Blackbook Privacy Policy

Last updated: 28 October 2026

Blackbook is a diary of the people you know and the promises you make, for iPhone, iPad and Mac, made by Wireside Studios. It is built so that your book stays yours: there are no accounts, and Wireside Studios runs no servers.

What Blackbook stores, and where

• Your pages (each person's name, how to reach them, who they are, things to remember, how you met, promises and to-dos, diary entries and, if you allow it, the place where you added them) are stored on your device and, if you are signed in to iCloud, in your private iCloud database, so they appear on your other devices signed in with the same Apple Account. Wireside Studios cannot access this data.
• Settings (appearance, calendar and Reminders choices, notification times and quiet hours, whether location is saved with new pages, whether you have seen the welcome screens) are stored on the device.
• Automatic backups are snapshots of your book kept inside the app on each device and, if iCloud Drive is on, copied to iCloud Drive › Blackbook › Backups. They stay in your Apple Account; Wireside Studios cannot access them.
• Backups you export are files you choose where to save; they contain your book in an open JSON format.
• Things you share into Blackbook from another app (text, links, contact cards and photos) are passed from the share sheet to the app on the same device and are not sent anywhere else.

Permissions

Each permission is asked for only when you first use the feature that needs it, and Blackbook works without any of them.

• Contacts — used to suggest people from your address book as you type a name, to link a page to an existing card, and to save a person as a new contact when you ask (or, if you turn on the setting, every new person with a number or email). Blackbook reads the cards you allow; with iOS's limited access it sees only the contacts you chose. When you save a person who already has a card, Blackbook adds a missing company, number or email to it; it never removes anything from your contacts.
• Calendar — used to add, update and remove the events for promises you choose to put on your calendar. It does not read your other events.
• Reminders — used only when you choose Send to Reminders. Blackbook creates, updates and removes reminders in a list named "Blackbook" and never reads your other lists. Changes you make in the Reminders app are not read back.
• Notifications — Blackbook schedules notifications on your device from your own book: when a promise is due, a check-in if it is still open, people who have gone quiet, and a morning page on days that have something in them. Quiet hours and quiet days are respected. No server is involved and nothing about your book is sent anywhere to produce them. Turn any of it off in Settings › Notifications.
• Camera — used only when you photograph a business card (you can also choose an existing photo instead). The name, company, number and email are read from the image on your device; the photo is not kept.
• Location (while using the app) — optional. If you allow it, Blackbook reads your location once when you add a person and stores the coordinates and a short place name (such as "Dubai Marina") on their page, so you can recall where you met. There is no background location use and no tracking. Turn it off in Settings, remove it from any page, or decline the permission.
• Microphone and Speech Recognition — used only when you tap the microphone in Jot. When your device and language support it, speech is recognised on the device. Otherwise the audio is sent to Apple's speech recognition service under Apple's privacy terms; the screen says which is in use.

On-device intelligence

Jot, card scanning and Bring in People turn text into pages on your device, using Apple Intelligence where it is available or a built-in parser. To-do suggestions are drafted the same way from a person's own diary and promises, and you choose which to keep. Nothing is uploaded to Wireside Studios or any third party.

What Blackbook does not do

• No analytics, usage tracking, advertising identifiers or session recording.
• No third-party SDKs or libraries.
• No accounts and no sign-up.
• It never sends a message for you. WhatsApp, Messages and Mail open with the person ready; you decide what to send.

Your control

• Edit or remove any person, promise or diary entry at any time. Removals sync to your other devices and remove any calendar event Blackbook created for them.
• Settings › Privacy › Remove Everyone takes every page off this device and, through iCloud, off your other devices. A safety backup is taken first.
• Settings › Privacy › Reset Blackbook removes every page, clears notifications and puts every setting back to its default. You choose whether to keep or delete your backups.
• Settings › Backup › Export Backup gives you a complete copy of your book in an open format.
• Deleting the app removes its data from the device; data in your private iCloud database and iCloud Drive remains under your Apple Account until you remove it in the app or in iCloud settings.

Children

Blackbook is not directed at children.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes, the date above will be updated and the new text published at https://blackbook.wiresidestudios.com/privacy/. Questions: farhan@wiresidestudios.com.