Privacy
Privacy policy
Last updated 21 September 2026
The apps have no accounts, no servers and no analytics. What you make in them stays in files on your own devices, and in whichever cloud folder you choose to sync those files through. That is the whole policy. The detail is below.
What the apps collect
Nothing. There is no account to create, no sign-in, and no telemetry or crash reporting. Your work is never sent to us, because there is no server of ours for it to be sent to.
That is not a policy we keep to, it is a shape the apps are built in: an app with no account and no server of its own has nowhere to put your work except your own disk. Where one of them does something beyond that, it is written down under its own heading here.
Lone Timer: where your work is kept
Tasks, projects, clients, invoices and tracked hours are plain JSON files. Which folder holds them is your choice, and the app writes nowhere else.
- On the phone: in the app’s own storage, or in your iCloud Drive folder named Lone Timer, or in your Dropbox app folder, depending on which one you pick in Settings.
- On macOS, Windows and Linux: in the app’s own data folder, or in a sync folder you choose yourself.
Every one of those belongs to you: your Apple ID, your Dropbox account, or whichever service owns the folder you pointed it at. The files are plain text, so you can read, copy, back up or delete them yourself at any time without the app’s help.
What the apps connect to
The phone app reaches the internet only if you connect Dropbox, and then only to Dropbox, to read and write your own files. Left on the phone or on iCloud it makes no network requests at all.
The desktop app does two things beyond that: it checks GitHub for a new version, which tells GitHub your IP address the way any download does, and it fetches a calendar feed if you subscribe to one, from the address you typed in. Neither request carries anything about your work.
Other companies
If you sync through iCloud, Apple handles those files and Apple’s privacy policy covers them. The same is true of Dropbox if you connect it. The Dropbox connection is limited to a single app folder, so it cannot see the rest of your Dropbox, and the token it uses is kept on your device and deleted when you disconnect. We have no access to either account and no way to reach your files inside them.
Buying a licence
Payments run through Polar, who are the seller of record: they take the payment, handle the tax wherever you happen to live, and email you the key. Card details never reach us, and we never see them.
We do not keep a copy of your key either. A key is a signature the app checks on your own machine, so there is no activation, nothing to phone home to, and no list of who owns what for us to lose.
This website
The site counts page views in aggregate through Vercel Analytics. It sets no cookies and does not follow you between sites. The apps have nothing of the kind.
If you sign up to the newsletter, your address goes to Kit, who send it. If you use the contact form, your name, address and message go through Resend, who deliver it to us as email. Neither is used for anything else and neither is sold.
Children
The apps are not directed at children, and they collect nothing from anyone whatever their age.
Deleting your data
Delete the app and delete its files. There is no copy anywhere else to ask us about, because no copy was ever made. On the phone the files sit in the app’s storage, in your iCloud Drive under Lone Timer, or in your Dropbox app folder. On the desktop they are here unless you moved them:
- macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/io.lonetimer.desktop - Windows:
%APPDATA%\io.lonetimer.desktop - Linux:
~/.local/share/io.lonetimer.desktop
Changes to this policy
If this changes, the new version appears on this page with a new date at the top.
Questions
Anything here that is unclear can go to us through hello@crustworks.net.