Essential — Privacy Policy
Lafayette ("we", "us") makes Essential, a calendar app for iPhone and Apple Watch with Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets (the "App"). This policy explains what information the App handles, where it is stored and what leaves your device.
Summary
- No Essential account. We do not collect your name, email address or phone number. Signing in with Google is optional and used only for Google Calendar and Google Tasks sync.
- Your events and tasks are stored only on your devices and in your own iCloud. We cannot read them.
- No ads, no tracking, no advertising identifier (IDFA). We do not sell or share your data.
- Only these leave your device:
- Weather requests. If you allow location access, they include your coordinates rounded to about 1 km.
- Crash reports, through Firebase Crashlytics.
- Anonymous usage statistics, through Firebase Analytics.
- If you connect Google: your Google Calendar events and Google Tasks, exchanged directly with Google and never through our server (section 1.5).
1. Information the App handles
1.1 Stored only on your devices and in your iCloud
This information is never sent to our servers and we cannot access it.
| Category | What | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Events and tasks | Title, notes, URL, date and time, repeat and alert settings, completion status, postponed date | On device (SQLite); synced between your devices through your own iCloud (CloudKit private database) |
| Device Calendar and Reminders | Reads only the calendars and lists you choose and writes items you create in the App (from 3 years in the past to 1 year ahead) | Your device's Calendar and Reminders |
| Settings | Theme, dark mode, first day of week, text size, minute interval, selected calendar and list IDs, launch count, whether you responded to the review prompt | On device |
| Widgets and Apple Watch | Copies of your schedule summary and weather | Your iPhone and Apple Watch (App Group, WatchConnectivity) |
| Cache | Recent weather and exchange rate responses | On device |
- Reminders are local notifications scheduled on your device. Our servers do not send push notifications.
- iCloud sync runs under your own Apple Account and is governed by Apple's Privacy Policy.
1.2 Sent to our server (weather and exchange rates)
We run a small relay server on Cloudflare Workers for weather and exchange rates.
| Feature | What is sent | Purpose | Stored on server |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weather (location allowed) | Latitude and longitude rounded to two decimal places (about 1 km), language, country code, device time zone | Show weather for where you are | Location is not stored |
| Exchange rates (Korea region only) | No user data | Show exchange rates | N/A |
- If you deny location access, nothing about your location is sent and the App shows weather for a default city based on your device time zone.
- Our server fetches weather from Apple WeatherKit. Your IP address is not passed to Apple.
- The server caches weather responses only, on a grid of about 5 km (0.05°), for up to 6 hours. The cache is not linked to any person.
- Server storage (Cloudflare KV) holds only request counts and cache hit rates, with no identifiers.
- Cloudflare processes your IP address in order to deliver the request. We do not store it.
- All traffic uses HTTPS, and the server only accepts requests carrying the App's authentication token.
1.3 Collected automatically (Firebase)
| Tool | Data | Purpose | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Firebase Crashlytics | Crash details, stack trace, device model, iOS version, app version, Crashlytics installation ID | Find and fix crashes | 90 days |
| Firebase Analytics | App instance ID, default SDK events such as app open and screen view, device model, OS version, app version, language, country/region-level location derived from IP address | Understand how the App is used, as aggregate statistics, to improve it | Up to 14 months, per Google's settings |
- This data does not include your name, email or other direct identifiers, and is never used for advertising or tracking.
- We view Analytics data only as aggregate statistics. It is not combined with other data or used to track you across other apps and websites.
- The App does not yet have a setting to turn off crash reporting or usage statistics. We are looking at adding one.
1.4 Email
If you email us, we use your email address and message only to reply. "Send Feedback" in the App opens the App Store review page; the App itself does not collect email addresses.
1.5 Google Calendar and Google Tasks (optional)
If you choose to connect a Google account, the App uses the Google Calendar API and the Google Tasks API to show your Google events and tasks alongside your other items, and to save the changes you make in the App back to your Google account. The App does nothing with Google until you connect.
| Data | Access | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Email address of the connected Google account | Read | Show which account is connected |
| Calendars and events: title, date and time, location, notes, repeat and alert settings | Read and write | Show, create, edit and delete Google Calendar events in the App |
| Task lists and tasks: title, notes, due date, completion status | Read and write | Show, create, edit, complete and delete Google Tasks in the App |
- This data travels directly between your device and Google over HTTPS. It is never sent to our servers and we cannot read it.
- It is stored only on your device, including the copies used by widgets and Apple Watch. The sign-in token is kept in the iOS Keychain.
- We do not use it for advertising, do not sell it, do not transfer it to third parties and do not use it to train AI or machine learning models. It is not included in crash reports or usage statistics.
- Essential's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
- Disconnect: disconnect your Google account in the App's settings at any time, and the App deletes the Google data stored on your device. You can also remove the App's access at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Disconnecting does not delete anything from your Google account.
- Data in your Google account is governed by the Google Privacy Policy.
2. Retention and deletion
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| On-device data | Deleted when you delete the App |
| iCloud sync data | Until you delete it (Settings > [your name] > iCloud > Manage Storage) |
| Coordinates in weather requests | Not stored; discarded after the response |
| Server weather cache | Up to 6 hours |
| Firebase Crashlytics | 90 days |
| Firebase Analytics | Up to 14 months |
| Google Calendar and Google Tasks data on your device | Until you disconnect your Google account or delete the App |
| Email correspondence | 1 year after your request is resolved |
3. Sharing
We do not sell, rent or share your personal information with third parties, except with the service providers below acting on our behalf, or where required by law.
| Provider | Role | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Google LLC | Crash reporting (Firebase Crashlytics), app analytics (Firebase Analytics) | United States |
| Cloudflare, Inc. | Weather and exchange rate relay server | United States and Cloudflare data centers worldwide |
| Apple Inc. | Weather data (WeatherKit) | United States |
4. Permissions
| Permission | Used for |
|---|---|
| Calendars (full access) | Show and add events in your device calendars |
| Reminders (full access) | Work with your Reminders lists |
| Location (while using the App) | Weather for your current location |
| Notifications | Event and task reminders |
| Google account (optional sign-in) | Google Calendar and Google Tasks sync (section 1.5) |
All permissions are optional. You can change them at any time in Settings > Essential.
5. Security
We minimise what we handle: no accounts, coordinates rounded to about 1 km, and no location or identifiers stored on our server. All traffic is encrypted with HTTPS, the server only accepts authenticated requests from the App, and access to our admin consoles is limited to us.
6. Your choices and rights
- Your events, tasks and settings: view, edit or delete them in the App. Deleting the App removes on-device data; you can delete iCloud data in iCloud settings.
- Location: turn it off in Settings > Essential > Location. Weather then falls back to a default city.
- Requests: you can ask us to access, correct or delete personal information, or to stop processing it, by emailing us (section 10). Because we hold no account or name for you, we may ask for information needed to locate the data.
7. EEA, UK and Switzerland (GDPR)
Controller: Lafayette (contact in section 10).
| Processing | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Weather for your location | Performance of a contract: providing the feature you use (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Google Calendar and Google Tasks sync | Performance of a contract: providing the feature you turn on (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Crash reporting | Legitimate interests in keeping the App stable and secure (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Usage statistics (Firebase Analytics) | Legitimate interests in understanding how the App is used so we can improve it (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Replying to your emails | Legitimate interests in answering your request (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
- International transfers: data processed by Google, Cloudflare and Apple may be transferred to the United States. These transfers rely on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (and its UK and Swiss extensions) where the provider is certified, and on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
- Your rights: access, rectification, erasure, restriction, data portability and objection, including the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests. Email us and we will reply within one month.
- Complaints: you may lodge a complaint with the data protection authority where you live or work.
- We do not make decisions based solely on automated processing that significantly affect you.
8. United States (California and other states)
- Categories collected in the last 12 months: identifiers (Crashlytics installation ID, app instance ID), approximate geolocation (rounded to about 1 km and not stored), and device and diagnostic information. Sources: the App on your device. Purposes: as described in section 1.
- No sale or sharing: we do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and have not done so in the last 12 months.
- No sensitive personal information is used to infer characteristics about you.
- Your rights: to know, delete and correct personal information, and not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights. Email us to make a request; an authorised agent may act for you.
9. Children
The App does not collect names or contact details. It is not directed to children under 13 (under 16 in the EEA and UK), and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If we learn that we have, we will delete it.
10. Contact
| Operator | Lafayette |
| Privacy contact | Changhyun Lee |
| Address | Room 227, 2F, Renaissance City Plaza, 30 Bandal-ro 7beon-gil, Yeongtong-gu, Suwon-si, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea |
| qqqqq7ppppp@gmail.com |
11. Changes
We will post changes on this page at least 7 days before they take effect, or 30 days before for material changes.
| Effective | Changes |
|---|---|
| 2026-11-01 | Added optional Google Calendar and Google Tasks integration (section 1.5) |
| 2026-10-03 | Reflects how the App actually works: iCloud sync, weather and exchange rate server (Cloudflare), Reminders, Apple Watch and widgets added; contacts and place search removed |
| 2026-09-01 | First version |