Security & privacy
WristBuddy is built so nothing about your phone, your watch, or how you use either of them ever leaves your two devices. No cloud. No account. No tracking. No ads.
This page is the plain-English version. The full legal text is in the Privacy Policy.
What’s true on both iPhone and Android
These are the four design choices that shape every other decision in the app. They’re identical on the iPhone + Apple Watch version and the Android + Wear OS version.
No accounts, ever
You’ll never see a sign-in screen, an email field, or a password prompt. There’s nothing to sign up for, no profile to delete, no “forgot password” link to misuse. The app simply doesn’t know who you are.
Nothing leaves your devices
Your phone’s status — battery, charging, network, motion, focus mode, lock state, distance — is read on your phone and shown on your watch. There is no WristBuddy server. Both devices already talk to each other over the platform’s own encrypted, paired channel (Apple’s between iPhone and Apple Watch; Google’s between Android and Wear OS). WristBuddy uses that channel and nothing else. No internet round-trip, no analytics ping, no “phone home.”
Pay once, no subscription
WristBuddy Pro is a single one-time purchase, handled entirely by Apple (StoreKit on iOS) or Google (Play Billing on Android). WristBuddy never sees, stores, or transmits your payment information. No subscription, no auto-renewing fee, no upsell screens, no surprise charges.
No analytics, no trackers, no third-party SDKs
No Firebase. No Mixpanel. No Crashlytics. No Sentry. No advertising IDs. No tracking pixels. No marketing SDKs. The app’s code only talks to your own devices and to your platform’s official services for the Pro unlock. That’s the whole list.
What’s specific to each platform — the techie stuff
Optional reading. The design philosophy is identical on both platforms; the underlying tools differ because each platform provides its own security building blocks.
iPhone + Apple Watch
Phone–watch link
WristBuddy uses Apple’s built-in WatchConnectivity framework — the same secure, encrypted, peer-to-peer channel Apple’s own apps use between iPhone and Apple Watch. The link travels over Bluetooth or your home Wi-Fi LAN, never the public internet, and only your paired iPhone and your paired Apple Watch can read it.
Permissions WristBuddy may ask for
Each prompt is opt-in and reversible in iOS Settings → Wrist Buddy.
| Permission | Why | What it’s not used for |
|---|---|---|
| Motion | To show whether your iPhone is moving right now | Tracking your activity, logging steps, reading motion history |
| Microphone | iOS requires this only to route the locator-ring sound to the iPhone’s built-in speaker when headphones are plugged in | Recording anything — the microphone hardware is never sampled |
| Focus status | To show whether a Focus mode is active on your iPhone | Reading which Focus, or sharing your Focus state anywhere |
What WristBuddy will never ask for
Location, Camera, Photos, Contacts, Calendar, HealthKit, Bluetooth (beyond Apple’s built-in Watch link), or any account-linked identifier.
How Pro is unlocked
Apple StoreKit. Your Apple ID is the only identifier involved; WristBuddy never sees it.
Recent review
The code is periodically audited. The May 2026 pass covered every iPhone–Watch message boundary, every permission prompt, every saved setting, and the StoreKit purchase flow.
Android + Wear OS
Phone–watch link
WristBuddy uses Wear OS’s built-in encrypted Data Layer — the channel Google designed for paired-watch communication. Google scopes that channel to WristBuddy’s own app identity and signing certificate, so no other app on either device can read what WristBuddy sends.
Permissions WristBuddy requests
Each is reversible in Android Settings → Apps → Wrist Buddy.
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
BILLING |
One-time Pro purchase via Google Play |
ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE |
To read whether your phone is on Wi-Fi or cellular. Read-only — we don’t open a connection. |
WAKE_LOCK |
Required by Wear OS to briefly wake the phone when delivering an update to the watch |
VIBRATE (on the watch) |
For the “buzz watch” quick action you can trigger from your phone |
Notably absent: INTERNET
WristBuddy doesn’t declare the internet permission at all. The phone-side app cannot open a network connection — that’s enforced by Android, not just promised by us. Anything network-related (verifying your Pro purchase, etc.) goes through Google Play’s own services, not through any code we wrote.
Built to resist tampering
Release builds are minified and obfuscated with R8, making the shipped binary harder to reverse-engineer. Pro unlocks are cryptographically verified on-device using Google Play’s signature before any feature is enabled — we don’t take the easy shortcut of trusting whatever the system reports.
Backups deliberately disabled
WristBuddy’s data isn’t included in Google Drive auto-backup or in device-to-device transfer when you set up a new phone. The trade-off: when you change phones, your preferences are gone — but nothing of yours sits in someone else’s cloud either.
How Pro is unlocked
Google Play Billing. Your Google account is the only identifier involved; WristBuddy never sees it.
What we won’t pretend WristBuddy can do
We’d rather be honest about what the platforms don’t allow than promise features we can’t deliver:
- Carrier name / Wi-Fi network name — both platforms restrict this to apps that explicitly request the location permission and explain why. WristBuddy doesn’t ask, and we don’t show it.
- Airplane Mode — neither iOS nor Android exposes the Airplane Mode state to third-party apps. We can’t show it on the dashboard.
- Changing settings remotely — WristBuddy reads state, it doesn’t write. We can’t toggle silent mode, enable Wi-Fi, or change your Focus mode from the watch. Those are intentional platform boundaries.
- Alarms — the platforms don’t share alarm data with third-party apps. We don’t show one.
If a feature on the dashboard isn’t there, it’s because the platform doesn’t expose it cleanly, not because we forgot. We’d rather ship four reliable rows than ten that hallucinate.
Got a question or spotted something?
Email policy@wristbuddy.app. The same person reads every message and replies within a couple of days.