- Delete — individual items, or your whole account (§6).
- Withdraw consent — turn off location, notifications or Face ID in system settings at any time. The related features stop; existing data is unaffected.
- Complain — write to support@deardiarys.com. We answer within 15 business days.
If you are in the EEA or the UK, our lawful basis is performance of our contract with you for the core service, and your consent for location and notifications. If you are in California, we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined by the CCPA/CPRA.
8. Children
Ultimate Diary is not directed at children under 13 (under 14 in mainland China). If we learn that we hold a child's personal information without the required parental consent, we will delete it. A parent or guardian can contact us at the address above to review or delete their child's information.
9. Security
- HTTPS/TLS for everything in transit.
- Row Level Security in the database: one account cannot read another's rows.
- Passwords stored as salted hashes; we cannot recover your plaintext password.
- Entry bodies encrypted with AES-GCM (§3).
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach occurs that is likely to affect your rights, we will notify you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.
10. Changes
We will update the "Last updated" date at the top. For material changes to the purpose, method or categories of processing, we will notify you prominently in the app and ask for your consent again.
11. Contact
Questions, requests or complaints: support@deardiarys.com