Effective July 13, 2026 · website sections updated November 2026
The short version
But First collects no data. No accounts, no analytics, no tracking, no servers of ours. Everything the app knows lives on your phone and stays there.
What the app can and can’t see
But First is built on Apple’s Screen Time framework (Family Controls). When you choose which apps to lock and which apps count toward your daily minutes, iOS hands the app anonymous tokens instead of app names. That means:
- The app never learns which apps you picked.
- The app never sees what you read, watch, type, or browse.
- The counting of your minutes is done by iOS itself, on your device.
The only things But First stores, on your device and in the app’s own private storage, are your daily goal, today’s progress, your settings, and the anonymous tokens above. Deleting the app deletes all of it.
Purchases
Pro is sold through Apple’s App Store. Payment is handled entirely by Apple; we never see your payment details, name, or address. Your purchase receipt is verified on-device through Apple’s StoreKit. See Apple’s privacy policy for how Apple handles App Store transactions.
Notifications
The “you’re done for today” notification is generated locally on your phone. It never touches a server.
The website (butfirst.app)
This website is hosted on WordPress.com, which, like most web hosts, keeps standard server logs and may set basic cookies. See Automattic’s privacy policy for details. The pages load their typefaces from Google Fonts, so your browser connects to Google to fetch them. We don’t add any analytics or tracking of our own. The only form on the site is the newsletter sign-up below. If you email us, we’ll have your email address because you sent it to us. We use it to reply, nothing else.
The Footnotes newsletter (website only)
The website, not the app, collects one thing, and only if you choose to give it: your email address, when you subscribe to Footnotes, our short monthly newsletter. Subscriptions are handled by WordPress.com (Automattic), which stores your address and sends the newsletter for us; see Automattic’s privacy policy. We use your address only to send Footnotes, and we don’t sell it. Every email has an unsubscribe link, and you can unsubscribe at any time. The app itself still collects nothing.
Children
But First is a self-directed tool, not a parental-control product, and it is not directed at children.
Changes
If this policy ever changes, the new version will be posted at this address with a new date. The app doesn’t collect contact information, so we can’t notify app users directly, but material changes to an app that collects nothing would be quite the plot twist.
Contact
Questions? Email asilverness@gmail.com.