Effective: November 2, 2026
Sundial is a small app for staying close to the handful of people who matter most. You share a day with someone, and it fills up with notes, photos, drawings, voice, and songs. This page says exactly what Sundial collects, what it cannot read, and how to get rid of all of it. It is deliberately short, because there is not much to say.
What you send is end-to-end encrypted on your device before it leaves it. That includes the golden hours, comments and reactions you share with your stars. We cannot read your messages, see your photos or drawings, or hear your voice notes. A few things are not encrypted, and this page lists them all. The main ones are your name, who follows whom, a photo only if you choose to show one on your page, and whatever someone can see when they report it, which they send to Jacob. We never ask for your email address, phone number, contacts, or location. We do not show ads, and we do not sell anything about you to anybody, ever.
Sundial is made by Jacob Cacheria. You can reach us any time at support@sundialus.com.
Everything you put into an orbit is encrypted on your phone before it is uploaded, and only the phones of the people in that orbit can open it. That covers your written beams, sunprints and doubletakes, inklings, hums, moonflowers and their answers, golden hours, sunsongs, backdrops, the FaceTime link for an eclipse, and the captions on any of them.
Golden hours you share with your stars are the same. The photo, hum, word and song are encrypted on your phone with a key that only you and the stars you have let in hold, and so are the comments and reactions under them.
Our servers, and the companies that run them, only ever store the encrypted version. Nobody at Sundial can open it. Neither can Google, whose infrastructure it sits on. The one way we ever see any of it is a report, when someone who could already see something decrypts it on their own phone and sends it to us. See "Reports" below.
One consequence is worth saying out loud: if you lose your devices and your keychain, that history cannot be recovered. Not by you, and not by us. That is the trade for us not being able to read it.
Some information has to be readable by our servers for the app to work at all. We would rather list it than let you assume otherwise:
Stars are one way following: someone you let in can see your golden hour for the 24 hours it is up. You approve every one.
You can report someone's page, or a golden hour or comment shared with stars, and you can report anyone in a chat from their page. Your phone then sends what you can see of it to Jacob, who makes Sundial and reads them: the name, photo or word, or the comment, decrypted on your phone, along with who it is about and who sent the report. If it is a comment, the server adds who wrote it, even if they have since deleted it, and stars still see no names. When one person sends more than 20 reports in an hour, the ones past that are deleted rather than kept.
Jacob can suspend someone after a report. Their page and link stop working, their photo is removed, their waiting requests and asks, their comments and their reactions are deleted, and they stop seeing who they follow. They can't join or start any new chat or solar system. Chats they are already in keep working.
Reports made in stars are kept for 90 days and then deleted, along with any picture they carry, even if the person who sent one or the person it is about deletes their account. See "Terms" at the end of this page.
You sign in with Apple. Apple gives us an identifier for your account and nothing else. Sundial does not request or receive your email address, never asks for a phone number, and there is no password to lose.
Your profile photo, and any world you draw for someone, are encrypted on your phone and stored with us so your own other phones can put them back when you sign in. We cannot see them, and they are never sent to the people you orbit with. The one exception is if you turn on "show your photo" on your page in stars, which puts a separate, unencrypted copy of your photo there, as described under "Stars" above. A world you draw is never shown this way.
Your settings also travel between your own phones through your iCloud Keychain, which Apple protects with end-to-end encryption: your name, the postcode you entered, your music service, your widget style, your north star, the order of your orbits, your reactions, and for each orbit the world it wears, the relationship you picked, and the ring you drew. Of these, the only one our servers ever see is your name, as described above.
If you enter a postcode so the sun in the app matches your sky, your phone asks Apple's maps service to turn it into a rough latitude. The postcode is never sent to us.
Sundial records a small amount of information about how the app is used, so we can tell which parts work and which are broken. Each record is an event name such as "a beam was sent", "a sunprint failed to load", or "the almanac was opened", sometimes with a small detail like an error code, along with your account identifier, a nickname generated from it, the hour on your clock, your time zone offset, and your iPhone model and iOS version. Sundial also keeps a running count of how often each feature is used.
If connecting with someone fails, the app sends a short report of why, with part of your account identifier, the app version, your iPhone model, your iOS version, and your time zone offset, so we can fix it.
These records say that something happened, never what it was. The contents of anything you send never appear in them. There is no third-party analytics company involved, no advertising identifier, and no tracking across other apps or websites.
Nothing from any of these is uploaded except the specific thing you chose to send, and that goes up encrypted like everything else, apart from a photo you choose to show on your page, and what you send in a report.
So you can say "beam mom in sundial", Sundial gives Siri the names you use for the people you orbit with. What you say to Siri is handled by Apple under its own privacy policy.
Notifications and widgets are filled in on your phone. The notification our server sends only says who something is from and what kind of thing it is, and the copies your widgets show are kept on your phone.
Sundial Gold is a one-time purchase handled entirely by Apple. Payment details never reach us. We store only whether an account has unlocked it.
Nobody can message you in Sundial unless you are in an orbit together, and that takes a link one of you chose to send. A star you let in can comment under your golden hour. Someone who has your link, or who shares an orbit with you, can ask to follow you or to start an orbit with you. You get a banner saying someone asked, with no name in it, and they get nothing until you say yes.
If you leave an orbit, that person is gone from your solar system and cannot message you again unless the two of you start a new one. Stars are separate: leaving an orbit does not stop them following you, or asking to.
If you block someone, they can't follow you, ask to start an orbit, or open your page, and your one to one orbit with them ends. Their comments and reactions on golden hours you shared with stars are deleted. It does not change shared solar systems you are both already in, but it does stop them joining one through a link you made.
If you send feedback from Settings, we receive your message, a screenshot if you attach one, and your iPhone model and iOS version. Feedback is written to us, so it is not encrypted.
Sundial runs on Google Firebase (Authentication, Firestore, Cloud Storage, Cloud Functions, and Cloud Messaging) and uses Apple for sign-in, push notifications, iCloud Keychain, Siri, and payments. It also uses Apple's App Attest to check that requests come from the real app, which helps keep out abuse. Everything is encrypted in transit, and your content is additionally encrypted by your own phone before it gets there, apart from what this page lists as not encrypted.
A day's beams leave the main page at midnight and are kept in your almanac, which only the people in that orbit can open. You can take back something you sent for three minutes after sending it. If somebody leaves a one to one orbit, the shared history is deleted within twenty-four hours. A solar system's history stays with the people still in it, and is deleted within twenty-four hours of the last of them leaving. Invite codes and links expire. A golden hour shared with your stars shows for 24 hours, is not kept in anyone's past golden hours, and is deleted from our servers within about two days, with its comments and reactions. Reports are kept for 90 days from when they reach us. Usage records and feedback are kept until your account is deleted, and so are reports that reached us before stars came to Sundial.
You can delete your account from inside the app, in Settings. It leaves every orbit you are in, which deletes a one to one orbit's shared history within twenty-four hours, and takes your uploads out of every solar system, where the words you sent stay with the people still in it until the last of them leaves. It removes your name, your profile photo and drawn worlds, your usage records, and your feedback. It also clears the settings kept in your iCloud Keychain, revokes Sign in with Apple, and deletes the account itself. It cannot be undone. If you would rather we did it, or you no longer have the app, email support@sundialus.com and we will.
In stars, it deletes your page, your link, your photo and your golden hours, the people who follow you and the people you follow, on both sides, your requests and asks, your comments and reactions, your blocks and anyone's block of you, and the keys on your phone.
Some things stay. A report you sent, or one someone sent about you, stays for the rest of its 90 days, because someone may still need to act on it, and that includes any words or picture it carries. Reports from older versions of Sundial that someone else sent about you stay until they delete their account. Anything already on someone else's phone, like a banner they have not cleared, stays there until they clear it or next open Sundial.
Sundial is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect anything from them. If you believe a child has made an account, email us and we will remove it.
If this policy changes, the effective date at the top changes with it, and the new version is posted here.
Using Sundial means agreeing to its terms, including zero tolerance for objectionable content and abusive people: sundialus.com/terms.
Questions, deletion requests, or anything at all: support@sundialus.com.