Privacy Policy — Pause & Pray

Effective date: October 4, 2026

Pause & Pray is an Android app that invites you to pray before a distracting app opens. This policy explains, in plain words, what the app does and does not do with information. The short version: your data stays on your phone. We run no servers, we have no accounts, and we cannot see anything you do in the app. What does leave the phone is Google's: the purchase, through Google Play, a rating or review if you choose to leave one in Google Play's own card, and technical diagnostics that Google's on-device tools send to Google — described under "What uses the internet" below.

The accessibility service

The app lock works through an Android accessibility service. When you switch apps, Android tells the service the technical name of the app now on screen (for example, com.instagram.android) — nothing more.

• The service compares that name, on your phone, against the list of apps you chose to lock. If it matches, the prayer screen opens.
• It reads no screen content, no text, no messages, no passwords and no screenshots — only the app's package name.
• The name is never sent anywhere. There is no "anywhere": the app has no server.

So that one prayer covers one visit, the service also holds two things in its memory while it is running: the name of the app you are in right now — a single name, replaced when you move to another app and dropped when you reach the home screen or the screen goes dark, never a list and never a history of where you have been — and a note that you have already prayed for an app, which expires on its own, so that opening a keyboard, a photo picker or a permission prompt inside that app does not ask you to pray a second time.

To tell "you switched to another app" apart from "a keyboard opened on top of the app you were already in", the service asks Android which of your installed apps are launchers, which are keyboards, and which have a home-screen icon. Those lists describe the apps on your phone, not you, and they are worked out afresh each time the service starts.

None of it is written to storage and none of it leaves the phone. It lives in the running app's memory and is gone when the service stops.

You turn this service on yourself in Android's accessibility settings, after the app explains it, and you can turn it off there at any time.

What the app stores on your phone

Everything below lives only in the app's private storage on your device. We have no copy and no way to read it.

• The first name you enter, used only to greet you.
• The list of apps you chose to lock.
• Your prayer style, prayer book and Bible translation choices.
• Your Bible reading position, prayer count and streak.
• Your daily check-ins: the closeness rating you picked and anything you wrote or dictated.
• Whether you bought the app and, if you chose the two free days, when they began and when they end, used only to work out when the app lock needs the purchase and until when the half price is offered.
• When the app last asked Google Play to show its rating card, so that it asks no more than once in four months.

Deleting it: uninstalling the app, or clearing its storage in Android settings, permanently deletes all of it. There is nothing to delete anywhere else.

The microphone

The check-in screen has a "Tap to speak" button. If you use it, Android asks for microphone permission, and your speech is turned into text on the phone itself using Google's on-device speech engine. Your voice is not sent to us or to anyone; the finished text is stored only in your journal on the phone. If you never tap the button, the microphone is never requested and never used. (Google Play services may download the speech model once; that download is a model file coming to your phone, not your voice leaving it.)

What uses the internet

Reading the Bible does not. The whole Bible is inside the app — every verse of it, in each translation offered. Opening a verse reads a file on your phone. Nothing is requested, so nothing is exposed: not which verse you read, not how often you pray, not your IP address. Earlier versions fetched verses from a public text collection; that is gone.

Three Google libraries the app is built on do use it, or hand you to Google Play, which does:

1. Diagnostics from Google's ML Kit. Speaking your check-in and reading a printed prayer from a photo both run on the phone with Google's ML Kit. ML Kit sends Google technical information about itself: this app's package name, the ML Kit version, your phone's language setting, the language the speech engine is set to, and an ID created at random for this installation of the app — not your name, not your Google account. It can be sent when a screen checks whether speaking is available, even if you never tap the microphone. Google says it uses this for diagnostics and usage analytics of ML Kit, encrypts it in transit and does not pass it to third parties. It never includes your voice, anything you write or dictate, your photos, your prayers or the apps you lock. It is Google's, not ours; we receive none of it. Google describes it at https://developers.google.com/ml-kit/android-data-disclosure.
2. Google Play purchases. The one-time purchase is handled by Google Play, at full price or at half price during the offer that follows your two free days. Payment details go to Google, never to us — the app only learns "purchased" or "not purchased" and stores that flag on the phone, and asks Google Play for its prices so it can show them to you. The two free days themselves are counted on your phone: they involve no payment and nothing is sent to Google Play for them. Google's billing library also sends Google diagnostics of its own about the phone (such as its model, country and language). Google's own privacy policy governs the transaction.
3. Google Play's rating card. Once you have written a check-in on a few different days, the app may ask Google Play, just after you save one, to show its own card for rating the app — no more than once in four months. Google Play decides whether the card appears. Whatever you choose there, stars or words, goes to Google Play as your review, under Google's terms, never to us: the app is not told whether you rated it or what you wrote, and sends nothing itself.

What the app does not do

• No accounts and no sign-in.
• No analytics of ours, no trackers of ours, no advertising and no ad SDKs. Google's ML Kit and billing libraries send diagnostics of their own to Google; see "What uses the internet" above.
• No selling or sharing of personal data, and nothing sent to us — we have no server to receive it.
• No reading of notifications, messages or screen content.
• Notifications: one optional daily check-in reminder, and one optional notice when your two free days are over and the half-price offer opens — both created on your phone, shown only if you allow notifications.

Children

Pause & Pray is made for adults and is not directed at children under 13. Regardless of age, the app asks for no personal information and sends nothing to us; the only data that leaves the phone is Google's diagnostics, purchases and any review you choose to leave on Google Play, described above.

Changes to this policy

If the app ever starts doing something this policy does not cover, the policy will be updated first and the effective date above will change.

Contact

Questions about privacy: support@hackneyhackers.com