Side Quest — Privacy Policy

The short version

• Side Quest works without an account. Without one, what you create stays on your device.
• Signing in is optional and only possible with Apple. It lets the app save your adventures, memories and photos to your account.
• No analytics, no advertising, no tracking, no advertising identifier, no location.
• We do not sell your data or share it for advertising.
• Your personal photos are never sent to the AI that writes chapter readings.

Using Side Quest without an account

If you don’t sign in, your quests, memories, notes, ratings, photos and preferences are stored on your device only. Deleting the app removes what the app stored.

The one exception is an idea you choose to suggest to Side Quest, described below.

Signing in with Apple

Sign in with Apple is the only way to create an account. The app does not ask for your name, an email address or a password. Apple gives our authentication provider an identity token, which becomes your account’s identifier. Depending on the choice you make in Apple’s sign-in sheet, Apple may also pass an email address, real or private-relay, to that account record; the app does not ask for it or use it.

Your session is kept in the iOS Keychain on your device.

What is saved when you are signed in

When you are signed in, the app saves the following to your account so you can find it again on your devices:

• Quest state: which quests you accepted or lived, and when.
• Memories: the day you lived an experience and the note you wrote (up to 300 characters).
• Ratings: the optional stars you give.
• A simple log of actions on quests (accepted, lived, “another idea”), used to choose which quest to suggest next.
• Chapters: which ten experiences make up each chapter.
• Chapter readings: the short text written for a completed chapter (see below).
• Subscription information (see below).
• Personal photos, up to three per memory. The original stays untouched on your device. The saved copy is re-encoded: location and other metadata are removed, it is limited to 2048 pixels and stored as a JPEG in a private storage space. The database and storage are configured so that each account can only access its own data.

Chapter readings and AI

SideQuest+ subscribers who are signed in can ask for a short written reading of a completed chapter. When you ask, our server sends the following to OpenAI, which writes the text: the language; for each of the chapter’s ten experiences, the quest title, the day you lived it, your own note if you wrote one, your stars if you gave any, the quest’s catalogue characteristics (such as category, company, setting, duration and budget) and the number of personal photos you attached; plus a timeline and tallies calculated from those entries.

We do not send your name, email address, account identifier, device identifier, any other chapter, or any photo. Your personal photos are not sent to the AI.

The request is made through our server, we ask OpenAI not to store it, and Side Quest does not keep the request or the answer in its logs. OpenAI’s own terms on retention and abuse monitoring apply to what it receives, and we don’t control them. Because your notes are part of the request, please avoid writing anything in a note that you would not want processed this way.

The app asks your permission, with this same information, before the first reading is written, and sends nothing until you allow it. You can turn it off at any time in the Account tab. The resulting five short sentences are saved to your account and shown in My story. If the way photos are handled ever changes, this policy will be updated first.

Subscriptions and purchases

SideQuest+ is bought through Apple. Payment is handled entirely by Apple: Side Quest never sees your card or Apple ID details. You can subscribe without signing in.

The app keeps a record of your subscription status (state, product and expiry date) on your device, in the Keychain. If you are signed in, the app also sends the App Store’s signed transaction to our server, which checks it with Apple and saves the product, the original transaction identifier, the expiry date, any revocation date and the environment, linked to your account.

Ideas you suggest

When you use “Suggest a Side Quest”, the idea is sent to us anonymously, whether or not you are signed in: the text (10 to 200 characters), the language, the date and any optional characteristics you chose (such as time, budget, company, setting). No account identifier, installation identifier or device data is sent with it.

Ideas are read by a person, who decides whether to edit and publish one as a Quest. A published idea becomes a public Quest, and its author is not recorded.

Because an idea carries nothing that identifies you, we cannot find it later, link it to you or remove it when you delete your account. Please don’t put personal information in an idea.

What we do not collect

Side Quest has no analytics, no crash-reporting tool, no advertising and no tracking. It does not use an advertising identifier or any device identifier, and it does not ask for your location, contacts, camera, microphone or health data.

The app asks for access to your photo library only so you can pick, with the system photo picker, the photo you want to keep with a memory.

If you have chosen to share analytics with app developers in your Apple settings, Apple may give us aggregated reports. The app does not control this.

Who processes your data

Side Quest relies on three providers. No other third party receives your data.

• Supabase: database, authentication, file storage and the server functions that run the app’s features. Its platform logs record technical request information, such as your IP address, to operate the service, and are kept according to Supabase’s own terms.
• OpenAI: writes chapter readings, as described above, and only when you ask for one.
• Apple: Sign in with Apple, and the App Store for purchases.

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it for advertising.

Why we use your data

Only to run the app: to show your quests and your story, to save and sync them when you are signed in, to unlock SideQuest+, to write chapter readings you ask for, to review the ideas people suggest, and to operate the service.

Keeping and deleting your data

On your device, data stays until you remove a memory or delete the app. If you remove a photo, its saved copy is removed from your account too.

You can delete your account at any time in the app: Account tab, then “Delete my account”, then confirm. Apple then asks you to confirm once more, so that Side Quest’s access through Sign in with Apple can be ended. Your account is deleted only if that step succeeds; if anything fails, nothing is deleted and you can try again. Deleting removes your photo files and then your account, and everything linked to it: quests, memories, photos, ratings, the action log, chapters, chapter readings and subscription records.

Once your account is deleted, the app also removes what Side Quest had stored on your device: your quests, memories, notes, ratings, photos kept in the app, ideas list and chapter readings, and the permission you gave for readings. Photos you picked from your photo library are not touched there. If the app is closed before it finishes, it completes the cleanup the next time it opens. The app then starts afresh, signed out. Deleting your account does not cancel a SideQuest+ subscription: manage it in your Apple Account settings. Anonymous ideas are not removed, as explained above.

Your choices

You can use the app without an account, choose which photos to keep, leave notes empty, remove a memory or photo, and delete your account. Subscribers can export My story as a PDF.

Depending on where you live, you may have other rights over your personal data. For any question or request about your data, write to contact@byelsestudio.com.

Security

The app talks to its servers over HTTPS, and your session is kept in the iOS Keychain. No system is perfectly secure, so we cannot promise absolute security.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app evolves. The date at the top of the page shows the latest version.

Contact

By Else Studio, contact@byelsestudio.com.