Privacy Policy

The short version

Lachlan has no accounts. We don’t know your name, and we can’t contact you unless you choose to leave an email on a note to the developer (Section 9).

We can’t see which apps you block — Apple’s Screen Time API doesn’t let us.

What you type to the AI mascot is sent to a third-party AI provider to generate his reply. They don’t keep it and don’t train on it — but we keep a copy, for 12 months, so we can see how he’s working and make him better. Turn on Private mode and the mascot switches to Apple’s on-device AI instead, and nothing you say to him leaves your phone. Details in Section 5.

We do collect product analytics — how you move through setup, what features you use, and how often you unlock — to understand how the app is used and improve it. This is tied to a random per-install ID, not to your name. Private mode turns this off too. Details in Section 8. We use no crash reporting, no advertising, and no cross-app tracking.

Beyond the mascot and analytics, the only other information that leaves your device is what’s needed to process a subscription purchase, handled by our payments provider and Apple — and anything you deliberately send us as a note to the developer (Section 9).

Private mode is one switch that does three things: it stops analytics, moves the mascot onto your phone, and means we keep no copy of what you say to him.

The long version follows.

1. We have no accounts

There is no sign-up, no login, and no user account, and we never ask for your email to use the app. There is nothing that identifies you by name. The one way we can ever contact you is if you choose to leave an email address on a note to the developer (Section 9) — and then only to answer it.

The app talks to three services of our choosing: a third-party AI provider for the mascot’s dialogue (Section 5), a third-party analytics provider (Section 8), and our payments provider (Section 7). Apart from those and Apple’s own systems, Lachlan makes no other network requests.

2. What you tell Lachlan during setup

During setup, Lachlan asks for:

• Your first name
• Your age
• Roughly how many hours a day you feel you lose to your phone
• What you do (your occupation)
• Why you want to cut back — a free-text answer

All of this is stored on your device, in a private container shared between Lachlan and its extensions (group.ndenterprises.Lachlan), and Lachlan uses it to talk to you like he knows you.

What we send to analytics: your age, hours, occupation, and your free-text “why” are included in the analytics described in Section 8 (unless you’ve turned analytics off). Your first name is not part of what setup sends. People are often candid in the “why” field — if you’d rather it stay on your device, turn on Private mode before finishing setup.

What goes to the AI provider: your first name, occupation, and your “why” are included in the briefing Lachlan gets before each conversation, so he can talk to you like he knows you (Section 5). None of this is sent in Private mode.

About your first name. Lachlan uses it when he talks to you, so it appears in his replies — and we keep those replies (Section 5). So your first name can end up in the conversations we store, even though we never ask for it directly. If you’d rather it didn’t, use Private mode.

3. We cannot see which apps you block

This is worth stating plainly, because most people assume otherwise.

When you choose which apps to block, iOS presents Apple’s own picker. Your selection is returned to Lachlan as a set of opaque tokens — not app names, not bundle identifiers, not icons. iOS deliberately withholds that information from us.

The practical result: we do not know, and cannot know, which apps you chose. Not “we choose not to look” — the operating system does not give us the option. Your selection is stored on your device in that same form and is never transmitted.

4. Screen time measurement

To set the mascot’s mood, Lachlan measures how much total time you’ve spent in the apps you selected today — for example, crossing 30 minutes, one hour, two hours, four hours.

This is measured on your device by iOS and recorded on your device. It’s an aggregate duration only, tied to the tokens described in Section 3, which means it isn’t linked to any app we can name. It never leaves your device, and it resets daily.

The Trends screen shows Apple’s own Screen Time figures for your apps. iOS draws those inside a sealed extension on your phone. Lachlan can display them but can’t read them back, and they are never sent anywhere.

5. The AI mascot

Lachlan’s dialogue is generated by an AI model. Which one depends on your Private mode setting.

Private mode off (the default). Your messages are sent to a third-party AI provider to generate his reply. What we send is:

• The message you typed
• The situation he’s reacting to — the name and reason you gave the rule, how many times you’ve unlocked today, and how much time is left on a running block
• Your setup answers, so he can talk to you like he knows you: your first name, occupation, and your reason for cutting back
• Notes he’s kept from your past conversations — see “What Lachlan remembers” below

We do not send which app you’re trying to open — Apple hides that from us entirely (Section 3), so Lachlan genuinely doesn’t know. We instruct the provider not to retain the conversation, and it is not used to train any model.

We do keep a copy. What you type and what Lachlan says back are stored on our servers, against the same random identifier as everything in Section 8 — never your name or email. We read them to see how he’s working and to make him better: whether he’s too easy to talk around, whether he’s too harsh, whether his replies land. They are not used to train any AI model and are not sold or shared. We keep them for 12 months, then they’re deleted automatically (Section 11).

What Lachlan remembers. As you talk to him, Lachlan writes himself the occasional short note about you — most often the reason you gave him for wanting an app back, plus things like a project you keep mentioning — so he can bring it up later instead of meeting you fresh every time. He also counts how many times the same reason has come up, which is what lets him notice when you reuse one. Those notes are stored only on your phone. We never receive them as a record of their own, they are never stored on our servers, and they are not in the analytics in Section 8.

When Private mode is off, the notes are included in what we send the AI provider (above), the same way your first name and your stated reason already are — that’s what lets him bring one up. When Private mode is on they never leave your phone at all, because Lachlan is running on it. Either way he keeps remembering. He’s told not to write notes recording your health, finances, or relationships as facts about you. He may note that you gave such a reason — “cited a family funeral” — because recognising a repeated reason is the point of the notes; what he records is the claim you made, not the underlying situation. A note is deleted automatically a year after the last time it came up — so one you’ve stopped giving him ages out, while a reason you’re still using stays current. Notes disappear entirely if you reset in-app or delete the app (Section 11).

Private mode on. Lachlan switches to Apple’s on-device Foundation Models, running on Apple Intelligence hardware in your iPhone. Everything you type to him and everything he says back is generated and stays on your phone. Nothing is sent to us, to the AI provider, or to anyone else.

The app also falls back to the on-device model automatically when you have no internet connection, or if the AI provider can’t be reached. That’s about where Lachlan thinks, not about the copy we keep: unless Private mode is on, a conversation you have offline is still saved and sent to us once you’re back online. Only Private mode stops that.

Note that Apple’s on-device model needs a device that supports Apple Intelligence. If your iPhone doesn’t, Private mode will leave Lachlan unable to talk — see the support page for hardware requirements.

You can change this at any time in Settings → Private mode. It takes effect on your next conversation with him.

6. Notifications are local and optional

If you allow notifications, Lachlan can send you two kinds:

• A heads-up five minutes before a scheduled block starts, so you’re not caught mid-scroll.
• Check-ins as your screen time climbs — when your time today in the apps you’ve selected passes 30 minutes, an hour, two hours and four hours, then once an hour after that.

Both are local notifications, scheduled and delivered entirely by your device. There is no push server, no Apple Push Notification Service registration, and no device token — nothing is sent to us and we cannot send you anything.

Notifications are entirely optional. Declining them does not affect blocking or unlocking.

7. Purchases

Subscriptions are processed by Apple and managed through our payments provider. That provider receives the purchase-related data below; our analytics provider is covered separately in Section 8.

To validate your subscription and keep it working across your devices, our payments provider receives:

• Purchase and receipt information from Apple
• The same random identifier described in Section 8, used as your subscription account ID
• Your device’s Vendor Identifier (IDFV), device model, OS version, and country

Our payments provider does not receive your name, age, occupation, your reason for cutting back, your conversations with Lachlan, or anything about which apps you block. We send them no advertising or attribution data.

We keep a record of your subscription events. Our payments provider notifies our own servers when a subscription starts, renews, changes, lapses, or is refunded, and when a subscription screen is shown or dismissed in the app. We store those notifications — the product, the price, the country, the store, and the timing — against that same random identifier, so we can see how many people subscribe and stay. They contain no payment details and no name or email. Because these records come from our payments provider rather than from the app, Private mode does not switch them off — they are the record of a purchase you made, not usage analytics. We keep them as long as we need them as business records.

Apple handles the payment itself; we never see your payment details.

8. Product analytics

To understand how people use Lachlan and to improve it, the app sends usage data to a third-party analytics provider that stores it on our behalf. This is on by default. You can turn it off at any time in Settings → Private mode; when it’s off, the app stops sending new analytics immediately.

Private mode is one switch with three jobs: turning it on stops analytics, moves the mascot to the on-device AI, and means we keep no copy of your conversations with him (Section 5). There is no way to keep some and not the others.

Identifier. Analytics is tied to a random identifier generated on first launch and stored in your device’s Keychain. It is not your name, email, or Apple ID, and we can’t use it to contact you. Because it lives in the Keychain, it can persist if you delete and reinstall the app (see Section 11). It is also your subscription account ID with our payments provider (Section 7), which means your purchase records and your usage data sit under the same identifier.

What we collect:

• Setup answers — your age, the hours you estimate, your occupation, and your free-text “why.” Your first name is not part of this.
• How you use the app — which setup steps you reach and complete, whether you grant Screen Time and notification permissions, when the paywall appears, and when a subscription starts.
• What you configure — each rule you create, edit or delete: its name, reason, type, difficulty, times and days, timer and limit settings, whether it uses your main block list, and how many apps/categories it covers. Also how many rules you have, how many are Extreme, and how many apps/categories are on your main block list. Never the app names themselves, which Apple hides from us (Section 3).
• Unlocks — each time Lachlan lets you back in, including how long for and your running count for the day.
• Basic technical data — your app version, iOS version, and when the app was last active.
• Your conversations with Lachlan — what you type and what he says back, kept for 12 months. See Section 5.

What we do not collect here: which specific apps you block (Section 3), and any payment details.

How to describe this honestly: this data is pseudonymous, not anonymous — it isn’t attached to your name, but the free-text fields can contain whatever you typed, and the identifier is stable. The stored conversations are the most personal part of this: they’re free text, they can include your first name because Lachlan uses it, and people say candid things to him. If that matters to you, use Private mode.

We do not use crash reporting, advertising, ad identifiers, or cross-app tracking, and we do not sell or share your personal information with data brokers. Lachlan does not access your location, contacts, camera, photo library, microphone, calendar, health data, or motion data — it doesn’t ask for these permissions, because it doesn’t use them.

9. Notes you send us

Settings → Support → Note to developer lets you send a message straight to the developer — a bug report, a feature idea, or anything else. Nothing is sent unless you write something and tap send.

What the message carries: what you typed, which of the three categories you picked (bug / idea / other), your app version, and your iOS version. That’s it.

The email field is optional and it’s yours to give. Leave it blank and the note is still sent — we simply have no way to reply. If you do fill it in, we use it for one thing: answering you. It is not added to a mailing list, not used for marketing, and not shared.

Private mode does not silence this. You tapped send, so the note goes either way. What Private mode changes is the identifier: with it on, the note is stored without the random identifier from Section 8, so it can’t be connected to your usage data or your subscription. With it off, the identifier is attached, which is what lets us look up the rule or the unlock a bug report is about.

Retention. Notes are kept until they’re dealt with and then as a record — there’s no automatic expiry, because a note often is the reply address. Ask us and we’ll delete yours (Section 11).

10. Children

Lachlan is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from them.

Although Lachlan uses Apple’s Screen Time framework, it operates in individual mode — a self-control tool for the person holding the phone. It is not a parental-control app and cannot be used to monitor another person’s device.

11. Deleting your data

Much of what Lachlan holds is stored on your device, and you control it directly:

• Reset in-app — clears your profile, your unlock history, the mascot’s mood, and everything Lachlan remembers about you (Section 5).
• Delete the app — removes the private container and everything in it, including your first name, your on-device conversation history, and Lachlan’s notes.

What deleting the app does not reach: anything we’ve already received — the analytics in Section 8, the stored conversations in Section 5, any notes you sent us in Section 9, and the subscription records in Section 7. Those live on our servers, not on your phone.

Retention. Stored conversations are deleted automatically 12 months after they happen. Notes you sent us (Section 9) have no automatic expiry and are deleted on request. Lachlan’s on-device notes expire on their own a year after the last time the note came up. You don’t have to ask for either.

Deleting sooner. The random identifier (Section 8) is stored in the Keychain, which iOS may preserve across app deletion and reinstall — so if you want to stop sending before deleting, turn on Private mode first. Everything we hold is tied to that identifier, not to your name; contact us at the address below and we’ll delete the data associated with it, conversations included. Subscription records (Section 7) are the one exception we may need to keep as business records — tell us and we’ll say exactly what’s retained. We’ll also help with subscription data held by our payments provider and Apple.

12. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we’ll update it here and revise the effective date above. If a change ever means data leaving your device in a new way, we’ll make that clear rather than burying it.

13. Contact

Questions about this policy, or about privacy in Lachlan:

support@ndenterprisesllc.com

ND Enterprises LLC
California, United States