Privacy Policy
This policy applies to Habit Browser for Android and iOS (“the app”). The app is made by an individual developer (“the developer”).
1. In short
The developer does not collect information about the app's users. There are no accounts, and no SDKs for analytics, ads or crash reports. Nothing about you is sent to the developer's servers.
The app does talk to the sites you open, as any browser does, and to the services listed in section 3 when you use those features.
2. What stays on your device
The app keeps the following only on your device:
- History, bookmarks, open and recently closed tabs, pages saved to read later, and download records
- Past searches, settings, site settings, and user scripts with their stored values
- Cookies and data that sites store
Private tabs keep their history, cookies and site data apart from normal tabs, and these are gone once the private tabs are closed.
Backups
- Android: the app's data is excluded from Google's cloud backup and from device-to-device transfer.
- iOS: the app's data is included in iCloud and device backups (except ad blocking filter lists). Those backups are kept by Apple in your account.
- Files written by the app's “Backup” feature are not encrypted. Mind where you keep or share them.
3. What is sent when you use a feature
When you use these features, information goes to the parties below, who handle it under their own privacy policies.
| Feature | Sent to | What is sent |
|---|---|---|
| Opening pages | The sites you open (and sites they load from) | The same requests as any browser (IP address, user agent, cookies, …) |
| Search | The search engine you chose | What you search for |
| Search suggestions | The search engine you chose (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, …) | What you are typing in the address bar. Can be turned off; never sent from private tabs |
| Ad blocking | Filter list hosts (easylist.to, filters.adtidy.org, secure.fanboy.co.nz, …, and the hosts of lists you add) | Only the requests that fetch and update the lists |
| User scripts | Script hosts (jsDelivr, …) and whatever the scripts connect to | Requests that fetch and update scripts. What a script sends is up to its author |
| Page image list and saving, artwork in the audio notification | The sites the images are on | The same requests as when the page is open (with that page's site cookies) |
| Site icons (iOS) | The site you open | The request for the icon. Not fetched in private tabs |
| Page translation (Google Translate, Android) | The address of the page to translate | |
| On-device translation (Android) | Google (ML Kit) | Downloads of language models. The text is translated on your device and not sent. See “ML Kit” below |
| Translation (iOS) | Apple's translation | As Apple's system handles it (on device once the languages are downloaded) |
| Search by image | Google (Google Lens) | The address of the image you chose |
| AI summary | None | Done by the on-device AI (Gemini Nano on Android, Apple Intelligence on iOS); the page's text is not sent |
| Voice input | Android: the device's speech recognition service (often Google) / iOS: Apple's speech recognition | What you say. Some services process it on their servers |
| Support (in-app purchases) | Google Play / App Store | See section 5 |
ML Kit (Android)
The Android app uses Google's ML Kit for on-device translation, language identification and AI summaries. When you use them, ML Kit sends Google information for diagnostics and usage analytics, such as device and app information, performance metrics, error codes, the configured or identified languages, and per-installation identifiers. Google states that this data is not transferred to third parties. See ML Kit's data disclosure.
4. Device permissions
- Location: when a page asks for it, the app asks you and passes it only to sites you allow (https pages only).
- Microphone and speech recognition (iOS): used only while you search by voice. On Android, the device's own voice input screen is used.
- Camera (iOS): used only when you take a photo or video to upload to a page, and it goes only to that page. On Android, pages' requests for the camera and microphone are refused.
- Photos (iOS): used only to add images you choose to save from a page (add only).
- Face ID (iOS): used to unlock your private tabs.
5. Support (in-app purchases)
“Support” in the app is an in-app purchase through Google Play or the App Store. The store handles the payment; the developer does not receive your name or payment details, only sales totals from the store. Supporting changes nothing about the app's features or how you are treated.
6. What the stores collect
Google Play and the App Store collect things such as download counts and the usage data you agree to share, under their own policies. The developer sees these only as totals.
7. Children
The app does not knowingly collect information from children (it collects no information about anyone).
8. Changes to this policy
Changes are announced on this page, with a new “Last updated” date.
9. Contact
Email you send is used only to reply to you.