Version 10.0 · 18 October 2026 · English is the binding version · replaces version 9.0 of the same day · applies to the companion application for Android, not to the desktop application
This policy describes the companion application as it stood on 18 October 2026. Where the application changed at a particular version, the text says so at the point where it matters. Section 13 says what we do when a newer version changes what is recorded.
The companion app reads what your phone already knows about app usage, keeps it on the phone, and has no way to send it anywhere — it has no internet permission at all.
RiD · Ĺubomír Roth · Emanuel Veit-Gasse 20, 7423 Pinkafeld, Austria
Contact: hello@madebyrid.com
We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer. We are not required to, and appointing one voluntarily would bring duties that do not fit a business of this size.
It reads what Android already keeps. Android records which apps you used and when. The companion app reads that record through the usage-access permission you grant, and keeps a copy on the phone. It does not watch your screen, read your content, or see inside any app.
It records what you type into it yourself: named periods, interruptions, plan blocks, and your settings.
It records your audit notes. An audit asks you about a block of time — "14:05–14:30 — how was it?" — and keeps your answer: its start and end, the name you give it, and three things you say about yourself: whether it was planned or came up, how much it cost you, and whether it moved you forward.
An audit note records how something felt at the time you answered. It cannot be edited or deleted on its own, and that is deliberate: a note you change a day later is a memory, not a measurement. The audit puts its result in front of you; what you make of it is yours.
The app checks every fifteen minutes whether it should ask you — in two cases, and in no others.
The first: while an audit that asks is running. To decide whether to ask, the check reads Android's own record of when the screen went on and off, when the phone was locked and unlocked, and which app was in front. Of that, only one thing is kept: how far it has already asked. The check stops when the audit ends, when the app starts, and by itself as soon as it finds no running audit — before it reads anything.
The second: if you switch on the soft setting below the audit. It is off when the app is installed, and nothing happens until you switch it on yourself. With it on, the same fifteen-minute check runs outside an audit as well. In that mode it keeps only when the screen went on and off and when the phone was locked and unlocked — which app was in front is read and thrown away, because the soft setting never asks about an application. It asks only after you come back from a break of at least ten minutes that has no name yet, and it asks without the three ratings.
This is the one place where switching something on makes the app read more often rather than less. We say so here rather than in a release note. Switching it off stops the check entirely: the app removes it from Android's schedule, and the moment it was switched on is deleted with it.
A span you are asked about can be named piece by piece. Each piece can carry its own name and its own note, so one span may end up with several.
It can show you the notes you wrote on your computer. They are read from the sealed file your computer writes into the shared folder and kept as a copy on the phone — replaced at most every half hour when it is shown, and freshly before every question.
It records drives, only if you switch that on. See section 5.
It records nothing else. No location, no contacts, no messages, no photos, no advertising identifier.
| Permission | What it is for | When it is asked |
|---|---|---|
| Usage access | To read Android's own record of which apps were used and when. Without it the app has nothing to show | At setup |
| Nearby devices (Bluetooth) | Only to notice that the phone has connected to a car audio system, so that a drive can be recorded | Only when you switch drive recording on. Not before |
| Notifications | To show the question an audit asks. The notification never contains an app name, not even once the phone is unlocked; its public form on the lock screen reads only "RiD Flow has a question" | When you first switch on something that asks — an audit, or the soft setting below it. Not before |
| Seeing which apps are installed | Removed in version 0.66.0 — the app does not hold it any more. Up to version 0.65.0 the app held the broad permission that lets an application see every app on the phone. Android grants that one when the app is installed, without ever asking you | Up to 0.65.0: granted at install, without a prompt. Not held any more |
| Internet | Not requested at all. The app does not have this permission, and therefore cannot send anything anywhere, to us or to anyone else | never |
What replaced it, from version 0.66.0. Instead of being able to see every app, the app now names in advance the kinds of app it wants to see: apps that have a launch icon, home screens, the dialler screen, and by name Android Auto together with a few Google and system services. This is not a permission in the sense of the permission dialog — Android does not ask you about it, and there is nothing for you to grant or refuse. It is a declaration that limits what the app is shown.
What it is for, unchanged: to turn the package names Android returns into app names and icons — for the list of what may leave the phone, and for the screen that opens when you answer a question. Measured on the owner's phone at the changeover: all 67 apps kept their name.
What you may notice. An app the companion is not shown now appears in the list as "uninstalled or not visible to this app", where up to version 0.65.0 it would simply have read "uninstalled". The second wording is the honest one: the app cannot tell those two cases apart, and up to 0.65.0 it stated the one it could not know.
This is the part that differs most from the desktop, so it is set out in full.
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| App-usage events read from Android | Only as long as Android itself keeps them. Each time the app reads, it replaces its copy with what Android returns — it does not build up an archive. If Android returns nothing, the existing copy is left alone rather than erased |
| How far back that reaches | Android decides, not us. It is a rolling window whose length depends on your Android version and your phone's manufacturer; on the device we tested it was about nine days. We cannot state a figure that holds for your phone |
| What you typed in yourself — named periods, interruptions, plan blocks, settings | Indefinitely, until you delete it. Nothing expires |
| Your audit notes | Indefinitely, until you delete everything. They are not removed on their own, and a single note cannot be removed by itself — see section 2 |
| How far an audit has already asked | Until the next audit replaces it |
| How often it writes to your folder | A setting of its own, kept until you change it or remove everything. It is in no export, because exports do not read settings |
| The soft setting, and the moment you switched it on | Until you switch it off — then both are deleted — or until you remove everything. Neither is in any export, because exports do not read settings |
| The copy of the notes you wrote on your computer | Replaced at most every half hour from the sealed file when it is shown, and freshly before every question; removed with everything else |
| The device entry | Indefinitely, until you delete it |
| Drives | Until you use "Forget every drive on this phone" |
| Export copies in the app's cache | Deleted after use. The readable copy is removed as soon as the export is done; a sealed copy that was shared is removed one hour later, because removing it at once would break the transfer in the app you sent it to |
When the app reads from Android, in full:
Reading and writing are one job with one rhythm: it reads Android's record of the last 30 days, keeps what is new, and then writes the sealed copy. If you have not chosen a folder, that job does not exist at all.
How often that scheduled job runs, you set yourself. Under Write every … minutes you can choose anything from 15 minutes to 6 hours; if you change nothing it is every 15 minutes. The lower limit of 15 minutes is Android's own for repeating background work, not ours.
This is not the same fifteen minutes as in section 2. That one is the check whether the app should ask you something, it runs only during an audit or with the soft setting on, and it is not affected by what you set here. The other occasions listed above are not affected by it either — opening the app reads straight away, whatever you have set.
Earlier versions wrote on a fixed schedule — every six hours up to version 0.60.2, every hour in 0.60.3, every 15 minutes in 0.63.0. Version 1.0 to 5.0 of this policy named six hours. From 0.60.3 that was no longer correct, and this version says so rather than quietly replacing the number. Each read asks Android for the last 30 days and keeps whatever Android returns of that.
No vehicle is recognised. The app does not know which car you are in, and it does not store one. What it notices is that the phone connected to some Bluetooth device that identifies itself as car audio or a hands-free unit.
You can mark days as private.
What that does: those days are removed from the copy that leaves the phone — events, named periods, interruptions, drives, plan blocks and your audit notes alike. A test enforces that, so no new kind of record can quietly escape it.
What that does not do, and we would rather you know it: the data for those days is still recorded and still stored on the phone. Marking a day private is an export setting, not a recording setting. The app shows you every day in the list, private ones included, and its preview shows exactly the cleaned copy that would be sent.
Anything on a home screen can be read by whoever can see the screen, so this is stated exactly.
✓ HH:MM.14:10–15:40 · 1h 30m — together with category buttons such as household or commute.HH:MM noted.14:05–14:30. Android decides that, not we. What we decided is that no app name is ever in there to be shown.Nothing, by itself. The app has no internet permission.
Two things leave only because you make them leave:
| You do this | What happens |
|---|---|
| Write to a shared folder | The app writes a sealed file into the folder you chose, so that the desktop application can read it. It is unreadable without the code your devices share. It does this as often as you set — see section 4. Whoever can see that folder sees a new modification time that often, without being able to read anything in it. Since version 0.63.0 the app also reads the sealed notes file your computer writes there, before it asks you anything |
| Use Android's share menu | The app hands the sealed file to whatever app you pick. Android decides which apps it offers; the app releases that one file and nothing else. Whoever receives it cannot open it without your code, so in practice this moves the file to another device of your own |
Without the shared code, nothing is written or shared at all, and the app tells you why rather than failing silently.
Your data is not included in Google's backups. From version 0.65.0 the app is built so that Android leaves it out — both the cloud backup Google keeps for you and the direct transfer to a new phone that Android offers while you set one up.
One limit, and it is about the past rather than what happens from now on. Versions up to 0.64.0 excluded only the cloud backup; since Android 12 that setting no longer covers the direct transfer. If you already moved to a new phone with one of those versions and accepted the transfer, what came along is on that phone. This version stops it happening again. It cannot undo what has already happened — on that phone, Remove everything on this phone is the way.
"Remove everything on this phone" removes what the app holds: the copy of Android's usage record, everything you typed in, your audit notes and the copy of the ones from your computer, your drives, your settings, the device identifier and the shared code. Before it runs it tells you how much there is, and it warns you about the code — if this is the only device that still has it, the files your other devices wrote are no longer readable by anyone.
What it cannot reach, and says so:
Three narrower actions remain for the cases where you do not want to remove everything:
You can also use Android itself at any time: Settings → Apps → RiD Flow → Storage → Clear data, or uninstall the app.
Version 1.0 of this policy, published on the same day, said there was no way to remove everything from the phone. That was correct when it was written and stopped being correct with version 0.57.0 of the app. It is corrected here rather than quietly dropped.
You can ask us for access (Article 15), correction (16), erasure (17), restriction (18) and portability (20), and you can object to processing based on legitimate interest (21).
The honest limitation is the same as for the desktop application: what the app holds is on your phone, and we never receive any of it. There is nothing for us to give you, correct or delete. What we hold is your licence record and any correspondence, and those rights apply in full there.
Write to hello@madebyrid.com. We answer within one month.
If you think we are handling your data unlawfully, you may complain to the Austrian Data Protection Authority (Datenschutzbehörde, Barichgasse 40–42, 1030 Vienna, dsb@dsb.gv.at), or to the authority where you live.
RiD Flow is not aimed at children. We do not knowingly process data of persons under 14 years of age, the age limit that applies in Austria.
We will publish a new version of this policy at madebyrid.com/privacy-phone before the app changes what it records or where it writes — not afterwards. The version and date at the top tell you which one you are reading.
RiD Flow Companion Privacy Policy, Version 10.0, 18 October 2026.