Privacy policy
Last updated 24 September 2026.
Your screen time never leaves your phone. Everything PhoneStop records about how you use your phone stays on your device: when the screen is on, for how long, and your daily budget. There is no account, no cloud sync, and no advertising.
The app does send a small number of things over the internet, and this page lists every one of them under What the app sends: anonymous taps, a daily check that the tracker runs, error reports without their messages, and, only if you buy Supporter, what the purchase needs. You can turn the anonymous taps off in the app.
What changed. Until version 1.0.2, the app had no internet permission and sent nothing at all. Version 1.0.3 adds the internet permission for the items listed below. From 1.0.3, the anonymous taps start on for everyone, and you can turn them off at any time in Settings ("Send anonymous taps"). Your screen time stays on your phone. This page changed on 24 September 2026 to say so.
The website you are reading now (phonestop.app) is a separate matter, and it does two small things: it measures traffic with cookieless analytics, and it lets you join the iPhone waitlist by giving us your email. Both are described under The website below.
What PhoneStop stores on your device
To do its job, PhoneStop records the following locally, on your phone only:
- When your screen turns on and off, and how long each session lasted
- How many times you unlocked your phone each day
- Your daily screen-time budget, and any time you extended it
- Your settings: notification tone, day-start hour, theme
This data is written to your device's private app storage, which other apps cannot read. It never leaves your phone. We never see it, and we could not retrieve it if we wanted to.
What the app sends
- Anonymous taps. Which screens you open, which buttons you tap, which permissions you allow, and the Google Play install source (for example, that you came from this website). They go to PostHog on its EU servers, relayed through phonestop.app. A random ID, made on your phone, links them together. It is not tied to your name, your email or your Google account. Each tap also carries your phone's model, its Android version, its language and time zone, and the time of the tap, so PostHog can tell how long you spent inside PhoneStop's own screens. That is time in this app, not your screen time. PostHog also works out an approximate location, the country and city, from the internet address the taps arrive from. Turn the taps off in Settings → Privacy → "Send anonymous taps".
- A daily check. Once a day, the app reports whether the tracker is running and which permissions are on. These are yes or no values only. It goes to PostHog in the same way, and the "Send anonymous taps" switch turns it off too.
- Error reports. When the app hits an error, it sends the type of error and where in the code it happened. It never sends the error message, because a message can quote your data. The "Send anonymous taps" switch turns these off too.
- Purchases. If you buy Supporter, Google Play takes the payment. RevenueCat, the company that handles purchases for us, receives an anonymous purchase ID and the Google Play receipt, so the app can unlock Supporter. We never see your card details.
- Email, only if you write to us. The feedback card in the app opens your own email app. If you send the message, we get your email address and what you wrote. We use them only to reply to you and to send your Supporter code.
Never sent: how long you used your phone, your daily totals, your budget, which apps you use, or a record of when your screen was on.
PostHog keeps the anonymous taps, the daily checks and the error reports for one year, and then deletes them.
What the app does not do
- No user accounts, sign-up, or login
- No sending of your screen time: no session lengths, no daily totals, no budget, no app names
- No screen recording and no record of what you type
- No advertising, ad networks, or advertising identifiers
- No selling of data, and no sharing beyond the services named on this page: PostHog, RevenueCat and Google Play
- No tracking of which apps you use: PhoneStop measures total screen time only, not app-by-app activity
The website
This policy is mostly about the app. The website (phonestop.app) is separate and does two small things, both built to be as private as we could make them.
Traffic analytics. We use PostHog to see how many people visit and which pages help, on its EU servers. We made it as private as the tool allows:
- No cookies, and nothing is stored on your device. That is why there is no consent banner to click. Each visit is anonymous and is not linked to you or to your earlier visits.
- Your browser never contacts PostHog. The data is relayed through our own domain, so no third-party tracker loads in your browser and nothing to block.
- We record page views and which links and buttons are clicked.
- We also record anonymous replays of how the website is used: page changes, scrolls, pointer movement and clicks. Every text field is masked in the replay, so we never record what you type. We do not build a profile of you.
The iPhone waitlist. If you enter your email to be told when the iPhone version launches, we store that email (and nothing more than the country and date, for our own planning) so we can send you that one message. It is kept on our provider's servers, never sold or shared, and used only for launch news. Every email we send has a one-click unsubscribe, and you can ask us to delete your address at any time at the contact address below.
The website analytics and the app's anonymous taps go to the same PostHog account. Neither one ever carries your screen time.
Permissions, and why each is requested
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
| Notifications | To deliver low-budget warnings and the time's-up reminder. |
| Display over other apps | So the full-screen stop can appear over whatever app you are using. Without it you get a notification instead. |
| Usage access | To restore your own screen-time statistics if Android stops PhoneStop in the background. This reads Android's built-in usage log, processes it on your device, and stores nothing elsewhere. |
| Device administrator (optional) | Powers the "Lock my phone" button, and only that. PhoneStop requests lock-screen permission alone: it cannot wipe your device, change your password, read your data, or prevent uninstallation. You can decline it and the rest of the app works normally. |
| Run at startup, battery optimisation exemption | So screen-time tracking resumes after a reboot and is not silently killed mid-day. |
| Full-screen intent | So the time's-up reminder can appear when your screen is locked. |
| Internet | To send the anonymous taps, the daily check and the error reports described above, and to complete a Supporter purchase. It never sends your screen time. |
Every permission except Internet serves the app's single purpose: measuring your screen time and stopping you when your budget runs out.
Children
PhoneStop is intended for users aged 18 and over. The anonymous taps carry no name, email or age. If a child has written to us by email, tell us at the contact address below and we will delete the message.
Deleting your data
Uninstalling PhoneStop permanently deletes everything it stored on your phone, including your screen time history and the random ID.
The anonymous taps, daily checks and error reports stay with PostHog for one year, and then PostHog deletes them. They carry no name or email, so we cannot match them to you. To stop new ones, turn off "Send anonymous taps" in Settings.
If you bought Supporter, Google Play and RevenueCat keep the record of the purchase under their own privacy policies. If you wrote to us by email, ask us at the contact address below and we will delete your messages and your address.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this address with a new "last updated" date.
The version of 12 August 2026 said that the app would ask you before it began to collect any data. From version 1.0.3 the app does not ask first: the anonymous taps, the daily check and the error reports start on, and the "Send anonymous taps" switch in Settings turns them off. Your screen time still never leaves your phone.
If the app ever starts to send anything that is not listed on this page, this page will change first.
Contact
Questions about privacy: [email protected]