Privacy Policy

Last updated 2026-09-14

The short version

Harubo keeps everything on your device. There is no account, there is no server, and nothing you record is sent to us or to anyone else.

We cannot see your habits, because there is nowhere for them to go. There is no analytics, no advertising and no tracking of any kind. There is one exception, and it is described in full below: if the app breaks, it can send a report saying what broke. That report never contains anything you wrote, it is only ever sent when something has actually gone wrong, and you can switch it off in Settings.

Harubo may ask you to rate it once, after you have been using it a while, and only once ever. Harubo shows you a card first, then hands over to your app store’s own rating dialog, which is drawn by the operating system. Harubo never asks whether you like it and never treats one answer differently from another. It does not see whether you rated it, or what you said.

What Harubo stores

The habits you create: their names, targets, any smaller version you set for a bad day, schedules, chosen colour and companion, and the optional note you can add about why a habit matters to you.

Your check-ins: which day, what amount, and the time of day, which is what the time-of-day chart is drawn from.

Anything you choose to write about a day, and how that day felt if you record it. Both are optional, both are only ever shown back to you, and neither is required to use the app.

Rest days and cozy days, so streaks can treat them correctly.

Anything on your list: the words you wrote, the day you wrote them for, and the day you crossed each one off.

Anything in your notebook: whatever you wrote and the day you wrote it. Notebook pages are only ever shown back to you, and nothing in the app scores, counts or charts them.

Anything you write down on the money page: the amount, and whatever you typed for the item, the shop and the type. Harubo has no connection to a bank, a card or a shop, and cannot see anything you did not type in yourself.

Your progress in the Nook: crumbs earned and spent, decor placed, the state of the garden, and which companions are unlocked.

Your settings: theme, week start, reduce motion, whether you have asked Harubo to hide the numbers, a name if you chose to give one, and any reminders you set.

Stretches you have marked as time away, so a holiday is not counted as a run of missed days.

Where it is stored

On your device, in the app's own private storage. Harubo uses three local keys. They are named nuzzle rather than harubo because that was the app's working title, and renaming them would make existing installs lose their history, which is worse than an odd-looking name you never see.

If you add the home screen widget, Harubo also writes a small summary of today into a shared container that the widget can read: the date, your habits due today and whether each is done, the longest run among them, and the colours of your chosen palette. It holds today only, it never leaves your device, and it is removed when you erase everything or delete the app.

Tapping a habit on the widget does not change your history by itself. The widget cannot reach the app’s records, so it writes a short note of the tap into that same shared container, and the app applies it the next time you open it. That note holds only which habit you tapped, which day it was for, and when. It is deleted once applied, and it is deleted along with everything else when you erase everything or delete the app.

The keys are nuzzle.data.v1 for your habits and history, and nuzzle.social.local.v1 and nuzzle.social.cache.v1, which are reserved for a shared goals feature that is not enabled in this version.

If your device backs itself up, for example through iCloud or your Android backup, then Harubo's data is included in that backup, under your own account and your device maker's terms. That is a function of your phone, not of this app.

When the app breaks

Software fails sometimes. When Harubo hits a fault it cannot recover from, it can send a report so that the fault can be found and fixed. This is the only thing Harubo ever sends anywhere, and it is sent only when something has actually gone wrong. Opening the app, keeping a habit, and every ordinary day send nothing at all.

A report contains the technical description of the fault and the trace of where in the code it happened, the name of the screen you were on, such as Today or Insights, and your device model, operating system version and Harubo version. That is what makes a fault reproducible.

A report never contains your habits, your entries, your notes, your essays, your money records, your room or your companions. It carries no name, no email address, no device or advertising identifier, no location, and no screenshot or recording of your screen. Harubo does not attach any of these, and the parts of a report that could carry them are stripped before it is sent.

One honest limit, because it is better said than glossed over: a fault describes itself in its own words, and in rare cases that description can quote a value the app was working on at the time. Nothing can reliably tell such a value from an ordinary word. Those reports are read only to fix the fault and are never used for anything else.

Reports are processed by Sentry, a service used for this purpose alone, and are deleted on their ordinary retention schedule. They are never sold, never shared for advertising, and never used to build a profile of you.

You can turn this off. Settings, under About, has a switch called "Send a report when something breaks". Turning it off stops every report, and everything else in the app works exactly the same. It is on to begin with, because a fault that nobody hears about is a fault that stays broken for everybody.

Apple Health and Health Connect

Harubo can fill in habits your phone already measures, so you do not have to tap them in. This is off until you turn it on, and it asks for permission at the moment you turn it on rather than at launch.

If you enable it, Harubo asks once for the whole set it is able to read: step count, water, time in daylight, mindful minutes, sleep, and walking, running, strength or stretching workouts. It asks for all of them together because your phone offers that sheet once and never volunteers it again, so a habit you add next month would otherwise sit empty forever with nothing on screen to say why. Each habit still reads only the one kind of data it needs, and a kind no habit of yours uses is never read at all.

Harubo only ever reads. It never writes anything back into Health, and it never sends health data anywhere. It stays on your device with the rest of your habit history.

A day you filled in by hand is never overwritten by Health, and a rest day stays a rest day.

You can turn it off per habit at any time, or revoke access entirely in your phone's Health settings.

Reminders

If you set a reminder, it is scheduled locally by your phone. Harubo does not use push notifications, so no reminder passes through a server. Nothing about a reminder leaves your device.

Harubo asks for notification permission once, at the end of setting up your first habit, and only if you chose a habit to start with. You can say no, and everything else in the app works exactly the same. You can also set or remove a reminder later from inside any habit.

Harubo may also send two reminders you did not set individually: one in the evening when a run you have going is still open, and one if the app has gone unopened for several days. Both are worked out on your device from your own history, both are scheduled locally, and turning off notifications stops all of them.

If you use the stopwatch on a timed habit, the running session is saved on your device so it survives closing the app, and it can book one local notification for when your time is up. That is cancelled the moment you pause or finish.

Children

Harubo is not directed at children under 13 and collects no data at all, from anyone, of any age.

Your data is yours

You can export everything Harubo holds as a single readable JSON file, and you can restore from one. You can also export your check-ins as a spreadsheet, and bring a spreadsheet in from Harubo or from another app. All of it is in Settings.

A file you import is read on your device and nowhere else. Harubo does not upload it, does not keep a copy of the file itself, and adds only the habits and check-ins it contains to what is already here. It never overwrites a day you have already recorded.

Harubo also keeps one automatic copy of your history in its own private folder on your device, refreshed at most once a day, so a mistake inside the app can be undone. It is never sent anywhere, and it is deleted along with everything else when you delete the app. It is not a substitute for an exported backup.

You can erase everything from Settings, and deleting the app removes all of it from your device.

Because we never receive your data, there is nothing for us to delete on your behalf and no request you need to send us.

If this ever changes

A future version of Harubo may add shared goals with friends. If it does, that will require an account, it will be clearly marked, it will be optional, and it will ask you before anything is sent anywhere. This policy will be updated before any such feature ships, not after.

Nothing in this version sends data anywhere.

Contact

Questions about privacy can go to support@harubo.app.