← RoutineLab

Privacy Policy

RoutineLab: Protocol Tracker

Last updated: 2 November 2026

Who we are

RoutineLab is operated by BuildQuo Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 16634044), registered address 11 Turners Avenue, Tenterden, Kent, TN30 6QB. For the purposes of UK and EU data protection law, we are the data controller for the limited personal data described in this policy.

For any question about this policy or your data, contact admin@buildquo.com.

The short version

RoutineLab has no account and no login. Almost everything you create — your routines, your completion history, your settings and your onboarding answers — lives on your iPhone and, if you use iCloud, in your own private iCloud. We cannot see it.

A few things do leave the device: anonymous usage analytics that help us improve the app; the optional Advisor, which sends your questions to OpenAI (through a server we run) to generate a reply; the optional feedback form; and your subscription status, handled by Apple and RevenueCat. Each is described in full below. Your raw Apple Health data is never sent anywhere — to us or to anyone else.

What stays on your device (and your own iCloud)

The following is stored on your iPhone in the app's local database and, if you are signed into iCloud, synced to your own private iCloud using Apple's CloudKit so it survives a new phone or a reinstall. It sits in your private iCloud database; Apple acts as a processor and we have no access to it and cannot read it:

  • The routines you follow and the actions within them
  • Your daily completion records, adherence scores, streak and history
  • Your settings — wake time, bedtime, age, sex, reminder preferences
  • Your name, if you choose to provide one during setup
  • Your onboarding answers about goals, consistency and obstacles
  • Your Advisor conversations

If you are not signed into iCloud, or have iCloud disabled, the app works exactly the same and this data simply stays on the one device. Deleting the app and choosing "Delete all data" removes it permanently — we cannot recover it, because we never had it.

Two uses of this data do go further, and only as described below: a small set of anonymised onboarding answers is sent to our analytics, and — only if you opt in — a summary of your adherence figures is sent to the Advisor.

Analytics

To understand how the app is used and where it can be improved, RoutineLab uses PostHog, a privacy-focused product-analytics tool, hosted in the European Union. Analytics are tied to a random, app-generated identifier — never your name, email or Apple ID (see "Identifiers" below).

Through analytics we collect:

  • Anonymous usage events — which setup screens you reach, which tabs you open, when you view the paywall or share your progress, and similar in-app actions
  • A small set of segmentation properties from your setup — your chosen goal, age range, starting level, how you heard about us, coach style, pace, and how many habits you follow
  • Session replays — recordings limited to the first-run setup and the subscription screen only, to help us find confusing or broken flows. Recording stops the moment you reach the main app, so your day-to-day use is never recorded. Any text you type, all images, and your name are masked and not captured.

We never send your name, your sex, the content of your messages, or any Apple Health data to analytics. This is first-party analytics used only to improve RoutineLab. It is not advertising, and we do not track you across other apps or companies.

Apple Health

With your permission, RoutineLab reads the following from Apple Health, read-only, to confirm automatically whether you have completed actions in your routines:

  • Sleep analysis
  • Step count
  • Walking and running distance
  • Workouts

RoutineLab requests read-only access and never writes anything to Apple Health. This data is used for one purpose: showing whether you completed your own actions, and calculating your adherence score. In line with Apple's requirements:

  • Apple Health data is never transmitted to us, to OpenAI, to our analytics, or to any third party
  • It is never used for advertising, marketing, or any use-based data mining
  • It is never sold, shared, or disclosed to anyone

Apple Health figures are used on your device and are deliberately kept out of iCloud sync: in line with Apple's health-data rules, no Health reading or value derived from it is stored in iCloud. When the app needs a figure, it re-reads it from Apple Health on the device. Only whether an action was completed — not any health measurement — is recorded in your synced history.

You can withdraw Health access at any time in the iOS Settings app under Privacy & Security → Health → RoutineLab. The app continues to work without it; actions simply fall back to manual confirmation.

The Advisor, and our use of OpenAI

The Advisor is an optional feature that generates guidance in response to your questions. It is inactive until you open it and give explicit consent on a screen that sets out exactly what is sent and where it goes. No data is sent before you consent.

What is sent

  • The text of the messages you write. This is always sent when you use the feature.
  • A summary of your adherence figures — but only if you additionally switch on personalised advice. This summary contains the names of the routines you follow, your overall adherence percentage, your current streak, your per-action completion rates, and your configured wake and bed times.
  • A random device identifier, used solely to apply usage limits and prevent abuse. It is separate from the analytics identifier and is not linked to your name, your Apple ID, or anything that identifies you personally.

What is never sent

Raw Apple Health data is never included — no sleep, step, workout or heart-rate records ever leave your phone. The adherence summary contains only percentages and action names that RoutineLab has calculated on your device.

Who it is sent to

Your message and, where you have consented, the adherence summary are sent to a server we operate on Supabase infrastructure, which passes them to OpenAI to generate a response. OpenAI processes this data as our sub-processor under their API terms. At the time of writing, OpenAI does not use data submitted through their API to train their models. We do not store your conversations on our servers — the message is processed and the response returned; your conversation history is kept only on your device. OpenAI's own privacy policy is available at openai.com/policies/privacy-policy. The same server also powers the in-app daily briefing.

If you decline

Plan my week uses the same server. When you type or choose something to plan around (for example "Busy Tue/Thu mornings"), that request and your habit schedule (habit names, how many times a week, and their times) are sent to OpenAI to suggest a weekly plan, only after you have consented to the Advisor. Your name, your Apple Health data and the values you log (such as wake times, pages read or alcohol-free days) are never included. If you choose "Looks good", nothing is sent.

The Advisor is unavailable until you consent. If you consent to the feature but decline personalised advice, your messages are still sent to OpenAI to generate a reply, but no information about your adherence is included — you receive general guidance only. You can stop using the feature at any time; nothing is retained on our servers to delete.

Feedback

If you use the feedback form in the app, we receive the message you write, the type of feedback you selected, your app and iOS version, and the same random device identifier used for the Advisor. If you choose to provide an email address, we store it solely so we can reply to you; the email field is optional and clearly marked as such. This data is stored in our Supabase database and is not shared with anyone.

Subscriptions and payments

Subscriptions are sold and processed by Apple through the App Store. We never see or receive your payment details, card number, or billing address. We use RevenueCat to manage and verify subscription status; RevenueCat receives your purchase and entitlement data, tied to the anonymous app identifier. It receives no Apple Health data. It also receives your answer to "Where did you hear about us?" and, if you installed from an Apple Search Ads advert, Apple's attribution for that advert (which campaign it was), so we can see which channels bring subscribers. This uses Apple's own privacy-preserving attribution: we do not track you across other apps or websites, and no advertising identifier is used.

Identifiers

RoutineLab has no account. It uses two random identifiers, neither of which is your name, your Apple ID, or an advertising identifier:

  • An anonymous app ID, generated on first launch and kept in your own iCloud key-value storage so your data and subscription follow you across your devices. It is used as the identifier for analytics and for RevenueCat.
  • A separate device ID, stored only on the device, used to rate-limit the Advisor and the feedback form.

Notifications

If you enable reminders, they are scheduled and delivered entirely on your device using local notifications. No push notification service is used, and no notification data reaches us.

What we do not do

  • We do not show advertising or build advertising profiles
  • We do not use the App Tracking Transparency framework, because we do not track you across other apps or companies
  • We do not sell or share your personal data with anyone for their own purposes
  • We do not send your name or your Apple Health data off your device, to us or to any third party

Legal basis for processing (UK and EU users)

For the Advisor and the feedback form, our lawful basis is your consent, given on the Advisor consent screen or by submitting the feedback form, and withdrawable at any time by ceasing to use those features. For anonymous product analytics, and for rate-limiting and abuse prevention, our lawful basis is legitimate interests — understanding and protecting a service that has no account, using data that does not identify you.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR and equivalent laws you have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict, object to, and port your personal data, and to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.

In practice, because almost all of your data lives only on your device and in your own iCloud, you already control it directly: view it in the app, remove it using "Delete all data" on the You screen, or delete it entirely by deleting the app and removing RoutineLab's data from iCloud (Settings → your name → iCloud → Manage Account Storage).

To delete the anonymous analytics we hold, or anything in our feedback records, email admin@buildquo.com and we will action it within one month.

UK users may complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Data retention

On-device and iCloud data is retained until you delete it. Advisor requests are processed transiently and not retained in our database. Feedback submissions are retained until resolved and for a reasonable period afterwards. Analytics events are retained in PostHog for up to 12 months. Standard server logs, which may include a timestamp, device identifier and response status, are retained for up to 30 days for security and abuse prevention.

International transfers

Our Advisor and feedback server infrastructure, and our analytics, are hosted in the United Kingdom and the European Union. OpenAI (United States) and RevenueCat (United States) process data as our sub-processors. Where personal data is transferred outside the UK or EEA, we rely on the standard contractual clauses and equivalent safeguards in our providers' data processing terms.

Sub-processors

  • PostHog — product analytics (EU-hosted)
  • OpenAI, L.L.C. — generates Advisor responses
  • Supabase, Inc. — hosts our server infrastructure and the feedback database
  • RevenueCat, Inc. — subscription management and verification
  • Apple Inc. — iCloud sync (your own account) and App Store payments

Children

RoutineLab is not directed at children and is not intended for anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect data from children. If you believe a child has used the app and provided information to us, contact admin@buildquo.com.

Not medical advice

RoutineLab, including the Advisor, provides general wellbeing and habit information only. It is not medical advice and is not a substitute for advice from a qualified professional. Do not rely on it for medical decisions, and seek professional advice for any health concern.

Security

Data on your device is protected by iOS's own security and, where the device is passcode-protected, its encryption. Requests to our server are sent over encrypted HTTPS connections. Our API credentials, including the OpenAI key, are held server-side as secrets and are never embedded in the app.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The date at the top shows when it was last changed. Material changes will be communicated in the app.

Contact

BuildQuo Ltd
11 Turners Avenue, Tenterden, Kent, TN30 6QB
admin@buildquo.com