Privacy policy

Your family’s moments are yours

The Golden Blink is a journal for parents. This policy explains what the app keeps, where it keeps it, who can see it, and how to delete it.

Effective October 13, 2026. The Golden Blink is made by Lawrence Karchner ("we", "us").

What the app keeps on your phone

Everything you add is saved on your phone first:

• Your children: names, birthdays, the colour you pick for each, and an optional photo.
• Moments: what you write, the date, tags and milestones, and the photos, videos and voice notes you attach.
• Letters: letters you write or record for your children, the recordings, and the text of what you said.
• Your settings, such as the app’s appearance and the family pictures you chose.

This information stays on your phone unless you turn on Family & backup. Your phone’s own backup (iCloud or Google) may include it, depending on your phone’s settings.

Family & backup

If you turn on Family & backup, we store:

• Your account: your email address, which we use to send you sign-in codes, and the name you choose to show your family.
• Your family’s journal: everything listed above, plus who in the family added or last changed something, and your family’s invite code.

The journal is stored with Supabase, our hosting provider, on servers in the United States. It is encrypted when it travels between your phone and the servers and while it is stored. Access rules on the servers let only the members of your family read or change it. Long videos may be compressed before they are uploaded; the original stays on your phone.

Anyone you invite to your family can see and add to the shared journal, including what you added before they joined.

Phone features the app uses

The app asks before using each of these, and you can change your answer in your phone’s settings at any time.

• Camera, photos and microphone: to take and attach photos and videos, and to record voice notes and letters. Optionally, the app saves a copy of the photos and videos you take to your phone’s gallery.
• Speech recognition: when you speak a letter, your phone’s speech service (from Apple or Google) turns it into text. That service may send the audio to Apple or Google to transcribe it, under their privacy policies.
• Notifications: if you turn on the daily nudge, it is scheduled on your phone. We don’t use a push notification service.
• Home screen widget (Android): shows your children’s initials so you can start a moment quickly. It stays on your phone.

When you share a moment as a picture, the picture is made on your phone and goes only where you choose to send it.

App updates

We deliver improvements to the app through Expo’s update service. When the app checks for an update it sends basic technical details, such as the app’s version and your phone’s platform. It never sends your journal.

Subscriptions

If you buy a subscription, Apple or Google handles the payment. We receive whether your subscription is active and when it renews, never your card details.

What we don’t do

• We don’t show ads, and the app contains no advertising or analytics tracking.
• We don’t sell your personal information or share it for advertising.
• We don’t look through your journal. We access it only if you ask us to help with a problem, or if the law requires it.
• We don’t use your journal to train artificial intelligence.

Children

The Golden Blink is for parents and caregivers. It is not meant for children to use, and children can’t create accounts. Parents decide what to record about their children and can change or delete it at any time. If we learn that a child under 13 has created an account, we delete it.

How long we keep it

• On your phone: until you delete it, or delete the app.
• With Family & backup: for as long as your account exists.
• When you delete your account: we remove your account and email address right away. If no one else is in your family, we also delete the family’s journal and every photo, video and voice note backed up for it. If others are in your family, the shared journal stays with them, including what you added. Deleted information can remain in encrypted backups for up to 30 days before it is overwritten.

Your choices and rights

• Change or delete moments, letters and children at any time in the app. Changes sync to your family.
• Delete your account in the app: Settings, Family & backup, Delete account. Without the app, see Delete your account.
• Get a copy of your whole journal in the app: Settings, Export my journal. It saves a page that opens in any web browser, every photo, video and voice note, and a data file other apps can read, to a folder you choose. You can also ask us by email for a copy of what we store for you.
• Stop syncing at any time by signing out or leaving your family. Your journal stays on your phone.

Depending on where you live (for example the European Union, the United Kingdom or California), you may have rights to access, correct, delete or move your information, and to object to how it is used. We honour these requests for everyone, wherever they live. We use your information to provide the service you asked for, and rely on your permission for the phone features above, which you can withdraw. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.

Security

Your family’s journal is protected by sign-in codes sent to your email, by access rules that limit it to your family, and by encryption. No system is perfectly secure, so please keep your phone and email account secure too.

This website

This website doesn’t use cookies, analytics or advertising, and its fonts, pictures and videos are served from the site itself. Like any website, the company that hosts it (Hostinger) keeps standard server logs, such as IP addresses and the pages requested, to keep the site running and secure.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we’ll update the date at the top. For important changes, we’ll also tell you in the app.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or a request about your information: email support@thegoldenblink.app.