Yours, and only yours.
Inkus ("the app") is a private journaling app for iPhone and Mac, made by Giant Mushroom Studio ("we", "us"). This page explains, in plain English, what data the app handles and where it goes. The same answers apply on both platforms.
If anything below is unclear, email [email protected].
What we collect
Nothing. Inkus has no account system, no login, no analytics SDK, no telemetry, and no advertising identifier.
We don't know who you are, how often you open the app, what prompts you tap, or what you write.
Where your entries live
| Where | What | Who can see it |
|---|---|---|
| On your iPhone or Mac | Every entry, photo, scan, doodle, mood, tag, and reflection — including all attachments | Only you (and anyone with your device passcode) |
| In your iCloud private database (if you choose iCloud) | Entries plus all attachments (photos, scans, doodles), syncing between your iPhone and Mac via your private CloudKit container. Toggle Inkus under Settings (or System Settings on Mac) → [Your Name] → iCloud → See All → Inkus. | Only you. Apple stores it in your account; we cannot access it. |
| On a Nextcloud server (if you choose Nextcloud) | Entries plus attachments, in a folder named "Inkus" inside your Nextcloud home directory. Inkus speaks WebDAV directly with the server you provide; we never see your data. | You and whoever administers the Nextcloud server you point Inkus at. |
| On Dropbox (if you choose Dropbox) | Entries plus attachments, in a folder named "Inkus" inside your Dropbox account. Inkus uses a Dropbox PKCE OAuth flow with the files.content.* scopes; we never see your data. |
You and Dropbox. |
| On Google Drive (if you choose Drive) | Entries plus attachments, in an "Inkus" folder created by the app. Inkus uses the drive.file scope, which means we can only see files Inkus itself created — never your wider Drive. |
You and Google. |
| On Inkus's servers | Nothing — we don't have any. | — |
As of v1.2, all attachment kinds — photos, scans, doodles, and voice notes — sync via your chosen provider alongside the text.
How the AI features work
Inkus's AI features — the daily prompt, the mood and tag suggestion, and the weekly reflection — are generated by Apple Intelligence, on your device.
That means:
- Your text is never sent to OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, or any external service.
- Your text is never sent to Apple's servers either, including Private Cloud Compute. Inkus only uses Apple's on-device foundation model.
- If Apple Intelligence is unavailable on your device, Inkus falls back to a curated set of about 80 hand-written prompts bundled inside the app. The fallback never makes a network call either.
You can verify this yourself: every release of Inkus is built from source we can show you on request, and a search for URLSession in the writing or AI code paths returns zero results.
Voice dictation
Voice notes use Apple's on-device Speech framework with requiresOnDeviceRecognition = true. The recogniser runs entirely on your device — no audio or transcript is sent to Apple's servers. The recorded audio is saved as an attachment alongside your entry and rides the same sync provider you've chosen for everything else.
What network requests does the app make?
A complete list, for v1.0:
| Request | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| CloudKit sync (Apple) | When you have iCloud Drive enabled and Inkus is toggled on for iCloud | To sync your entries and attachments via your private iCloud database |
| Nextcloud WebDAV (your server) | When you've selected Nextcloud and entered server + app password | To upload, list, fetch, and delete entries and attachments under /Inkus/ in your Nextcloud home |
| Dropbox API (your account) | When you've selected Dropbox and signed in via PKCE OAuth | Upload, list, fetch, delete entries and attachments under /Inkus/ in your Dropbox |
| Google Drive API (your account) | When you've selected Drive and signed in via PKCE OAuth | Same shape, scoped to files Inkus creates (the drive.file scope, not full-Drive) |
| Tappable links to crisis-helpline websites | Only when you tap them, in Settings → Crisis resources | To open Safari at 988lifeline.org, samaritans.org, or findahelpline.com |
| App Store update checks | Handled by iOS itself | To deliver app updates |
That's it. Inkus has no third-party SDKs, no analytics service, no advertising network, no remote logging, and no crash reporter sending anything beyond what iOS sends to Apple. The cloud-provider rows are your account talking to your provider — Inkus is the courier, not the recipient.
Notifications
If you opt in to notifications during onboarding, Inkus schedules a single recurring local notification each Sunday evening to let you know your weekly reflection is ready. Local notifications never travel through any server.
Permissions Inkus may ask for
| Permission | Why | Optional? |
|---|---|---|
| Notifications | The Sunday weekly-reflection ping | Yes |
| Photos | To attach a photo to an entry | Yes |
| Microphone | To attach a voice note (future feature) | Yes |
| Speech Recognition | To transcribe a voice note (future feature) | Yes |
We never ask for Location, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, Health, or Bluetooth.
Children
Inkus is rated 12+ and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect any data from anyone, of any age.
GDPR / UK GDPR / CCPA
Because Inkus collects no personal data, there is nothing to subject access, port, or delete on our side. Your data lives on your iPhone (and optionally in your iCloud) and you have full control of it through iOS.
If you live in the EU, the UK, or California (or anywhere else with a privacy law), the same answer applies: we have no records about you because we never collected any.
Changes to this policy
If we ever add a feature that changes the data picture — for example, attachment sync, optional cloud backup, or anything else that touches your content — we will update this page first, and the app's "What's New" notes will point to it.
Contact
Giant Mushroom Studio
Jake Watts
[email protected]
For privacy questions, security disclosures, or anything else.