Privacy Policy
Last updated 10 September 2026 · Effective 10 September 2026
The short version. StudyBuff does not collect your personal information, has no analytics and no trackers, and your camera never leaves your device — not even in the Arena. Decks are written by a model on your own device wherever possible. Study text only leaves the device if you choose to switch on DeepSeek, a third-party AI service, and the app asks your permission before that happens. There is no account to create.
On this page
1. Who we are
StudyBuff (“StudyBuff”, “we”, “us”) is an iPhone app that turns revision into a workout. This policy explains what the app does with information on your device, and covers both the app and this website.
2. What we collect
We do not collect personal information. StudyBuff has no user database and no account system of its own, and we cannot see your reps, your answers, your progress, your camera, your microphone or your identity. The one piece of infrastructure we run is a small relay that passes study text to DeepSeek when — and only when — you have allowed it (section 8). It does not keep what it relays.
Specifically, StudyBuff does not:
- Use analytics, telemetry or crash-reporting services
- Include advertising or any third-party software development kits
- Track you across other apps or websites, or access the advertising identifier
- Sell or rent information to anyone, or share it with anyone other than DeepSeek when you have explicitly allowed it
- Build a profile of you, or use your data to train any model
This website is a set of static pages. It sets no cookies and runs no analytics. Web fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, which will see your IP address as part of serving those files; nothing else about your visit is transmitted.
3. What stays on your device
StudyBuff stores the following in the app’s own private storage on your iPhone or iPad. It is included in your encrypted device backups if you make them, and it is deleted when you delete the app.
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Progress | XP, level, rank, streak, badges, quests, per-question memory strength and past session summaries, so the app can space your revision and keep your streak. |
| Decks | The built-in decks and any you create. |
| Profile | Your display name, avatar colour or profile photo, and whether you are a guest or signed in with Apple. |
| Settings | Sound, haptics, spoken questions, camera preference, speech rate, voice, boss rounds, and whether you have allowed DeepSeek. |
A profile photo you choose is cropped and stored in the app’s own storage on your device. It is never uploaded, and other players never see it.
4. Camera and body tracking
StudyBuff asks for camera access so it can count your reps. Frames are analysed on your device using Apple’s Vision framework to estimate the position of your joints, and the app keeps only the resulting rep count.
Video is never recorded, never written to disk, and never leaves your device — not to us, not to DeepSeek, and not to another player in the Arena.
Camera access is optional. If you decline it — or turn it off later in iOS Settings — the app tells you so and switches to logging reps by tapping. Every part of StudyBuff remains usable.
5. Microphone and spoken answers
StudyBuff asks for the microphone and for speech recognition so you can answer questions out loud while your hands are busy.
The app requests on-device recognition from iOS and uses it whenever your iPhone and language support it, in which case your speech is transcribed locally and never leaves the phone.
One honest caveat. On-device recognition is not available for every device and every language. When iOS reports that it cannot transcribe locally, StudyBuff falls back to standard iOS speech recognition, and in that case Apple may process that audio on Apple’s servers to return a transcription. That processing is Apple’s, governed by Apple’s Privacy Policy — the audio is not sent to us and we never receive it. If you would rather this never happen, answer by typing or by tapping a choice instead; the answer mode is a setting, and the microphone permission is entirely optional.
Audio is used only to transcribe the answer you are giving. It is not recorded or stored by StudyBuff.
6. The Arena and Game Center
The Arena lets you race head to head, in two ways.
Against Buff Bot
A bot match sends nothing at all. The opponent runs entirely on your own device, and no network connection is made.
Against another player online
The Real Arena finds you an opponent through Apple’s Game Center. Signing in, finding a match and connecting the two devices are handled by Apple, under Apple’s Privacy Policy and your Game Center settings. StudyBuff does not receive your Apple ID or email from Game Center.
During a match the two devices exchange game state only: whether you’re ready, which built-in questions the bout uses, your reps, your points and which round you’re on. Your opponent sees your Game Center name — never the name you use inside StudyBuff, and never your profile photo.
- Your camera is never sent. It counts your reps on your own device, exactly as in a solo workout.
- There is no chat, and nothing you type is sent to the other player.
- Online matches only use questions that ship with the app, so another player’s content never appears on your screen.
- We don’t store anything about a match. Your own reps and points are saved on your device, like any other session.
If Screen Time or Game Center settings on your device don’t allow online games, StudyBuff respects that and offers Buff Bot instead.
7. Sign in with Apple
Signing in is optional — you can tap Continue as guest and use every feature indefinitely, then switch later without losing progress.
If you do sign in, Apple returns a user identifier and, if you allow it, your name and an email address (which may be a private relay address you can turn off at any time in your Apple Account settings). Because StudyBuff has no server, these are saved only in the app’s storage on your device and are never transmitted anywhere. They are used to put a name on your profile and to recognise you if you sign in again on the same device.
Signing out from Profile › Settings removes them from the device.
8. Writing decks with AI, and DeepSeek
StudyBuff can write a deck for you from a topic, pasted notes, an imported file, or a photo of a page.
On your device, by default
On devices that support Apple Intelligence, decks are written by Apple’s on-device language model. Your topic, your notes and the text read off your photos are processed on the device itself, sent to no one, and it works with no internet connection. Photos are read with on-device text recognition: the image never leaves your device, and StudyBuff keeps only the text, which you can edit or delete before generating anything.
DeepSeek, only if you allow it
StudyBuff can also use DeepSeek, a third-party AI service, to write decks (on devices without Apple Intelligence, or when you switch on Write with DeepSeek), to give a second opinion on a spoken answer the app isn’t sure about, and to write the short summary at the end of a session.
Nothing is sent to DeepSeek unless you explicitly allow it. Before anything is shared, the app shows you what will be sent, what won’t, and where it goes, asks you to confirm you’re old enough to agree (or that a parent or guardian has said yes), and asks for your permission. You can withdraw it at any time under Profile › Settings › AI features; deleting your account withdraws it too.
What is sent, with your permission
- The topic you type, notes you paste, and text from a file or photo you choose — to write a deck
- The words of a spoken answer the app isn’t sure about — to check it
- Your session results and the questions you missed — for the end-of-session summary
What is never sent
- Photos, video or audio
- Your name, email, Apple ID or Game Center identity
- Your IP address — requests pass through our relay first
Where it goes. DeepSeek is a company based in China. Requests are processed on its servers under DeepSeek’s Privacy Policy, which may include keeping them. Our relay passes the text along without your IP address or any account details, and does not keep what it relays. It runs on Cloudflare, which processes network data such as IP addresses in order to deliver requests.
If you don’t allow DeepSeek, everything else keeps working: decks are still written on your device where supported, the on-device grader checks your answers, and you can always build a deck by hand.
9. Children
StudyBuff is designed for students, and nearly everything it does happens on the device without us receiving any information. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from children.
Two features involve third parties, and both are off until someone turns them on. DeepSeek (section 8) asks the person enabling it to confirm they’re old enough to agree where they live, or that a parent or guardian has said yes. Online Arena matches (section 6) follow the Game Center and Screen Time settings on the device. Parents can turn DeepSeek off in Profile › Settings › AI features, and use Screen Time to restrict online games.
To remove everything the app has stored, use Delete account in Profile › Settings, or delete the app.
10. Your choices and your rights
Every permission is optional and each is explained on screen, with its reason, before it is requested. You can change them at any time in iOS Settings › StudyBuff. Declining any of them leaves the app usable.
To remove your data:
- Reset everything under Profile › Settings clears your progress, decks and history.
- Sign out removes your Apple identifier, name and email from the device.
- Deleting the app removes all of it.
Privacy laws such as the GDPR and the CCPA give you rights to access, correct, export and delete personal data that a company holds about you, and not to have it sold. We hold none, so there is nothing for us to retrieve or erase on your behalf — the controls above put all of it in your hands. We do not sell or share personal information as those laws define it, and we do not use it for any form of automated decision-making or profiling.
11. Changes to this policy
If the app changes in a way that affects this policy — for example by changing what is sent to DeepSeek, or which AI service is used — we will update this page and change the date at the top before the new version ships. Material changes will also be described in the App Store release notes.
12. Contact
Questions about this policy, or about privacy in StudyBuff, are answered on our support page, which also explains how to get in touch.
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