My Minerals Privacy Policy
Last updated October 6, 2026
In short: My Minerals is a private journal. Your stones, photos, notes, roles and journal entries are stored only on your iPhone. There is no My Minerals account on a server, no advertising, no analytics and no tracking. A few optional AI features send only what they need, only when you use them, and only after you agree.
What stays on your phone
- Your stones, their photos, roles and role history, notes, and journal entries.
- Your profile. If you choose Sign in with Apple, your name and email (or Apple's private relay address) are kept only on your phone to personalise the app. We never receive them.
- Voice notes are recorded to a temporary file, turned into text on your phone by Apple's speech recognition, and then deleted. Recordings are never uploaded.
- Photos of handwritten notes are read into text on your phone, unless you choose to have them read by AI (see below).
When something leaves your phone
Five optional features use an AI model, Claude, made by Anthropic. Each one explains what it sends and asks for your permission before it is first used. You can turn each one off at any time in the app under Profile → Privacy.
- Ask Minerals AI sends your question, up to 40 short excerpts of your journal that relate to it, and your stones' names and roles.
- Sort into prompts sends the text of that one reflection, split into sentences.
- What is this stone? sends that one photo, made smaller, plus the Directory's mineral names and physical facts.
- Upload notes sends the text of your note pages, line by line, plus the Directory's mineral names.
- Read my handwriting with AI sends photos of your note pages, made smaller, so they can be written out in your words.
These requests go through the My Minerals server, which runs on Google Firebase (Google Cloud). The server passes each request to Anthropic and returns the answer. It does not store your text or photos and does not log their contents. Like any internet service, Google's servers see technical details such as your IP address in order to deliver the request; we don't use them to identify or track you.
Anthropic processes the request to produce an answer. Under its commercial terms it does not use this data to train its models, and it deletes it after a limited period under its data-retention policy. See Anthropic's privacy policy.
My Minerals+ subscriptions
Journaling, voice notes, photos and the Directory are free. The AI features above come with a My Minerals+ subscription, bought and managed through Apple. We never see your payment details, name or email.
With each AI request the app sends Apple's signed record of your subscription. The My Minerals server checks Apple's signature and stores one thing: a count of this month's AI uses, filed under the subscription's anonymous Apple transaction number, so it can apply your plan's monthly allowance. Nothing you write is stored with it.
To stop abuse of the AI features, the app uses Firebase App Check with Apple's App Attest, which confirms requests come from the genuine My Minerals app. It does not identify you.
What we don't do
- No advertising, analytics, or tracking tools, and no data brokers.
- We don't sell or share your data.
- We don't request your location, contacts or Bluetooth.
- Nothing runs in the background when the app is closed.
Permissions the app asks for
- Camera and photos: to photograph your stones and your handwritten notes. You choose which photos the app can see.
- Microphone and speech recognition: to turn your spoken notes into text on your phone.
Your data, your choice
- Export: Profile → Export my journal saves all your writing as a text file.
- Delete: Profile → Delete my profile erases everything from your phone. Deleting the app does the same.
- Backups: if you use iCloud Backup, your iPhone's backup includes My Minerals' data, handled by Apple under Apple's privacy policy.
Because we don't keep your journal on a server, we have no copy to view, correct or delete. Everything is on your phone and under your control.
Children
My Minerals is not directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect information from them.
Changes
If this policy changes, we'll update this page and the date at the top. Any new way of sending data will always ask for your permission in the app first.
Contact
Questions about privacy: lizzy.labs11@gmail.com