That is not a policy choice made to sound good; it is how the app is built. There is nowhere for your data to go, because there is nothing of ours for it to go to.
What is stored, and where
Routines, runs, notes, values, records and settings are written to files inside the app's own container on your device, and shared with its widgets and its watch app. They are included in your device backup if you have one, which is between you, Apple and your backup — we never see it.
If you turn on iCloud in the app's settings, the same files are kept in sync between your own devices through your private iCloud database. That database is yours and Apple's: it sits in your iCloud account, under your Apple ID, and we have no way to open it. It is off until you turn it on.
We collect nothing. There is no usage tracking, no crash reporting, no advertising and no profiling. The app ships no third-party code, so there is nobody else in it to collect anything either.
The only ways anything leaves your phone
Every one of them is something you set up or ask for yourself, and none of them reaches us.
A webhook you configured
A step can send a request to a web address you typed in. It goes to that address and nowhere else, carrying only what you put in it. If you never add one, the app makes no network requests of its own.
A shortcut or another app
A step can run a Shortcut, or hand something to another app you chose. What happens after that is that app's business and its own privacy policy.
An assistant you ask
The app can write a routine from a sentence with Apple Intelligence on your phone. That model runs on the device: what you type is not sent anywhere.
On iOS 27 it can instead ask Apple's cloud model, which runs on Apple's Private Cloud Compute. What you ask is used to answer and is not kept, and Apple says nobody there can see it. It holds what you typed and, when you ask about one, that one routine, step or run.
When you ask Siri about a routine or a run — Ask Siri on a row, or "this" on its page — the app hands Siri the text of that one routine or run: its name, its steps and where the run stands. What Siri does with it is covered by Apple's own privacy terms, including when you have chosen ChatGPT or another assistant in Siri.
When you send a request to ChatGPT, Claude or another assistant from the share sheet, or build a shortcut with Apple's Use Model action, the request goes to the service you picked, and what it writes back comes to the app. It holds what you put in it and, when you ask to change one, that one routine. The service's own privacy policy applies to it. Nothing is sent this way unless you send it.
A routine you share
A shared routine is carried inside the link itself rather than uploaded anywhere, which is what lets it work with no account and no server. Whoever you send it to can read it, the same as any message you send — so treat a routine link like the message it travels in.
Opening routinerun.com in a browser is an ordinary web request to our
host, like any web page. The app itself does not call this site.
What each permission is for
iOS asks before granting any of these, and it asks when a step first needs one rather than at launch. Everything below happens on your device. Declining any of them leaves the rest of the app working.
- Health — reads workouts only, so a routine can be offered when one ends. A step can write what you just did: a glass of water, minutes sat still, what the scales said. Only what the step says, only when the run reaches it.
- Home — reads the names of your scenes so you can pick one, and runs only the scene a step names.
- Location — starts or offers a routine when you arrive at or leave a place. Where you have been is read on this phone and never leaves it.
- Calendars — writes scheduling events. Routines write with write-only access; full access is asked only so you can choose which calendar, which means reading the list of their names and nothing else.
- Reminders — used to schedule routines and trigger them by place, and, where you ask for it, to put a step's deadline in your list. The app then reads whether you ticked the reminders it wrote, and nothing else in your lists.
- Photos — a note keeps the place of a photo rather than a copy, so it needs to find it again. Nothing is read until you pick one, and nothing is copied out of Photos.
- Camera — scans a serial number, a barcode or a meter reading straight into a value. It runs only while that screen is open, and nothing is photographed or kept.
- Focus — reads whether any Focus is on, and nothing about which one, so the app can show fewer routines while one is running.
- NFC — writes a routine's link onto a tag you chose to write.
- Notifications and alarms — how a routine reaches you, including through Focus and the silent switch for steps you asked not to miss.
Events sent to the app
Routine Run can accept events from other systems you connect to it — a monitor, an automation, another app. Those arrive because you set that up, are stored on your device like everything else, and are not forwarded anywhere.
Children
Routine Run is not directed at children and collects no personal information from anyone, of any age.
Changes
If this ever changes, the date at the top changes with it. Anything that would mean collecting data we do not collect today would be said here first, plainly, and in the app.
Asking us
Write to [email protected].
Because nothing is collected, there is no account to close, no export to request and nothing of yours for us to delete. Deleting the app removes what it stored on your device.