Last updated 27 August 2026
Privacy
Psalm Path has no accounts and no server of ours for your writing to go to. This page explains exactly what that does and does not mean, including the handful of things that genuinely do reach the internet.
The short version
- There is no account. You never give us a name, an email or a password, because there is nowhere to give them to.
- We receive nothing. We operate no server that the app talks to. Your prayers, journal entries, notes, highlights and fasts are written to a database on your own phone and are never sent to us.
- No analytics, no advertising, no tracking. The released app contains no analytics service, no advertising identifier, no crash-reporting service and no third-party tracking code of any kind.
- A few things do reach the internet — chapter audio, hymns, and searching for a nearby church. Each happens only when you ask for it, and each is listed in full below.
- Your phone's own backup is the one exception to "it stays on this device." If you use iCloud Backup or back up to a computer, your Psalm Path database is included, the same as any other app's.
Contents
- 1. What we collect about you
- 2. What is stored on your device
- 3. What leaves your device
- 4. Backups
- 5. Permissions the app asks for
- 6. How your writing is protected
- 7. Your controls
- 8. This website
- 9. Children
- 10. Changes to this policy
- 11. Contact
1. What we collect about you
Nothing. We want to be precise about why that is true rather than ask you to take it on trust: the app contains no code that sends your information to us, because we run no service for it to be sent to.
Specifically, Psalm Path contains no analytics service, no advertising or attribution SDK, no crash-reporting service, no push-notification registration, and no advertising identifier or device identifier of any kind. It has no sign-in, no sign-up and no user account. It does not ask for your name in order to identify you — if you enter a first name so the app can greet you, that name is stored only on your phone.
The app does contain an internal list of the kinds of moments that would be worth counting one day — a walk finished, a prayer answered. In the version released on the App Store, that list is wired to a recorder that does nothing at all: the events are discarded the instant they are raised. They are not written to the database and they are not transmitted. In development builds on our own machines they are printed to the developer console and go no further.
2. What is stored on your device
Everything the app remembers lives in a single database file inside Psalm Path's own private storage area on your phone, which other apps cannot read. That includes:
- Your prayers — their titles, bodies, categories, updates, and anything you write when you mark one answered
- Your journal entries, including sermon notes, tags, mood, and any voice recordings you make
- Your fasts and fasting plans, including what you wrote as your intention. Note that a record of when and how you fast is information about your health, and it is treated with the same care as everything else here
- Your Bible highlights, bookmarks, notes, reading position and reading history
- Verses you are memorising and how your reviews have gone
- Churches you have saved — including the address and coordinates of that church, and whether you marked it as home
- Your preferences: reminder times, quiet hours, translation, appearance, text size, and what you told the app during onboarding
The database is protected by iOS's own file encryption, which keeps it unreadable while your phone is locked. We should be straightforward about the limit of that: the app does not add a second layer of encryption of its own, so the protection is the protection your device provides, and it depends on you having a passcode set. Voice recordings are stored as ordinary audio files in the same private area rather than inside the database.
3. What leaves your device
This is the part of a privacy policy most worth reading carefully, so here is the complete list. Every item is triggered by something you do; none of it happens in the background or on launch.
| When | Where it goes | What is sent |
|---|---|---|
| You tap Listen on a Bible chapter | The Internet Archive (archive.org). If that fails, Audio Treasure (audiotreasure.com) | A request for a recording of that chapter. No account and no identifier — but the request necessarily reveals which chapter you are listening to, along with your IP address, in the same way visiting any web page does. Chapters continue automatically, so one tap can lead to further requests for the chapters that follow. |
| You play a hymn | Wikimedia Commons (upload.wikimedia.org) | A request for that hymn's recording, revealing which hymn, plus your IP address. |
| You search for a church near you | Apple | Your approximate coordinates and the words "church", "chapel" and "cathedral". Handled under Apple's privacy policy, not ours. |
| You search for a church by typing a place | Apple | The town, postcode or address you typed, sent to Apple to be turned into a location. This happens even if you never granted location permission — it is the one free-text box in the app whose contents reach anyone else. |
| Church results are shown on a map | Apple | Requests for map imagery of the area being shown. |
| You tap a link to a church or organisation | That website, via your browser | The app hands the address to iOS and stops there. It adds nothing to the link that could identify you or say that you came from Psalm Path. |
| You use the share button | Wherever you choose to send it | Whatever you shared — a verse, or an export of your data. This is your choice each time, and the destination app's privacy policy governs what happens next. |
Everything else works with no connection at all. The full text of all five Bible translations, the nine devotional works, the artwork, the Bible stories, the Atlas and its maps, and the study material are all included in the app when you install it. The Atlas draws its maps on your device from map data shipped inside the app; it contacts no map service.
What is never sent anywhere, under any circumstances, by the app itself: your prayers, your journal entries, your voice recordings, your fasts, your highlights and notes, your reading history, and the verses you are memorising.
4. Backups
If your phone backs itself up — to iCloud, or to a computer — the Psalm Path database is part of that backup, exactly like the data of most other apps on your phone. That means a copy of your prayers and journal entries exists wherever your backups are kept, under the terms of whoever provides them, usually Apple.
This is deliberate rather than accidental. It is what makes it possible to get a new phone without losing years of your journal. But it means the honest way to describe the app is that your writing never leaves your device through Psalm Path, and you remain in control of backups through your device's own settings.
One exception in your favour: voice recordings are deliberately excluded from backups, because they are large and personal. They live only on the phone that made them, so bear that in mind if a recording matters to you.
5. Permissions the app asks for
Every one of these is optional, is asked for only when you first use the feature that needs it, and never on launch. Declining any of them leaves the rest of the app fully working.
| Permission | Asked when | What it is used for |
|---|---|---|
| Location (while using the app) | You tap "search near me" when looking for a church | A single approximate reading, accurate to about 100 metres, used to search for churches nearby. It is not tracked continuously, is never saved to the database, and is never written to a log. You can search by typing a place instead and skip this entirely. |
| Microphone | You first tap record on a journal voice note | Recording voice notes. Recordings are saved on your phone and are never uploaded. |
| Notifications | During onboarding, and skippable there | Reminders you have chosen — morning, evening, a journey, a prayer, a church service. These are scheduled entirely on your phone; there is no push service, and no server can send you anything. |
| Screen Time | You set up the set-apart window or a fast from screens | Holding back apps you choose during a window you choose. The app can only see the anonymous handles iOS gives it for your selections; it cannot read your usage, and it never reports on what you did. |
6. How your writing is protected
Inside the app's own code, prayer and journal text is wrapped in a special type that refuses to print itself. If a developer accidentally writes that text into a log or a diagnostic, what appears is the word <redacted> rather than what you wrote. Reading the real text takes a deliberate, visible step in the code, which makes accidental exposure very unlikely and easy to spot in review.
We would rather describe this accurately than impressively, so: this is not encryption. It does not scramble your text, it is not protected by a key, and it does not stop code that deliberately asks for the text from getting it. It is a guard rail against mistakes, not a vault. The meaningful protections for your writing are the ones described above — that there is no server, no account, and no transmission — together with your device's own encryption.
7. Your controls
Because nothing is held by us, there is no request to make and no one to make it to. Everything is in your hands, in the app's settings:
- Export everything. Settings can produce a single archive file containing your data, which you can save or send wherever you like. Be aware that this archive is plain, readable text and is not password-protected — treat it as carefully as you would a paper journal.
- Delete everything. Deleting the app removes the database and every recording with it. There is no copy elsewhere for you to chase, apart from any backup you have made.
- Turn any reminder off individually, and set quiet hours during which none will arrive.
8. This website
This site is a set of plain, static pages. It sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and contains no advertising, tracking pixels or social media embeds. It makes no requests to any third party at all — the fonts and every image are served from this site itself, specifically so that visiting this page does not announce your visit to anyone else.
If you use the light/dark switch, your choice is saved in your own browser's local storage under the name pp-theme. It stays in your browser, is readable only by this site, and is never transmitted anywhere.
The site is hosted by Vercel, which — like any web host — processes the requests needed to serve you these pages, and may keep short-lived operational logs including IP addresses for security and reliability. That is standard hosting infrastructure and is governed by Vercel's privacy policy. We do not add any analytics on top of it, and we do not consult those logs to build any picture of visitors.
9. Children
Psalm Path is intended for a general audience and is suitable for family use. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, of any age, because we do not collect personal information at all. There is no account to create, no profile to fill in, no messaging, and no way for one person using the app to contact another.
Parents should know that the app contains links out to church and organisation websites, and that playing chapter audio or hymns contacts the third parties listed in section 3.
10. Changes to this policy
If the app changes in a way that affects any of this, this page will be updated and the date at the top will change with it. If a future version ever collects something it does not collect today, we will say so plainly and in advance rather than quietly revising this page. The version of this policy inside the app matches this one.
11. Contact
Questions about privacy, or anything on this page you think is wrong or unclear, can go to privacy@psalmpath.com. If you have found something in the app that contradicts what is written here, we would genuinely like to know — please say so, and we will correct either the app or this page.
Psalm Path is made in the United Kingdom. Because we hold no personal data about you, there is no data controller holding a file on you and no access request to make — but you are welcome to ask us anything about how the app behaves.