Samaru Privacy Policy

Last updated: November 3, 2026

Summary

Samaru is an offline-first journal app published by Final Frontier Ventures (FFV) (“FFV”, “we”, “us”). This policy covers the Samaru mobile app and the website at samaru.app.

No account. Samaru has no sign-up, login or user profile.
No journal sync. We do not run a server that stores or syncs your journal. We never receive your entries, photos, voice notes, moods or habits.
Encrypted on your device. Your journal is stored in an encrypted database on your phone, and attached media is encrypted too.
The app only sends data off your device in the cases listed under Data that leaves your device: crash diagnostics, an optional weather lookup, and app-store purchases.

Data the app stores on your device

Journal entries, tags, moods, habits, sentiment scores and, if you add them, location coordinates and weather, stored in a local database encrypted with SQLCipher. Its key is kept in your device's secure key storage (Android Keystore or iOS Keychain).
Photos and voice notes you attach, stored in the app's private storage and encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM. Photos added in very early versions, before media encryption, stay sandboxed but unencrypted unless re-imported.
Identifying metadata (such as GPS location, camera model and capture time) is removed from JPEG, PNG and WebP photos before they are stored or shared. Other formats, such as HEIC, are kept as they are.
The unencrypted copy that the camera, photo picker or recorder hands to Samaru is deleted as soon as the encrypted copy exists. A photo you pick from your photo library stays in that library, and on some Android phones the camera app also saves its own copy to the gallery. Samaru cannot encrypt or remove those copies, and tells you about both.
App settings, such as theme, reminder time, backup schedule and the start of your free trial, stored in the app's local preferences.

Device permissions

Samaru asks for each permission only when you use the feature that needs it.

Camera and photos: to attach photos you take or pick.
Microphone: to record voice notes. Recording happens on the device and audio is never transmitted.
Location: only when you tap “Add location” on an entry. It is never collected automatically or in the background.
Notifications: for optional daily reminders, scheduled on the device.
Biometrics or device credential: for the optional app lock.
Notification access (Android only, off by default): if you turn on Notification Volume Logging, Samaru counts how many notifications arrive each day. It never reads a notification's sender, title, content or source app. Counts stay in the encrypted database and are never transmitted. You can turn it off in Samaru or revoke the permission in Android Settings at any time.

Crash diagnostics (Firebase Crashlytics)

When the app crashes or hits a serious error, it sends a crash report to Google's Firebase Crashlytics so we can fix the problem. A report contains technical information such as the stack trace, app version, device model, operating system version, the state of the app at the time, and a random installation identifier. Crash reports are designed not to include your journal content, passwords or encryption keys. Google processes this data under the Firebase privacy terms and keeps crash data for up to 90 days.

Weather lookup (Open-Meteo, optional)

When you add a location to an entry, Samaru rounds your coordinates to two decimal places (about 1 km) and sends only those rounded coordinates to the Open-Meteo weather service to get the current temperature and conditions. No API key or account is used, so no persistent identifier ties the request to you, and no journal content or exact coordinates are sent. This happens only when you take that action.

One-time purchase (Google Play and App Store)

Samaru includes a free trial, after which a one-time in-app purchase unlocks creating new entries. The purchase is handled entirely by Google Play (or the App Store on iPhone) under that store's own privacy policy. We never see or store your payment details. The app only receives confirmation that the purchase was made and remembers it on your device.

Things you choose to send

Backups. Backups are encrypted with a password you choose before they leave the app. If you save them to a cloud-synced folder, that transfer is handled by your operating system and storage provider, which never receive the password.
Sharing an entry. When you share an entry, Samaru creates a password-protected, signed file and hands it to your device's share sheet. Who receives it is up to you. Photos are included unless you turn them off; location is left out unless you turn it on.
Streak card. The shareable streak image shows only your streak, best streak and the date, never journal content.

What we do not do

We do not sell, rent or share personal data with advertisers or data brokers.
The app contains no advertising and no advertising or analytics SDKs.
We do not use your journal content to train AI models. Sentiment analysis runs on your device.

Security

Local database encryption with SQLCipher, keyed from the device's secure key storage.
Photos and voice notes encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM.
Backups encrypted with AES-256-GCM using a key derived from your password (Argon2id).
An optional biometric or device-credential lock.
On Android, screenshots and the recent-apps preview of Samaru are blocked.
On iPhone, Samaru covers its screen in the app switcher and while the screen is being recorded or mirrored.

Retention and deletion

Your journal stays on your device until you delete it. You can delete individual entries and media in the app, or remove everything by uninstalling Samaru or clearing its app data. Because we never receive your journal, we cannot recover it for you, and there is nothing for us to delete on a server. Backup files you made stay wherever you saved them until you delete them. Crash reports are deleted by Firebase after 90 days.

Your controls

Create, restore and schedule encrypted backups.
Import entries from Day One and Diarium exports.
Delete entries and media.
Turn reminders, auto backup and Notification Volume Logging on or off.
Choose whether to add a location, and so whether a weather lookup happens.

Children

Samaru is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

The samaru.app website

This website is a static page. It does not host or receive your journal data.
Google Analytics, only if you agree. When you first visit, a banner asks whether we may use Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages are read. Nothing is loaded and no cookies are set until you tap Accept. If you accept, Google Analytics 4 sets first-party cookies (_ga and _ga_<ID>, kept for up to two years) and sends Google page views, approximate location derived from your IP address, and browser and device type. Google signals and ad personalisation are turned off, and advertising consent is never granted. Google processes this data under the Google Privacy Policy, and we keep analytics data for the shortest retention period Google Analytics allows.
If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat that as “no” and don’t show the banner.
Changing your mind. Use Cookie settings in the footer of any page to accept or reject at any time. Rejecting deletes the Google Analytics cookies and stops further measurement.
Your consent choice (key samaru_consent_v1) and, if you switch between light and dark mode, your theme (key samaru_theme_v1) are remembered in your browser’s local storage and never sent to us.
The site is served by Cloudflare, which processes standard request data such as your IP address to deliver and protect the site. Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, which receives your IP address when you load the page.
Website analytics never include anything from the Samaru app or your journal.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we will update it on this page and change the “Last updated” date above.

Contact

Samaru is published by Final Frontier Ventures (FFV). For privacy requests or questions about this policy, email info@ffvlk.com.