In short: your data builds your briefing — nothing else.
Litmus is a personalized daily briefing, so it needs an account, and we operate a backend that stores your preferences and reading activity to build your feed. That data is used only to make Litmus work for you. There are no ads, no third-party analytics or tracking SDKs, and we never sell your data or use it for advertising.
What we collect
- Your account — the email address you sign up with (via email and password, Sign in with Apple, or Google). We use it to sign you in and, rarely, to contact you about your account.
- Your preferences — the fields you follow, the specific blogs and topics you follow, your preferred format (checklist, narrative, code-first, visual), depth (TL;DR to deep), skill levels, and your onboarding answers. These shape what your briefing covers and how it reads.
- Your library — the stories you save.
- Notification settings — if you turn on notifications, we store a device push token (from Apple) plus your chosen briefing time and time zone, so we can send the alerts you asked for. See Notifications below.
- Your reading activity — lightweight signals such as which stories you expand, skip, save, or ask to re-explain, and roughly how long you read. Litmus uses these only to make your feed more relevant.
- Personalized briefings — the renders Litmus generates for you are cached in your account so reopening them is instant.
Your session is stored in the iOS Keychain on your device. We don't collect your contacts, your location, advertising identifiers, or anything about what you do outside the app.
How your data is used
To assemble your daily feed, personalize how stories are explained to you, and keep your library and preferences in sync when you sign in on a new device. That's the whole list.
AI processing
Litmus uses AI providers (currently OpenAI) to distill published articles, changelogs, and posts into summaries, briefings, and lessons. When Litmus renders a story for you, your format, depth, and level preferences are included so the result fits how you learn. When you use Read a link, Litmus sends the URL to Tavily to retrieve readable page text, then sends that text to OpenAI for distillation. This processing happens under OpenAI's API terms and Tavily's privacy policy; your data is not used to train their models.
Notifications
Notifications are off until you turn them on. If you do, iOS gives us a device push token that we store with your account, along with the briefing time and time zone you pick. We use them only to send the alerts you asked for — a daily briefing when there's genuinely something new, and posts from blogs or topics you follow. Notifications are delivered through Apple's Push Notification service; the message content leaves our servers only to reach your device. Turn notifications off anytime in the app or in iOS Settings, and the token is removed when you sign out or delete your account.
Where your data lives
Your account and personal data are stored with Supabase (our authentication and database provider) and processed on Amazon Web Services, in the United States. Data is encrypted in transit. Profiles, saves, learning progress, and links submitted through Read a link are scoped to your account; public feed articles and their shared distillations are intentionally common to all readers.
Services we rely on
- Supabase — accounts and database.
- Amazon Web Services — hosting.
- OpenAI — AI summarization and briefing generation, as described above.
- Tavily — server-side search and page extraction. Feed searches use public topic queries; Read a link sends the URL you submit so Tavily can return its readable text.
- Apple — Sign in with Apple (if you choose it) and the Push Notification service that delivers your alerts (if you turn them on).
Retention & deletion
We keep your data for as long as your account exists. You can delete individual saved items in the app at any time. To delete your account, open Settings → Delete account & data in the app — deletion is immediate and permanently removes everything tied to your account: your profile, preferences, library, reading activity, and cached briefings. You can also request deletion by email at [email protected] from your account address.
Your choices
- Change your fields, format, and depth anytime in Settings, or redo onboarding from scratch.
- Turn notifications on or off, and pick your briefing time, in Settings.
- Delete any saved item, or sign out on any device.
- Delete your account and all its data in-app (Settings), or email us for deletion or a copy of your data.
Children
Litmus is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.
Changes
If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted on this page with a new date. For meaningful changes, we'll also tell you in the app.
Contact
Questions? Email [email protected].