Privacy

Worlds Apart, for iPhone, iPad and Mac  ·  last updated 10 September 2026

Worlds Apart has no account and no server of its own. That is not a promise about how we behave. It is a description of how the app is built, and it is the reason the rest of this page is short.

What the app collects

Nothing. No account, no sign in, no analytics, no crash payloads, no identifiers, and nothing you write. There is no advertising, no tracking, and no third party software development kit inside it.

Where your two worlds are

• On the device you wrote them on.
• In your own iCloud, in a private database only your Apple Account can open, if you have iCloud turned on. Apple holds it. We cannot read it, list it or restore it.
• Nowhere else. There is no Worlds Apart server holding a copy.

Turn iCloud off and both worlds stay on that one device, and nothing leaves it.

Because there is no server, there is no admin view either. If something goes wrong with sync there is nothing for us to look up on your behalf, and the line naming your last successful sync is the only tool either of us has. We would rather say that here than discover it with you later.

The two worlds are sealed from each other, and from the system

Work and Life are separate stores. While you are in one, nothing in the other can be seen, searched, counted or heard from. That holds outside the app as well: nothing is given to Spotlight, so a line cannot surface in a search field that has no world in it, or in Siri Suggestions, or on your Lock Screen. Only the app's own shortcuts are registered, so the app itself is findable by name.

Siri answers when you name the world and never otherwise. A widget draws its text and the system keeps it hidden until the device is unlocked.

Permissions, and why

• Notifications. Never asked at launch. Asked the first time you put a real time on something, in context, so the question arrives with a reason attached. Declining it leaves the rest of the app working.
• Microphone and speech, on the Mac only. Only if you dictate into the panel, and asked the first time you do. Apple performs the recognition, no audio is kept, and the app sends nothing anywhere. Not requested at all on iPhone or iPad.
• Open at login, on the Mac only. Offered once in settings and off until you turn it on. It is what lets the shortcut work before the app has been opened. Not a privacy permission, listed here so the Mac's full ask is in one place.
• Nothing that watches you. Not Accessibility, not Input Monitoring, not Screen Recording, not Full Disk Access, not Location, not your Calendar, on any platform. The Mac shortcut is registered with the system and needs none of them, which is the whole reason it was built that way.

Seasonal headstarts are matched to today's date and nothing else. The app does not read your calendar and asks for no calendar permission.

The headstarts do not phone anywhere

The headstarts ship inside the app. Matching what you type against them happens on the device. There is no server to send it to, by design.

Payment

The purchase happens entirely inside Apple's App Store. We never see your name, your card, or your address. We receive an anonymous record that a purchase occurred.

This website

Everything above is about the app. This website is a different thing, and it is measured. worldsapart.app runs Google Analytics, which sets a cookie in your browser and reports back which pages were opened, roughly where in the world from, and which link or search brought you. It is how we know whether anyone is reading this.

That measurement stops at the edge of the website. It has no reach into the app, no way to see anything you wrote, and no connection to anything on your phone. The app carries no measurement code at all, which is the claim that matters and the one you can verify by watching what it talks to.

If you would rather not be counted, any content blocker or your browser’s own tracking protection will stop it, and the site works exactly the same without it.

Children

Worlds Apart is not directed at children under 13 and collects nothing from anyone, of any age.

Your rights

Data protection law gives you the right to see, correct, export and delete the personal data a company holds about you. We hold none that identifies you. The one exception is the visit counting described above, where Google Analytics holds a random browser identifier we cannot connect to a person, and which the tracking protection above removes. What you write is yours: export it whenever you like, as two files you can read, one per world, and delete it by deleting it.

Changes

If this page ever changes materially, the date at the top changes with it and the previous version is replaced rather than quietly amended.

Who we are