SnapbackSnapback Privacy Policy
Effective date: August 9, 2026
Snapback is an app blocker. It helps you lock distracting apps and websites behind schedules, daily caps, and effort gates. This policy explains what data the app touches, where that data lives, and who can see it.
The short version: Snapback has no accounts, no analytics, no ads, and no servers. We do not collect, transmit, sell, or share your data. Everything the app knows lives on your device, plus an optional backup in your own iCloud.
What Snapback stores, and where
Everything below is stored only on your device (and, on Apple platforms, mirrored to your private iCloud — see "iCloud backup"):
- Your blocking rules — the apps and websites you've locked, their schedules, daily caps, and modes, and your strict-mode configuration.
- Your settings — theme, coach voice, and similar preferences.
- Your onboarding answers — the goal, reason, and obstacle you describe during the Sgt. Bloom intake. These are used only to personalize the app's messages to you.
- App usage time — how many minutes you've spent today in apps you've put under a daily cap. Snapback keeps day-level totals; it needs them to know when a cap is reached.
- Blocked-attempt counts — how many times you opened a blocked app and were stopped, kept as daily totals for the last 90 days.
- Strict-mode PIN — if you enable strict mode with a PIN, the PIN is generated on your device and stored there until it's revealed to you.
- Purchase status — whether Snapback Pro is unlocked.
None of this is ever transmitted to us. We have no way to read it.
Permissions the app asks for, and why
Screen Time (iOS). App blocking on iOS uses Apple's Screen Time (Family Controls) framework. When you pick apps to block, iOS hands Snapback opaque tokens — by Apple's design, Snapback cannot see which apps you selected, and neither can we. Blocking and usage counting happen inside Apple's sandboxed extensions, on your device.
Camera. Used for exactly one thing: counting your pushups when a blocked app asks you to earn your way in. Frames are analysed in memory on your device (Apple Vision on iOS, Google ML Kit on Android). No photo or video is ever recorded, saved, or sent anywhere, and the microphone is never enabled.
Usage access (Android). Snapback reads which app is in the foreground and today's per-app usage totals so it can enforce blocks and daily caps. This information stays on your device.
Accessibility service (Android, optional). The short-form blocker watches six specific apps (YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook) to detect short-form video feeds — Shorts, Reels, Spotlight — and steer you away from them. Screen content is inspected in memory, on device, for that single purpose. Nothing it sees is stored or transmitted.
Display over other apps and run at startup (Android). Used to show the block screen on top of a blocked app, and to re-arm blocking after your phone restarts.
Notifications. Local only — for example, the banner that returns you to an effort gate. Snapback sends no push notifications and has no server to send them from.
VPN / network filter (website blocking, iOS and Android). To block websites, Snapback runs a small DNS filter on your device. Only DNS lookups (the "what address is this site at?" questions) pass through it — your actual browsing traffic does not. Lookups for domains you've blocked are answered with "this site doesn't exist." All other lookups are forwarded, unlogged, to Google Public DNS (8.8.8.8) and the answer is relayed back. Snapback keeps no record of any lookup. While the filter is active, Google's handling of those DNS queries is governed by Google's privacy policy.
Administrator approval and Safari control (macOS). On macOS, website blocking edits the system hosts file (which requires your admin approval each time) and may close or redirect Safari tabs pointing at blocked sites. Both happen locally.
iCloud backup (iPhone, iPad, Mac)
So your rules survive reinstalling the app, Snapback mirrors its data files into your private iCloud Drive container. That storage belongs to your Apple account. It is not a Snapback server; we cannot access, read, or recover anything in it. If iCloud is unavailable or you're not signed in, the app simply works locally.
The complete list of things the app connects to
Snapback makes no network connections of its own except these:
- Apple App Store / Google Play, to process Snapback Pro purchases and restore them. Payment is handled entirely by Apple or Google; Snapback never sees your payment details, only whether Pro is unlocked. The one-time "enjoying Snapback?" prompt is Apple's/Google's own review sheet.
- Google Fonts, from which the app downloads its typefaces on first launch and caches them. This is a plain file download; the app attaches no identifiers to it.
- Google Public DNS, only while the website-blocking filter is on, as described above.
That's the whole list. There is no analytics SDK, no crash reporter, no advertising framework, and no "phone home" of any kind in the app.
What we never do
- We never collect or receive your personal data.
- We never sell or share data with anyone — there is nothing to sell.
- We never track you across apps or websites.
- We never profile you, build audiences, or serve ads.
Children
Snapback is not directed at children under 13. Since the app collects nothing, no personal information from anyone — child or adult — is ever gathered.
Deleting your data
Deleting the app deletes everything it stored on your device. To also remove the iCloud backup on Apple devices: Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Manage Account Storage → Snapback → Delete Data. There is nothing on our side to delete, because nothing ever reached us.
Your rights
Privacy laws such as the GDPR and CCPA give you rights over personal data a company holds about you. Snapback's answer to every such request is the same: we hold none. Your data is on your device and in your iCloud, both under your direct control. If you have any question about this, write to us and we'll answer plainly.
Changes to this policy
If the app's data practices ever change, this policy will be updated at this address before the change ships, and the app's release notes will say so.