Privacy Policy
Last updated 31 August 2026 · Effective 31 August 2026
The short version. StudyBuff has no servers. It does not collect your personal information, it has no analytics and no trackers, and your camera never leaves your phone except to go directly to a friend’s phone during an Arena match you started. 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 backend server, no user database, and no account system of its own. We cannot see your reps, your answers, your progress, your camera, your microphone or your identity, because none of it is ever sent to us.
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, rent or share information with anyone — there is nothing to sell
- 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. 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, and whether you are a guest or signed in with Apple. |
| Settings | Sound, haptics, spoken questions, camera preference, speech rate, voice, boss rounds, and the Arena video switch. |
If you choose to supply your own AI key (see section 8), it is held in the iOS Keychain, not in ordinary app storage.
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 uploaded to us. The one exception is an Arena match against a nearby friend, described in section 6.
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 your local network
The Arena lets you race head to head. There are two kinds of match, and they behave very differently.
Against the bot
A bot match sends nothing at all. The opponent runs entirely on your own phone. No network connection of any kind is made, and no local network permission is needed.
Against a friend in the room
StudyBuff asks for local network access so it can find other phones nearby running the app. Discovery and play use Apple’s peer-to-peer networking over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. There is no server in the middle. Your phone talks directly to theirs, and neither of you needs an internet connection.
During a match the two phones exchange the shape of the game — reps, score, round, and your display name and avatar colour — and, if you leave it on, a live picture from your camera so your opponent can see you working. That video:
- Goes only to the phone you are playing against, directly
- Is never recorded, never stored, and never reaches us or any server
- Stops the instant the match ends
- Can be switched off before or during a match, in the match controls or under Profile › Settings › Arena. Your opponent then sees your avatar and your rep count only.
We have no way to see, intercept or retain anything exchanged in a match.
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. Optional AI features
StudyBuff can optionally use Anthropic’s Claude API to write decks from a topic or your notes, to give a second opinion on a spoken answer that was close but not word-for-word, and to write a short post-session summary.
In the current App Store release these features are switched off and the app makes no outbound internet requests at all. Where they are enabled, only the text of questions, answers and any notes you paste is sent. Camera frames and audio are never sent, under any configuration.
If a future release enables them, this policy will be updated before that release ships, and the app will continue to show you which mode it is in under Profile › Settings › AI features. Requests would be governed by Anthropic’s Privacy Policy. Anthropic does not train its models on API inputs or outputs by default.
9. Children
StudyBuff is rated 4+ and is suitable for general audiences, including students. Because the app collects no personal information and transmits nothing to us, it does not knowingly collect information from children — or from anyone. We do not have any data about a child that a parent could ask us to delete, because we never receive any. Parents who want to remove everything the app has stored can delete the app, or use Reset everything in 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, including the Keychain entry.
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 — most plausibly by enabling the AI features in section 8 — 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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