Orby Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 2026

Orby shows you a single number — how much of your daily social media time you have left — and lets the friends you choose see that same number. This policy explains exactly what that involves.

What Orby can and cannot see

Orby measures social media time using Apple's Screen Time framework (DeviceActivity and Family Controls). Because of how Apple designed that framework, Orby cannot:

• See which apps you selected to monitor.
• Read your usage history, session times, or app names.
• Access anything you do inside those apps.

Orby only learns when your running total crosses each minute of your daily limit. That measurement happens entirely on your device, inside a sandboxed system extension that has no network access.

What Orby stores on your device

• Your first name, chosen orb colour, and app icon preference.
• Today's percentage and the notification thresholds you selected.
• Your permanent friend code.
• Cached copies of your friends' names and current percentages.

This data lives in Orby's private app container so the app, the widget, and the monitoring extension can share it. Nothing here is readable by other apps.

What is shared with your friends

When you add a friend, Orby syncs a small profile record through Apple's iCloud (CloudKit). That record contains only:

• Your first name.
• Your current percentage — or a "Private" marker if Private Mode is on.
• Your orb colour and your daily reset time, so friends' displays stay accurate.
• How many apps you have chosen to track — a number only. Apple hands app choices to Orby as sealed tokens, so Orby cannot read which apps they are and could not share them even if it wanted to. The count is what makes it visible if someone quietly stops tracking the app they use most.
• Your offset from UTC — for example -600 — so a friend's day is judged against their own midnight rather than yours. This is an offset, not a place: it covers a whole slice of the planet and does not identify where you are.
• The time your record last updated, so friends can tell a current number from a stale one.
• Your friend code, and whether your Friends subscription is active.

No app names, no session times, and no usage history are ever included. Your record is only meaningful to someone who already has your friend code, which is random and which you choose who to give it to.

Camera

Orby asks for camera access only when you tap Scan code to read a friend's QR code. The camera is used to look for a QR code in the live image and nothing else: no photo or video is recorded, stored, or transmitted, and the frames are discarded as they are read. Declining camera access leaves every other part of Orby working — you can still type or paste a code.

Accounts and identity

Orby has no sign-up, no password, and no email login. Syncing uses your device's existing iCloud account through Apple's CloudKit service; Orby never sees your Apple Account credentials. If you are not signed in to iCloud, the Friends feature simply will not be available — everything else in Orby continues to work.

Notifications

If you allow notifications, Orby sends them locally from your device when your orb crosses a threshold you chose, when a friend's orb does, or when a friend starts tracking fewer apps. Notification content is generated on-device; it is never sent from a server.

Orby also uses silent push messages from Apple's iCloud. These display nothing and contain no content — they only wake the app to fetch a friend's updated number, so it arrives sooner than waiting for the next scheduled check. They require no notification permission and you never see them.

Subscriptions and payment

Orby Friends is an optional paid subscription. All payment is handled by Apple through the App Store. Orby never receives, stores, or has access to your payment details. Apple provides the app only with whether a valid subscription exists.

Crash reports

Orby uses Sentry to report crashes, so a bug that breaks the app can be found and fixed. This is the only third-party service Orby uses, and the only data that reaches it is a crash report: the type of failure and where in Orby's own code it happened, plus the device model and iOS version.

Orby configures Sentry to send as little as it can. Specifically, it does not attach:

• Your name, friend code, percentage, or friends list.
• Your IP address or any other identifier of you.
• Screenshots or a copy of what was on screen.
• Performance traces of what you were doing.

Crash reports are never used for analytics, profiling, or advertising, and are not linked to your identity.

What Orby does not do

• No analytics, product telemetry, or usage tracking of any kind. Crash reports, described above, are the sole exception and carry no usage data.
• No advertising, and no advertising identifiers.
• No tracking across apps or websites, and no data sold or shared with data brokers.
• No servers of our own. Friend syncing runs entirely on Apple's iCloud; Sentry receives crash reports and nothing else.

Data retention and deletion

Orby does not support profile photos. There is no image upload anywhere in the app, so there is no user-generated imagery to store, share, or moderate.

You can remove a friend at any time, which deletes the link between your accounts and the cached copy of their data on your device.

Deleting Orby removes all locally stored data. Your synced profile record stops updating immediately, and it contains only a first name and a percentage. To have your profile record removed from iCloud, contact us using the address below and include your friend code.

Children

Orby is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has provided information through Orby, contact us and we will remove it.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes materially, we will update the date at the top of this page and, where appropriate, notify you in the app.

Contact

Questions about privacy in Orby: support@orbyfriends.com