Privacy Policy

What the app stores

Your family tree (people, relationships, dates, birthplaces, where someone lives, notes, photos) is stored in a local database on your phone. Backups you create are saved as files on your phone. Nothing is uploaded anywhere. Kinestry has no servers, no accounts, no sign-in, no analytics, no advertising and no trackers of any kind.

Internet access

Kinestry requests the network permission for exactly one feature: Desktop Mode, which lets a laptop browser on your own Wi-Fi network view and edit your tree while your phone is present. This traffic flows directly between your phone and your laptop on your local network. It never touches the internet, and it stops the moment you turn Desktop Mode off. Pairing requires a code shown on your phone and your explicit approval of each device.

Be aware of what this means in practice: while Desktop Mode is on, your names, dates and photos genuinely do travel across your Wi-Fi to the paired browser — that is the whole point of the feature. They are not stored on the laptop, and no third party is involved. On a network you do not trust, leave Desktop Mode off.

Outbound links

The "Visit Website" and "Privacy Policy" buttons in Settings open this site in your phone's own web browser. Kinestry itself sends nothing — your browser makes that request, exactly as it would for any link you tap. We receive no information about you when you do this.

This website

This site has no analytics, no cookies and no third-party scripts; the fonts are served from here rather than a font network. If you pick one of the four colour palettes at the top of the page, your browser remembers the name of it in local storage so the next page you open is not a different colour. That preference never leaves your browser, and clearing your browsing data removes it.

Calendar

Kinestry has no calendar permission and never reads your calendar.

On your phone, tapping "Add birthday", "Add memorial day" or "Add anniversary" hands that one name and date to your own calendar app, already filled in, using Android's built-in "new event" action. Nothing is sent anywhere, no web page opens, and it works with no connection at all. You still decide whether to save the event.

In Desktop Mode you are working in a web browser, which has no calendar app to hand an event to. There those same buttons open Google Calendar's web quick-add page instead, which does pass that name and date to Google in the web address. It happens only when you tap the button, only for the person you tapped it on, and Google's handling of it is then governed by Google's own privacy policy, not ours. If you would rather nothing left the device, add the date from your phone.

Photos

If you attach photos to people in your tree, the app asks for photo access and keeps a copy inside its own private storage. Photos are never uploaded.

Notifications and reminders

Kinestry shows two kinds of notification, both created entirely on your phone.

The first is the persistent "Desktop Mode is on" notice shown while your phone is serving your tree to your laptop — required by Android so you always know it is running.

The second is optional. If you switch on "Remind me on the day", the app schedules a quiet note each morning for a birthday, memorial day or anniversary already recorded in your tree. These reminders are built and delivered by your phone alone: nothing is sent anywhere, no reminder service is involved, and the text never leaves the device. Turning the switch off removes every pending reminder. Because Android forgets scheduled alarms when a phone restarts, the app asks for permission to re-create them after a reboot — that permission is used for nothing else.

Sharing and exports

When you export a PDF, image, GEDCOM or backup file, you choose where it goes using your phone's standard share dialog. What you share, and with whom, is entirely in your hands.

Children

Kinestry does not collect data from anyone, including children. Family members you record in your tree exist only on your device.

Where to get Kinestry

The only official build of Kinestry is the one on Google Play. Copies obtained anywhere else may have been altered by somebody other than us: we cannot vouch for what they do with your family's information, and this policy describes only the official app.

Changes

If this policy ever changes, the updated version will be published at this address and the date above will change. Since Kinestry's design principle is that your data never leaves your device, do not expect much to change.

Contact

Questions: kinestryapp@gmail.com