What John15Five knows about you.

The short version

There is no sign-up and no profile. The full Bible, your reading plans, notes, highlights and prayers live in a database on your own device. We keep no record of what you read. A few optional features send text you have written to our server so an AI can help with it — and only when you ask.

We do not track your reading

This is deliberate and it is absolute. Opening a chapter, finishing a plan, listening to a passage, marking a verse — none of it is transmitted, aggregated, or counted anywhere off your device. Not anonymised, not in the interest of improving the product. What you read is between you and God, not you, God and an analytics dashboard.

What stays on your phone

The Bible text, every reading plan, all notes and journal entries, prayer lists, highlights, progress and settings. These are stored locally. There is no cloud sync, so we hold no copy and cannot read them. Deleting the app removes them.

What leaves your phone, and when

Only when you tap something that says so:

• Reading plans from a description. If you describe what you are walking through, that text is sent to our server and on to Anthropic to generate a plan.
• A plan from a photo. If you photograph a printed plan, that image is sent to be read.
• Word studies and reflections. The passage or question you asked about is sent.
• Dictation cleanup. If you dictate a note, the transcript is sent to be tidied.

These requests travel over an encrypted connection. Anthropic processes them on our behalf and returns the result, which your phone stores locally.

Some of this is genuinely personal — the situation you describe to get a plan may be the hardest thing in your life at that moment. It is sent once, to answer your request, and is not retained by us.

Audio is never kept

You can dictate anywhere you can type. Speech becomes text using your device’s own recognition; depending on your settings Apple may process the audio as a system service, under Apple’s privacy policy.

John15Five retains no audio. No recording is saved to disk and none is sent to our servers — only the resulting text, and only where you would have typed it.

Camera and photos

The camera is used only when you choose to photograph a printed reading plan, and the photo library only when you pick an image yourself. John15Five does not browse, scan or upload your photo library. An image you select for a plan is sent to be read and is not retained afterwards.

The device key

Two AI features cost real money, so we count them. To do that without accounts, your phone generates 32 bytes of random data on first use and stores it in the device keychain. It is sent with those AI requests only.

It is worth being precise about what it is not. It is not an email, a phone number, an advertising identifier, or anything derived from your hardware — it is noise, so it cannot be correlated with anything about you anywhere else. Our server does not even store it: it stores a one-way hash. The most that database can say is “some device made three plans in June”, with no way to tell which, and no way to link it back to a person.

It is never sent when you read, listen, or reflect.

What we keep

Counts of AI requests against that hashed key, so the free allowance can be metered. Nothing else — no plan text, no notes, no prayers, no reading history. Our hosting provider keeps ordinary operational logs recording that a request occurred and whether it succeeded; those do not contain the text you sent.

Crash reports

John15Five sends crash and error reports to Sentry, a third-party diagnostics service, so faults can be found and fixed. These reports are deliberately stripped:

• No user identity — there are no accounts
• Request bodies are removed, so the situation you described or the note you dictated is never included
• Screen names are recorded, but Scripture references are replaced with [redacted] — a report never reveals which passage you were reading
• The device key is not sent; the headers carrying it are deleted
• No screenshots, no screen recording, no view hierarchy
• Console output is dropped entirely

A crash report tells us that the reader screen broke, never what was on it. These rules are covered by automated tests that run on every change.

What John15Five does not do

• No advertising, and no advertising identifiers
• No telemetry on Scripture engagement, aggregated or otherwise
• No selling or sharing of personal information
• No accounts, logins, or email lists
• No third-party trackers

Children

John15Five is suitable for family use and is not directed at children under 13 specifically. It collects no identity and builds no profile of any user, whatever their age.

Your choices

Your content lives on your device, so you control it directly. Delete a note and it is gone. Delete the app and everything goes with it. There is no account to close.

If you would rather send nothing at all, simply do not use the AI features. The complete Bible, reading plans, audio and notes all work without them.

Changes

John15Five is in active development. When what the app does with data changes, this page will be updated before that version ships, and the date at the top will change.

Contact

Questions about privacy in John15Five:
privacy@firstlightapps.com

FirstLight Technologies, Inc.