Privacy policy

Effective October 21, 2026

This policy covers the Seneca app for iPhone and this website, seneca.sglavoie.com. Seneca is made by Sébastien Lavoie, who is responsible for it and can be reached at seneca@sglavoie.com.

What we collect

Nothing. The developer never receives your reflections, recordings, settings, or any information about you or how you use the app. Seneca does not contain analytics, crash reporting, or advertising code from anyone, and it makes no network requests of its own.

What the app keeps on your iPhone

To work, Seneca stores the following in its own space on your iPhone:

• Your journal: the answers you save, your questions and practice, your focus, and any reviews in the journal.
• Drafts of answers you have not saved yet.
• Voice recordings, if you speak your answers, and your voice settings.
• Your reminder time.
• If you use sync, a reference to the folder you chose and a random identifier for this iPhone, kept in the iPhone’s keychain.

iOS protects these files with your device passcode. They are included in your iPhone’s backups, according to your backup settings.

Microphone and speech

Seneca uses the microphone only while you are recording an answer, and only after you allow it. Recordings are transcribed on the iPhone using Apple’s on-device speech models. When a language’s speech model is not yet on your iPhone, iOS downloads it from Apple; your audio is not sent. On iPhones with Apple Intelligence, Seneca uses Apple’s on-device language model to split a spoken reflection into an answer for each question. That also happens on the iPhone. Recordings never leave your phone unless you include them in a recovery export you share yourself.

Sync

Sync is off unless you turn it on. When you turn it on, you choose a folder, usually in your iCloud Drive, and Seneca writes your journal there so your other devices can read it. Seneca does not contact any server to do this; iOS moves the folder’s files the way it moves any of your files. Your journal in that folder is stored as plain text and data files. It is protected by your storage provider: for iCloud Drive, that is Apple, under Apple’s privacy policy, and turning on Advanced Data Protection encrypts it end to end. Recordings, drafts, and reminder settings are never put in the sync folder.

Sharing

You can share a review or a day’s reflection, a full recovery export of your journal, or a diagnostics report. Each one goes through the iOS share sheet, to the person or app you pick, and only when you send it. Before you share a review or a day, Seneca shows exactly what will be sent. The diagnostics report contains version numbers, counts, and error codes only: nothing you wrote, no dates, no questions, and no names.

Reminders

If you turn on reminders, Seneca schedules a notification on your iPhone at the time you choose. It never contains anything you wrote. Reminders are scheduled by the iPhone itself; no notification service is involved.

Third parties

The developer shares no data with anyone, because the developer has none. The only outside services Seneca relies on are parts of iOS that you control: your sync folder’s storage provider, and Apple’s downloads of speech models.

This website

This website sets no cookies and uses no analytics. Its fonts and images are served from this site, not from third parties. It is hosted by Cloudflare, which processes the technical information any website receives, such as IP addresses, to deliver pages and protect against abuse, under Cloudflare’s privacy policy.

Keeping and deleting your data

Your data stays on your devices until you delete it. The developer holds no copy, so there is nothing to request from us. You can:

• Delete a day’s reflection with Delete Today’s Reflection on Today, or Delete Entry on a day in History. It is removed from the journal on this iPhone and on your synced devices. Earlier versions of synced entries remain in the sync folder’s history until you delete that folder.
• Delete voice recordings, one at a time or all at once, in Settings › Voice, or have them deleted as soon as an answer is saved.
• Stop syncing with Disconnect Sync in Settings › Diagnostics and Recovery. This leaves the sync folder in place; delete it in the Files app to remove the copy there.
• Delete everything on the iPhone by deleting the app. Copies remain in any iPhone backups, sync folders, and exports you made, until you delete them.

Children

Seneca is not directed at children under 13. It collects no personal information from anyone, children included.

Your rights

Privacy laws such as the GDPR and the CCPA give you rights to access, correct, and delete personal data a company holds about you. Because we hold none, every copy of your data is already in your hands, and the controls above let you change or delete it. If you have a question about your privacy, write to seneca@sglavoie.com.

Changes to this policy

If Seneca ever changes how it handles data, this page will be updated before the change ships, with a new effective date at the top. A change that sends data off your iPhone in a new way will be described here and in the app’s release notes.