Privacy Policy

What we collect

Nothing. A New Word Every Day has no analytics, no advertising SDKs, no crash reporting that leaves the device, and no third-party trackers. We do not collect a name, an email, an advertising identifier, or any usage data. There is no sign-up and no login because there is no account.

Where your data lives

Everything the app remembers — starred (practice) words, difficulty level, onboarding calibration marks, theme and font preferences, and optional spaced-repetition review schedules — is stored locally on your iPhone in an Apple App Group container (group.com.lukewalton.wordoftheday). The app and its Home Screen widget read and write the same on-device store so your stars and settings stay in sync between them. Nothing is uploaded anywhere by the app.

The daily word is computed deterministically on-device from the bundled word list, the date, your difficulty band, and a per-install random seed. The widget recomputes the same word without calling a server.

Standard iOS device backups (iCloud Backup or an encrypted local backup) may include the app’s container, the same as any other app’s local data. That backup is governed by Apple’s privacy terms and your device settings, not by us; we never transmit your data to our own servers because we don’t have any.

Network access

The app makes no network requests at runtime. The word corpus, fonts, and scheduling code are bundled at build time. There is no sync, no lookup service, and no telemetry endpoint.

Sharing is always your choice

When you export practice words to Anki (CSV) or use any other share action, you decide where the file goes via the iOS share sheet. The app prepares that payload locally; it is sent only because you chose to send it.

Third-party code (on-device only)

The app bundles open-source variable fonts (SIL Open Font License 1.1) and implements the FSRS-5 spaced-repetition algorithm on-device for optional in-app study. The scheduling code is a hand-rolled port of the MIT-licensed swift-fsrs reference implementation — no third-party package is linked at runtime. No third party receives your data.

What A New Word Every Day does not do

• No accounts, no servers, no cloud sync operated by us.
• No analytics, no telemetry, no advertising, no ad identifiers, no ATT prompt.
• No selling or sharing of data — there is no data leaving the device to sell.

Children’s privacy

The app collects no personal information from anyone, including children.

Changes

If this policy changes, the updated version will be published here and the date above will be revised.

Contact

Questions about privacy or the app: luke@lukefwalton.com, or a GitHub Issue.

Personal project by Luke F. Walton — not a Surmado product.