Privacy Policy

Anticipate is a free contraction timer. There is no account, no advertising and no analytics. What you log stays on your phone unless you choose to share it.

This page says the same as the Privacy page inside the app.

What Anticipate keeps

On your phone, and nowhere else unless you share it (a watch keeps only what it shows, below):

• Your contractions: when each began, how long it lasted, and how strong it felt if you said.
• The contraction being timed, so the timer carries on if the app closes.
• Your setup answers: due date, birth history, age band and who to call.
• Your settings: theme, dimming and keeping the screen awake.
• After a birth: whether you were asked to share that labor to help improve the estimate and what you answered, and if you shared it, the code that deletes it and the record until it has been sent.

What it sends

Over the internet, nothing unless, after your baby is born, you choose to share a labor to help improve the estimate. Sending that record, and deleting it again if you ask, are the only things Anticipate ever does over the internet, and nothing is sent until you tap Share. There is no account, no ads, no analytics, no crash reports and no tracking of any kind. Only your own watch gets the timer, as the next section says.

Your watch

On a watch you can see the timer and start or stop a contraction. The phone sends the watch the contraction you are timing, when the last one began and ended, your usual length and interval, and the 5-1-1 status, and the watch sends back the starts and stops you tap on it. Never your log, a name or a phone number.

Wear OS watches talk to the phone through Google Play services. Anticipate uses it only to reach a watch that is nearby, and sends nothing until it has told you so once. An Apple Watch gets them over Apple's own link between an iPhone and its paired watch. The watch keeps only the newest of these, and any taps the phone hasn't had yet.

Sharing a labor to help improve the estimate

A few hours after your contractions stop, Anticipate may ask whether your baby has arrived. If you'd like to, you can answer a few questions about the birth and share that labor's timing to help check and improve the estimate. It is completely optional, and the screen before Share lists exactly what would be sent.

If you tap Share, one record of that labor is sent. It never carries your name, contact details, due date, any date but the year, or anything that identifies your phone, its language or its time zone. It holds only these, with any question the app doesn't ask left empty:

• The contractions of up to 3 days before the birth: when each began, in seconds after the first, how long it lasted, whether you confirmed that length, and how strong it felt if you said.
• When your baby was born, counted from the first of those contractions to the nearest 5 minutes, and how sure you are of the time.
• How your baby was born, how labor started and whether you had an epidural.
• Your age group, how many times you had given birth before, whether that included a vaginal birth or a cesarean if you said, and how many weeks pregnant you were.
• The year of the birth, and the 3-hour part of the day in which the first contraction began.
• The versions of the app, the estimate and the consent, and a code made at random for this record.

Where a shared labor goes

It goes over an encrypted connection to the Anticipate team's database, which Supabase, a database service, runs for us in the European Union, in Ireland.

The database keeps the record and a scrambled form of the code that deletes it, never the code itself. It keeps no IP address and no time the record arrived. Like any request over the internet, though, sending it shows the database service your phone's IP address, roughly where that address is (such as the city and time zone), the time, and the kind of phone software sending it. The service's own request logs keep these for a short time, apart from the records, and the team never matches the two.

Only the Anticipate team can read the records, which are the responsibility of Night Owl Software Studios. No single record ever leaves the team: anything shared beyond it gives only totals over groups of at least 12 labors. The records are used only to check and adjust the numbers in the estimate, not to train AI, and if that ever changes it will be published here first.

Each record is kept until you delete it or the work ends, for no more than 10 years.

When you share

Apart from a labor you choose to share, your log leaves your phone only when you share it yourself. Share or export the log opens your phone's share sheet, and you choose where it goes. Anticipate never learns where.

Backups

Your log is kept out of phone backups and out of transfers to a new phone, so it stays on the one you used. When you change phones, it doesn't come with you.

Permissions

• Notifications (Android) and Live Activities (iPhone): to show the timer on the lock screen, with a button to start or stop a contraction. On a Wear OS watch the same permission shows the timer on your watch face, in recent apps and on the tile while you're timing.
• Promoted notifications: on Android 16 and later, to show the timer as a chip in the status bar.
• Run at startup (Android): to put the lock-screen timer back after your phone restarts.
• Vibration: the short taps when you start and stop a contraction.
• Network access: only to send a labor you choose to share, and to delete it if you ask.

Deleting your data

You can delete any contraction, or clear a whole session, in the app. Uninstalling Anticipate, or clearing its data in your phone's settings, deletes everything on that phone for good. To delete a labor you shared, open the Menu and choose Delete the labor I shared: if it hasn't been sent yet, it is removed from your phone and nothing is sent; otherwise the Anticipate team's database deletes it. Do that before you uninstall Anticipate or change phones: the code that deletes it stays on your phone and out of backups, and the record carries no name or contact details, so without the code we can't reliably tell which record is yours.

Children

Anticipate is not directed at children. The question about sharing a labor is offered only to people who say they are 18 or over; under 18, nothing is offered and nothing is sent.

Changes

If what Anticipate keeps or sends ever changes, this page and the app will say so first.

Questions

Write to nossteam@nossdev.com. The support page answers the common ones.

Anticipate is not a medical device and doesn't give medical advice.