Privacy Policy

Effective date: October 2, 2026

Fledgling is made by MW Software LLC ("we," "us"). Fledgling turns a parent's spoken memories into written stories, kept on your device and in your own cloud storage — your iCloud on iPhone and, if you turn on backup, your own Google Drive on Android. This policy explains exactly what data the app touches, what leaves your device, and what we hold. The short version: your recordings never leave your own storage, your library lives with you and not with us, and we hold none of your content — with one narrow, temporary exception when you order a printed book.

1. The parent-directed model

Fledgling is designed for use by a parent or legal guardian, 18 or older, who is the account holder and the app's only user. Children are the subjects of the memories you record — they are not users, have no accounts, and the app collects nothing from them. When you record a memory (including one that captures your child's voice) and add a child's name, you provide that information as the parent, and you confirm you are the child's parent or legal guardian.

2. Where your memories live

Everything you create — recordings, transcripts, stories, photos, child profiles, and engagement details like read counts — is stored on your device. On iPhone it syncs to your personal iCloud private database (so your library survives a lost or new phone). On Android, your library lives on your device, with an optional, off-by-default backup to a hidden, app-private folder in your own Google Drive — you sign in and switch it on, it uses your storage, and restoring on a new phone brings your library back. MW Software cannot read your iCloud private database or your Google Drive — we hold no credentials for either. We operate no account system and hold no copy of your library (the one exception — book files staged briefly for a print order you placed — is described in Section 6).

3. Recordings and transcription

All transcription happens on-device. Your recordings never leave your device for transcription. On iPhone, a one-time download of Apple's speech model may occur over the network; that download brings Apple's model to your device, and no recording or other content is uploaded in the process. On Android, the speech model ships inside the app — nothing is downloaded, ever. Apple Watch recordings travel only from your watch to your paired iPhone (Apple device-to-device transfer) and are transcribed there.

The app never transmits audio to MW Software or to any AI or other third-party service. The only network traffic that contains audio or original photos is Android's optional backup — and that travels solely between your device and your own Google Drive. Traffic to MW Software's systems consists of text and rendered PDFs — never audio, never raw photos.

4. Story generation (the one AI processor)

When a transcript is turned into a story, the app sends the transcript text; the first names of the children you've tagged on that memory — only names from your child list, and nothing else about them; the app collects no ages or birthdays; the memory's date; and, if the memory is part of a trip, the trip's name. Along with the writing style you chose, these go through MW Software's API relay to our single AI processor category: a large-language-model service that writes the story and returns it to your device. That service is Claude, provided by Anthropic, PBC. The app tells you this and asks your permission before it sends anything, and you can turn story writing off at any time in Settings → Privacy; with it off, recording and on-device transcription still work. Nothing else from your library is sent. This is the only AI processing in the app; photos are never sent to any AI service, and no audio is ever sent to any AI service or to MW Software.

The relay call is transient: no vendor account exists for you, and under the API terms we use, your text is not used to train AI models and is automatically deleted from the vendor's systems within 30 days. (Like most AI providers, the vendor can hold content longer only if its automated safety systems flag a request as violating its usage policy — an exception designed for abuse, not for family stories.)

About our relay: MW Software's API relay verifies that requests come from a genuine copy of the app (Apple App Attest on iPhone; Google Play Integrity on Android) and passes your text through. It is transit-only: we do not log or store the content that passes through it — no transcripts, no stories, no book files — anywhere, with the single print-order exception described in Section 6. What we do keep, per app install, is one anonymous record: a security key for that install (on iPhone, the public half of an Apple App Attest key; on Android, a random secret our relay issues once Google Play Integrity has confirmed a genuine copy of the app), counts of how many stories and orders that install has made, and — if you subscribe — your membership tier, its expiry, and the store's anonymous purchase identifier (Apple's transaction identifier on iPhone; Google Play's purchase token on Android, which our relay checks with Google Play). We never receive your payment details, your Apple ID, or your Google account identity. None of that is content, and none of it identifies you. How long this record is kept is described in Section 9.

5. Subscriptions

Fledgling Membership is purchased through Apple In-App Purchase on iPhone and Google Play Billing on Android. Apple or Google handles payment; we never see your payment information. To apply your membership's limits fairly, your device proves its tier to our relay — on iPhone with Apple's cryptographically signed transaction record, and on Android with Google Play's purchase token, which our relay checks directly with Google Play. Neither carries payment details, your Apple ID, or your Google account identity.

6. Printed books (the one exception, and the two outside parties)

When you — and only when you — order a printed yearbook:

• Your device renders the book files locally, and the app uploads them to our relay, which stages them in MW Software storage for up to 14 days so the printer can fetch them. This is the only place MW Software ever holds your content. Files are deleted immediately if checkout fails, and deletion after the 14-day window is enforced automatically. Book files can include your stories, your photos (as print-resolution copies), and — for a memory that has no generated story — your transcript text.
• MW Software is the seller of the printed book. You pay on a secure checkout page hosted by Stripe, our payment processor. Your card details are entered on Stripe's page and never touch the Fledgling app or MW Software's systems; Stripe keeps the payment record and emails your receipt. Stripe's handling of your payment is governed by Stripe's own privacy policy.
• Your name and shipping address are entered on that same Stripe page. Once your payment succeeds, Stripe passes them to our relay once, and the relay forwards them to our print partner together with the book files. The relay does not store your name, address, or email — like everything else that passes through it, they are transit-only and never logged. Stripe retains them as part of your payment record.
• Our print partner, RPI Print (a US printer), receives your name, shipping address, and the book files, and prints and ships the book from a US facility. The order is labelled with a neutral description ("Fledgling Yearbook") and an anonymous order reference — your child's name is not part of the order record (it appears only inside the book itself). The printer keeps the book files for up to 60 days for reprints and quality checks, then deletes them, and uses your details for fulfillment only.
• Print pricing, shipping, delivery estimates, cancellations, and remedies for a damaged or defective book are set out in our Terms. Questions about an order go to [email protected]; to answer them we look the order up in Stripe and with the printer by its anonymous reference.

7. Sharing

Sharing in Fledgling is explicit and local: story cards, PDFs, text, original audio, and archive exports are files created on your device and handed to your phone's share sheet — you choose the person and the channel. Fledgling hosts no share links, and shared content never passes through our infrastructure.

8. What we don't do

• No third-party analytics, crash-reporting, or tracking SDKs. On iPhone, Apple's built-in, opt-in diagnostics only. On Android, the app includes only Google Play's own libraries — for subscriptions, for confirming a genuine copy of the app, and for the review prompt — which operate under Google Play's terms; Google's billing library sends its own usage logs to Google. We don't receive any of it.
• No advertising, no data sale, no profiling. We do not sell, rent, or share your data for advertising, and nothing you create is used to train AI models.
• No collection of location, contacts, browsing history, or advertising identifiers. The app has no account system and collects no email address — [email protected] receives only the mail you choose to send. (If you order a printed book, the email you give at checkout is used by Stripe for your receipt; see Section 6.)

9. Deletion — the promises the app keeps

1. Deleting a memory removes its audio, transcript, story, and engagement details from your device and your cloud copy (your iCloud; your Google Drive backup, if enabled).
2. Removing a child from your family list removes only that list entry — memories are never deleted this way. Each memory is deleted individually, deliberately, as in (1).
3. Deleting the app (and, on iPhone, its iCloud data) leaves MW Software holding none of your content — except any book files still inside their 14-day print window, which delete on schedule. What remains is the anonymous per-install record described in Section 4: a security key, usage counts and, if you subscribed, your membership tier and the store's purchase identifier. It contains no content and does not identify you. On Android, a device's install record is deleted automatically after 400 days without use.
4. On Android, your optional Google Drive backup belongs to your Google account and deliberately survives deleting the app — that's what makes restoring on a new phone possible. Delete it any time in the app (Turn off backup → Delete backup from Drive) or from your Google account's storage settings.
5. Recently-deleted memories are recoverable in-app for 30 days, then removed.

10. Children's privacy

Fledgling is directed to parents, not to children, and provides no child-facing features or accounts. Information about children (a first name, recordings a parent chooses to make) is provided by the parent, stored in the parent's own device and cloud storage, and used only to provide the app's features, as described above. We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children. Parents control this information completely and can delete it at any time (Section 9). If you believe a child has used the app to submit information without a parent's involvement, contact us at [email protected] and we will help remove it.

11. Our website and the beta program

If you sign up for the Fledgling beta on getfledgling.com, we store the email address you submit (and when you submitted it) solely to contact you about the beta and launch. It is never sold, shared, or used for any other marketing; it is deleted automatically one year after you submit it, and you can have it deleted sooner at any time by emailing [email protected]. This is the only personal information our website collects.

12. Your rights

Because your library lives in your own storage, the most important rights — access, export, correction, deletion — are built into the app itself (including full export from Settings). Depending on where you live, you may have additional legal rights over personal data; to exercise them or ask anything, contact [email protected]. We do not discriminate for exercising privacy rights. We process data as described in this policy to provide the service you request.

13. Changes to this policy

If the app's data handling ever changes — for example, a new feature that touches a new vendor — this policy will be updated before that feature ships, with the effective date above reflecting the current version. Material changes will be announced in the app or on our website.

14. Contact

MW Software LLC · [email protected] · mwsoftwarellc.com