Privacy statement
Effective 16 August 2026
The short version: Propel collects nothing. Your journal never leaves your iPhone. There is no account, no server, no analytics, and no third-party service involved.
What we collect
Nothing. Propel has no backend. We do not collect, receive, store, sell or share any personal data. We cannot read your journal — it exists only on your device.
Where your data lives
Everything you put into Propel — your profile, experiences, journal entries, voice recordings, photos of notes, and the CV sections, LinkedIn posts, tutor reports and weekly digests generated from them — is stored locally on your iPhone, in the app's private storage. If your device is set to back up (iCloud or computer backups), your Propel data is included in that backup under Apple's own terms; we have no access to it.
On-device AI
Propel's writing features (cleaning up entries, summaries, CV sections, LinkedIn posts, tutor reports, weekly digests) run on Apple Intelligence models on the device itself. Your entries are not sent to us or to any cloud AI service. On devices without Apple Intelligence, Propel uses built-in templates instead — still entirely on-device.
Permissions and why they're asked for
| Permission | Used for |
|---|---|
| Microphone | Recording voice notes you turn into journal entries. |
| Speech recognition | Transcribing those voice notes, on the device. |
| Camera | Photographing handwritten notes to convert into text. |
| Photo library | Choosing an existing photo of handwritten notes. |
| Face ID | Unlocking the app when app lock is turned on. |
| Notifications | Optional daily and weekly logging reminders you control in Settings. |
Every permission is optional. Declining any of them only disables that one way of logging; typing always works.
Analytics and tracking
Propel contains no analytics, no advertising, no tracking SDKs and no third-party code that phones home. Apple may provide us with aggregated, anonymised App Store statistics (such as download counts); these are governed by Apple's privacy policy and contain nothing from inside the app.
Sharing and export
Anything that leaves the app leaves it because you chose to share it — copying a CV section, sharing a LinkedIn post, sending a tutor report, or backing your data up from Settings. Where it goes from there is up to you.
A backup file is plain, unencrypted JSON containing everything you've written. That's deliberate: it's your data in a form you can read and keep. It also means the file is only as private as the place you save it, and it isn't covered by Propel's Face ID or PIN lock.
Deleting your data
Delete the app and the data is gone. We keep no copy. (Device backups, and any backup files you've saved yourself, remain yours to manage.)
Children
Propel is intended for students and early-career professionals aged 13 and over. Since no data is collected from anyone, no personal data is collected from children.
Changes to this statement
If a future version of Propel ever changes how data is handled, this page will be updated before that version ships, with the effective date above.
Contact
Questions about privacy: propel-support@12nines.com