Privacy Policy

Who we are

Halto: Pause Before You Scroll (“Halto”, “the app”) is made by Workaholic Developers (“we”, “us”). For any privacy question, email info@workaholicdevelopers.com.

What we collect: nothing

• We don’t collect, store, sell or share personal data. Halto has no server, so there is nothing to collect it with.
• There is no sign-up and no account.
• The app contains no third-party SDKs for advertising, analytics or crash reporting, and no tracking of any kind. It doesn’t use the advertising identifier.
• The app makes no network requests. The Android app doesn’t even request the Internet permission.

What Halto keeps on your phone

Everything Halto needs is stored on your phone, in the app’s private storage:

• History: a local SQLite database of your pauses (which guarded app, when, the breath length, whether you chose “Not now” or opened the app, and the intention you picked or typed, if any), the opens Halto let through during the free re-open time, and your focus sessions (start, length, and whether you completed them).
• Your guarded apps and each app’s rules: pause length, daily limit, and the minutes per open used for the time-saved estimate.
• Your settings: language, appearance, the free re-open time after “Open anyway”, wind-down and morning times, focus schedules, and notification choices.
• Streaks, insights and achievements, worked out on the phone from that history.

Shared with Halto’s widgets. So that widgets, the Live Activity and Control Center can show your numbers, and so the pause can work while Halto isn’t open, Halto keeps a small summary and its live state (a running focus session, the free re-open time, and pauses not yet saved to the history) in storage that only Halto, its widgets and its extensions can read: an App Group on iPhone, and the app’s private SharedPreferences on Android.

Backups. On iPhone, like any app’s data, Halto’s data can be part of your own device backups (iCloud Backup or a computer backup). On Android, Halto opts out of cloud backup (it is not copied to your Google account), but it can move with a direct phone-to-phone transfer. Those backups are between you and Apple or Google; we can’t read them.

On iPhone

Shortcuts automations and App Intents

On iPhone, the pause works through a personal automation that you create in Apple’s Shortcuts app (“When an app is opened, run Halto’s Pause before opening”). The automation and Halto’s App Intents run on your iPhone. Halto learns only that an app you chose was opened, at that moment, so it can show the pause. It can’t see other apps or anything you do inside them.

Screen Time (optional)

If your version of Halto offers Screen Time shields and you turn them on, Halto uses Apple’s Screen Time frameworks (Family Controls, Managed Settings and Device Activity) with your permission. By Apple’s design, this data stays on your iPhone and is not visible to us:

• The apps and categories you choose in Apple’s picker reach Halto only as private tokens. Only iOS can turn them back into app names, for example on the shield screen.
• Shields and schedules are applied by iOS on your iPhone.
• Screen Time charts in Halto’s Insights are drawn by iOS inside a sealed extension that can’t send data off your phone or back to the app.
• When you choose “Not now” or open an app from a shield, Halto records that choice in its on-device history, like any other pause.

You can withdraw Screen Time access at any time in your iPhone’s Settings › Screen Time, or in Halto.

Widgets, Live Activity and Control Center

These show data from the shared storage above and are drawn by iOS on your phone. App names in widgets are marked as private, so iOS can hide them on the Lock Screen while your iPhone is locked.

On Android

• Usage access is used only on your phone, and only to notice when one of your guarded apps comes to the front, so Halto can show the pause. Halto checks only while your screen is on and doesn’t keep a record of other apps you use. Before asking for it, Halto explains this on its own screen.
• Display over other apps is used only to show the pause on top of the guarded app.
• Your installed apps: to let you choose which apps to guard, Halto lists the apps on your phone that have a launcher icon, with their names and icons. Only the apps you choose to guard are saved.
• Background service: while the pause is on, Halto runs a small background service with a quiet notification, as Android requires. It starts again after your phone restarts or Halto updates, so the pause keeps working.
• Battery: Halto can open your phone’s battery settings so you can let it run in the background. It doesn’t request any special battery permission.
• Halto does not use an accessibility service, and it can’t read your screen or what you type.

Notifications

All notifications (the optional evening summary, the focus-done note and, on Android, the notification that shows the pause is on) are created on your phone. There is no push server.

Links and other apps

When you choose to open a guarded app from the pause, Halto opens it on your phone with that app’s own link. Links to our website, the app stores, email or our other apps open in your browser or mail app, which have their own privacy policies.

This website

halto.wdlab.app has no cookies, no analytics and no ads, and loads nothing from other sites. Like any web server, it keeps standard access logs (IP address, browser user agent, page requested and time) for security and troubleshooting. They are deleted automatically after about 14 days.

Children

Halto is not directed at children under 13. Because the app collects no personal data from anyone, it collects none from children. Halto is a self-help tool for the person using the phone, not a parental control app.

Your choices and deleting your data

• You can turn notifications, Screen Time access, usage access or display over other apps off at any time in your phone’s Settings.
• Halto › Settings › Reset all data deletes your guarded apps, pauses, focus sessions and streaks on this phone. Your settings stay.
• Uninstalling Halto removes everything it stored. On iPhone, the automations you made live in the Shortcuts app, so delete them there too.
• We hold no personal data about you, so there is nothing for us to access, correct, export or delete. You are still welcome to ask us anything.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we will update this page and the effective date above. If the app ever handles data differently (which would need an app update), we will explain it here before that update is released.

Contact

Workaholic Developers · info@workaholicdevelopers.com