Privacy Policy
Last updated: 30 August 2026
The short version.
Frictify has no accounts and no servers. The apps you choose to monitor, the intentions you pick, any note you write for yourself, and your session and usage history are stored only on your phone and are never uploaded anywhere.
There is one exception, and it is not about your behaviour: crash reports. If Frictify crashes or hits a bug, an anonymous diagnostic report is sent to Firebase Crashlytics so it can be fixed. That report can include which of the monitored apps was on screen when an overlay failed. It never includes your intentions or your usage history.
Frictify is free. It sells nothing, has no in-app purchases, and shows no ads, so no payment information is involved at any point.
Who this is from
Frictify is an Android app that adds a moment of friction before you open apps you have
chosen to be more deliberate about. This policy covers the app published as
com.frictify.app. Questions go to
frictify.app@gmail.com.
What stays on your device
All of the following is written to your phone's private app storage and is never transmitted:
| What | Why it exists |
|---|---|
| The apps you chose to monitor | So Frictify knows when to step in. |
| Your session history — the intention you picked, how long you asked for, how long you actually spent, and whether you extended | So the Analytics tab can show you your own patterns over time. |
| The note you can write for each app, shown when your time is up in place of one of Frictify's own lines | So the end of a session can say something in your words rather than ours. Optional, and empty by default. |
| Daily usage totals for the monitored apps — time in the foreground and how many times each was opened | Android only keeps about a week of this, so Frictify archives it locally to show longer trends. |
| Counts of how often a prompt was shown, dismissed, or unlocked | To show whether the friction is actually changing anything. |
This data is deliberately excluded from Android's cloud backup and from device-to-device transfer, so it is not copied to your Google account or to a new phone. Reinstalling Frictify starts genuinely clean.
What leaves your device
One thing, and it is not a record of what you did: crash diagnostics. There is no analytics SDK, no advertising, no in-app purchases, no account system, and no server that Frictify sends your activity to.
Crash diagnostics
Sent through Firebase Crashlytics (a Google service). A diagnostic report can contain:
- The error itself — its message and stack trace, and which part of the app failed.
- Your device model, Android version, and the app version.
- Whether each of the three permissions was granted at the time, as true/false values.
-
Which tab you were last on — for example
analytics— to help reproduce the failure. - If an overlay failed to display: the package name of the monitored app it was trying to appear over — one of the fixed set of apps Frictify supports. This is needed to reproduce the bug. It describes what the app was configured to watch, not a record of what you did.
- A random identifier that Crashlytics generates for the installation. It is not tied to you, your Google account, or your advertising ID, and Frictify never sets a user ID.
Crash reports never contain your intentions, the note you wrote, your session durations or timestamps, your open counts, or any content from your screen. Google processes this data as described in the Firebase privacy documentation, and retains crash data on its own schedule.
The accessibility service
Frictify uses Android's accessibility service for one job: noticing the moment a monitored app comes to the foreground, so the intention prompt can appear before you start scrolling. There is no other Android API that can do this at the moment it happens.
This is what that access is limited to, by configuration and not merely by promise:
- It receives only "a window came to the front" events, and reads only the package name from them.
- It cannot read the content of your screen. The capability to do so is switched off, so no text, messages, passwords, or images are available to it.
- It cannot see what you type, in any app. The one thing you can type into Frictify — the note described above — you enter in Frictify's own screens, the ordinary way; the accessibility service is not involved and never sees it.
- It cannot list the apps installed on your device. Frictify can only ask about a fixed, published list of supported apps, and it does not request the Android permission that would allow a full scan.
Permissions, and what each is for
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
| Accessibility service | Detects when a monitored app opens, so the prompt can appear in time, and draws the intention prompt and the "Time's Up" screen on top of that app. |
| Usage access | Measures how long you spend in the monitored apps, for the Analytics tab and to recover a session if the app is restarted. |
| Close background apps | Used only when you tap "Close App Now" or "Not now" to leave an app. |
| Internet | Used only to send crash reports. |
Keeping and deleting your data
Your data stays on your device for as long as the app is installed. Because there is no server copy, uninstalling Frictify deletes all of it. You can also clear it at any time from Android's Settings → Apps → Frictify → Storage → Clear data. Crash reports already sent to Crashlytics are held by Google under its own retention schedule; write to frictify.app@gmail.com if you want them removed.
Children
Frictify is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect information from them.
Changes
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and material changes will be noted in the app's release notes.