no legal maze
What stays yours
Here is exactly where your pages live, and the one thing we count.
Your pages stay yours. Moss has no account, no login and no sign-up. Your words, photos, voice notes, moods and journal names live on your iPhone and, when you turn it on, in your own iCloud. There is no Moss server holding any of it, so not even we can read them.
The one thing that leaves your phone for us is an anonymous count of which features get used: “a voice note was recorded”, never the voice. You can turn it off.
Who we are
Moss is made by Dew, the small team behind the Dew cycle tracker. Dew is responsible for this policy and for the anonymous usage counts described below. Write to hello@trydew.app with any question; one person reads every note.
At a glance
| Stays on this iPhone, and in your own iCloud when it’s on | your words, photos and videos, voice notes, drawings, moods and skies, journal names, what you ask Moss |
|---|---|
| Stays on this iPhone only | your Moss code and every journal’s own code (not even iCloud gets them) |
| Things we never have | an account, your name, your email, your location, an advertising ID, your IP address |
| The one thing we count | which features get used, anonymously, and you can stop it |
What lives on your device
Everything you put into Moss is stored in Moss’s own storage on your iPhone (or iPad, or Mac): pages, photos, videos, stickers, drawings, voice notes and their words, moods and skies, threads, bookmarks, journal names and settings. Moss also keeps its own safety copies on the device (one a day for the last week, and one from each of the last three months), so a damaged file can be replaced.
Widgets, the Lock Screen recording, reminders and alerts show a photo or a mood, never your words, unless you turn on “Words in widgets and alerts”. Reminders are scheduled by your iPhone itself; nothing passes through us.
iCloud
Keep in step with iCloud. If you are signed in to iCloud, Moss keeps your pages in step across your own iPhones and iPads through your own iCloud: the pages go to your private iCloud database, and photos, videos, drawings and recordings go to Moss’s private folder in your iCloud Drive (it doesn’t show up in the Files app). Only your Apple Account can open them, not us. This is on unless you turn it off in Moss › Settings › iCloud. If your iPhone signs in to a different Apple Account, Moss pauses rather than move your pages into someone else’s iCloud.
iCloud Backup. If your iPhone’s own iCloud Backup is on, it includes Moss’s pages and safety copies, like any other app. That backup is Apple’s and yours; we never see it.
Your Moss code and journal codes are kept in your iPhone’s Keychain for this device only. They never go to iCloud.
What we count, and how to stop it
Moss sends a small, anonymous signal when a feature is used, so we know what to make better. Every signal is a name from a fixed list (for example “a page was started”, “a voice note was recorded”, “Search or Ask was used”, “a setting was changed”), sometimes with a rounded bucket from a fixed list (for example how long a voice note was, as a range, or roughly how many pages an import brought). No free text and no exact numbers are ever inside.
Each batch of signals also carries:
- a random ID made on your iPhone when Moss first runs. It isn’t your Apple ID or any device ID, and it is deleted when you delete Moss;
- the Moss version and build, the iOS version, your language and region setting, the model of device (like “iPhone16,2”, not which iPhone), and your time-zone offset, so a count lands on the right day;
- the time each signal happened.
Signals are never your words, titles, photos, voice, moods, the dates of your entries, journal names, what you searched or asked, or anything Apple Health holds.
They go to our own counter at in.trydew.app, which runs on Cloudflare and stores the signals in a Cloudflare database. It never reads, logs or stores your IP address; the only thing it keeps about the connection is the two-letter country Cloudflare reports. There are no third-party analytics, advertising, attribution or crash SDKs in Moss, and nothing is used to track you across apps or websites, sold or shared.
To stop it: in Moss, open Settings › What stays yours › See every signal, and tap “stop sending usage”. It takes effect at once. One final signal records that counting was turned off, and nothing is sent after it. The same screen lists every signal Moss can send, in plain words.
Because the random ID isn’t tied to you, we can’t pick “your” signals out from anyone else’s. Deleting Moss throws the ID away.
Apple Health
Apple Health is optional, and Moss uses only what you allow on Health’s own permission sheet:
- Reads sleep, steps, time in daylight and mindful minutes, only to show them beside your pages and in Patterns.
- Writes the sky you pick for a day to Health as a State of Mind, with any feeling words Health has a name for. Never your words.
What Moss reads from Health stays on your iPhone. Moss never uploads it, never puts it in the usage counts, and never uses it for advertising or anything else. You can change what Moss may read or write at any time in the Health app or iPhone Settings › Health.
Microphone and speech
The microphone is used only while you record. A voice note keeps the audio on your page (on your iPhone, and in your own iCloud when it’s on). “Speak to write” turns what you say into words on your page and keeps no recording.
Speech is turned into words on your iPhone, by Apple’s on-device speech recognition. On iOS 26 and later your iPhone may download Apple’s speech model for your language once; your audio is not part of that. If your language can’t be recognised on the device, Moss says so rather than send your voice to a server.
Photos and camera
Photos and videos are chosen with Apple’s own picker, so Moss sees only the ones you pick and gets no access to the rest of your library. Moss keeps its own copy of each one you add.
The camera is used only to scan pages from a paper diary. The scan, and the handwriting read from it by Apple’s on-device text recognition, stay on your iPhone.
Apple Intelligence, on your iPhone
Titles, a gentle follow-up question, sky suggestions, the sentence in Patterns and Ask your pages are worked out on your iPhone by Apple’s on-device model. Moss sends nothing away to think, and your pages are never used to train anyone’s model. Titles, questions and look-backs can be turned off in Settings › Moss remembers.
Writing Tools, Image Playground and Genmoji are Apple’s own features, which you choose to use. They run under Apple’s privacy terms (which may include Apple’s Private Cloud Compute), not through us.
The lock
You choose what keeps Moss: open always, a six-digit Moss code of its own, or whatever opens your iPhone. The Moss code, journal codes and the count of wrong tries live in the Keychain on this device only. Face ID and Touch ID are handled by iOS; Moss never sees your face or fingerprint, only a yes or no.
Bringing pages in, and taking them out
Imports from Day One, Apple’s Journal, a copy from Moss, or plain text and Markdown are read on your iPhone. Nothing is uploaded. “Take everything with you” makes a copy on your iPhone (Markdown for each page, your photos and recordings beside it, and a moss.json), and it goes nowhere until you choose where to put it.
Dew, on the same phone
If you also use Dew, you can connect the two apps. They meet only in a shared space on your iPhone, never over the network. Dew can offer a small card for a day (cycle day and phase, the evening’s moods, sleep and energy); Moss shares with Dew only what you allow, and each kind of sharing is off until you turn it on. Flow, intimacy, tests and contraception never cross.
Purchases
Moss Plus and Moss, forever are bought through Apple’s App Store. Apple handles the payment; we never receive your name, Apple ID, card or billing details. Moss asks the App Store on your device whether Plus is active. The usage counts record only that a plan was started, restored or ended, and which kind (monthly, yearly or forever).
Crash reports
Moss has no crash-reporting SDK. If you have chosen “Share with App Developers” in iPhone Settings › Privacy & Security › Analytics & Improvements, Apple may pass us anonymous crash reports and performance data. That is Apple’s setting, and you can change it there.
Check it yourself
iPhone Settings › Privacy & Security › App Privacy Report lists every address Moss contacts: Apple, for iCloud and the App Store, and our anonymous counter, and nothing else.
Children
Moss is not directed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect anything from anyone younger. Since we don’t collect personal information from anyone, there is nothing of a child’s for us to hold.
Deleting everything
- In Moss: Settings › What stays yours › Delete everything. It removes every page in every journal, photos, videos and voice notes, the safety copies, your Moss code and journal codes, your settings, and the skies Moss wrote to Apple Health. With iCloud on, your pages also leave your iCloud and your other devices. A device backup Apple already made still holds them until it is replaced, or until you delete it in iPhone Settings › iCloud.
- Deleting the app removes everything Moss holds on that device. Anything in your iCloud stays there until you remove it in iPhone Settings › [your name] › iCloud › Manage Storage.
- On our side there is nothing to delete. We never had your pages.
Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us what we hold about you, and to correct or delete it. The honest answer is that we hold no personal information about you: no account, no name, no email, no IP address, and usage signals we can’t link back to you. If you write to us by email, we use your message only to reply, and delete it if you ask.
Changes
If anything here changes in a way that affects you, we’ll update this page and its date, and tell you in the app first.
Contact
Questions, concerns, or corrections: hello@trydew.app.