The short version. Whole Story records your voice, turns it into text on your iPhone, and saves that text on your iPhone. Nothing is uploaded. There is no account, no server, and no analytics. We could not see your entries if we wanted to — there is no path for them to reach us.
What Whole Story does with your voice
When you tap the record button, your microphone audio is streamed directly to a speech model bundled inside the app (an on-device whisper.cpp model) — not to Apple, not to us. Whole Story never writes the audio itself to a file. Once the words on screen are final, the audio is gone — there's no recording sitting on your phone or anywhere else, only the text you spoke.
What Whole Story does with the text
Your transcribed entries are saved in a plain file in your iPhone's app storage, in a folder only Whole Story can access. This file is not encrypted by Whole Story. It's protected the same way the rest of your phone's data is: by your device passcode and iOS's built-in Data Protection, which encrypts your device's storage when it's locked. We don't add a second layer of encryption on top of that.
If you have iCloud Backup or iTunes/Finder backups turned on, this file is included in that backup like the rest of your app data. Those backups are unencrypted unless you've turned on encrypted backups yourself (an iOS/Finder setting, not a Whole Story one). That's between you and Apple — see Apple's privacy policy.
What we collect
Nothing. Whole Story has no analytics SDK, no crash reporter, no advertising SDK, and no third-party libraries of any kind. The app contains no networking code at all — it cannot send your voice or your words anywhere, because there is no code path built to do it.
Purchases
Whole Story offers one optional one-time purchase, handled entirely by Apple's App Store through StoreKit. We never see your name, payment details, or Apple Account — we only receive Apple's confirmation that this device holds a valid purchase. Purchases are covered by Apple's privacy policy.
Getting your entries out, or deleting them
You can share any entry's text out through the iOS share sheet whenever you like — that's the only way your words leave the app, and you're the one who triggers it each time. Deleting an entry inside Whole Story removes it from the file immediately. Deleting the app removes the whole file. Either way, there is no copy anywhere else — we don't hold one to give back or delete on your behalf.
Children
Whole Story is not directed at children under 13. Since we collect no personal information from anyone, we collect none from children.
Your rights
Privacy laws such as the GDPR and the CCPA give you rights to access, correct, export, or delete personal data a company holds about you. We hold none of your journal data — it lives only on your device — so there's nothing on our end to return or erase. Everything you'd ask us for, you already have, on your phone.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the update will appear on this page with a new date above. If a future version of Whole Story ever adds a server, an account, or any form of data collection, we will say so here plainly, before it ships.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or about Whole Story: [email protected].