Calm Otter — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 15 October 2026

Short version: Calm Otter collects nothing. Everything stays on your phone.

What the app stores, and where

Everything Calm Otter stores lives only on your device, inside the app’s private storage:

• Your pause history: when each pause started, how long it lasted, how it ended, the first names of the people you paused with, the activity suggested for a shared pause, and your optional answer and short note after a pause.
• Your settings: theme, durations, the lists of apps that stay, scheduled pauses, and the other switches in Settings.
• The password, never in plain text: only a salted PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 hash, encrypted with a key held by Android Keystore.

None of this is ever sent anywhere. Calm Otter does not have the INTERNET permission: it cannot connect to the internet. There is no account, no server, no analytics, no advertising, no crash reporting and no third-party SDK that collects data (the QR scanner, ZXing, works entirely on the device).

Android backup. If you have Android’s own backup turned on, Android may include the app’s history and settings (never the password) in your backup, in your Google account, like it does for other apps. That’s Android, under your control, not Calm Otter sending data: you can turn it off in the phone’s settings.

Uninstalling the app, or clearing its storage from Android settings, deletes all of it. You can also clear History from inside the app. History can be exported as a CSV file through Android’s share menu: it goes only where you choose to send it, by your own tap. The same goes for sharing a finished pause or inviting a friend: the app prepares a short text with the Play Store link, and you choose whether and where to send it.

Permissions, and why

• Accessibility service: to know which app is in the foreground, so it can be covered with the pause screen during a pause. If you turn on “After long use”, it also counts how long the screen has been on without a break; that count is a few timestamps on the phone, with no record of which apps you used. It does not read what is on the screen or what you type (canRetrieveWindowContent is off), and the app in the foreground is used on the spot, never stored or sent. The app explains this and asks for your consent before you enable it.
• Do Not Disturb access: to silence notifications during a pause, and to restore your own settings afterwards.
• Notifications: the ongoing notification of a pause, the heads-up before a scheduled pause or a pause after long use, and the optional Sunday note.
• Camera (only if you scan a QR to join a shared pause): the image is read on the device to decode the code and is not saved.
• Bluetooth and NFC (only for shared pauses): to let two phones in the same room find each other and agree on the start time. What they exchange is a device name, the duration, a start time and the suggested activity; the connection ends when the pause begins.
• Run at startup: to restore a pause in progress and re-arm scheduled pauses after the phone restarts.

Links that leave the app

Settings contains links to the source code, the licence, the developer’s page and a feedback form on GitHub (the form is pre-filled with the app version and phone model, which you can see and edit before sending). Tapping one opens your browser; from then on you are on GitHub, under GitHub’s own privacy policy.

Children

Calm Otter is not directed at children under 13.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes, the new version will be published at this same address with a new date. Questions: open an issue at https://github.com/calca/otter/issues.