SENARYLegal
Privacy
Last updated 19 October 2026
Who this is
Senary Studios is a sole developer based in London. Contact: support@senarystudios.com.
This website
senarystudios.com is a static site. It sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and has no accounts, forms or tracking of any kind. Nothing you do here is recorded by Senary Studios.
The site is hosted on Cloudflare, which processes your IP address and request metadata in order to serve pages and protect against abuse. That processing is Cloudflare's, under their own terms. The fonts are served from this site too, so loading a page contacts no one else.
Emailing the address above means I hold your message and email address for as long as it takes to reply.
If you asked to test Senary Launcher before it went public, your address is on the tester list for the closed test in Google Play Console, where it has to remain for as long as that test runs, and Google processes it under their own terms. It is not used for anything else and it goes no further. Email me and I will take it off the list. Installing from Google Play needs none of this: nothing is collected and there is no list to be on.
Senary Launcher
Senary Launcher runs on your device. It has no account system and no server belonging to Senary Studios. Your home-screen layout, app list and settings stay on the phone.
Location
The app asks for approximate location only. Android's precise location permission is not declared in it, so the "Precise" option never appears and the app cannot receive one. It asks Android for a position only to show the weather: when the home screen comes to the front with the weather on the clock switched on, when you switch that on, and when you open the Shelf. It does not ask while the Shelf is closed. The coordinates are rounded to two decimal places, roughly a kilometre, before anything is sent.
Location is used for one thing, the weather. The last position the app got is kept on the phone, rounded the same way, to fall back on when a new one is not available, and it goes nowhere else. Deny location and the rest of the app works.
Read in the code rather than watched running: when the app asks for a position, and that the last position is kept only on the phone.
Which apps you use
The app can ask for Android's Usage access. It is off until you turn it on, on a system screen: Settings, Apps, Special app access, Usage access. With it on, the app reads which apps came to the front and when, over the past week, and how long each was on screen, over the past day and week. Putting things in order is the only thing it is used for: the drawer's Recents and Suggestions, the recent apps on the Quickdrawer and the Shelf, the recent apps the dock's search shows before you type, with when you last opened each, and the order apps are offered in when you first set up a home screen.
None of it leaves the phone, and the usage times are not saved: the app asks Android again when it needs them and holds the answer in memory. Turn Usage access off and those lists fall back to what the app knows by itself, and the times disappear.
What it knows by itself, with or without Usage access, is two short lists kept in its own storage on the phone. One is the apps you opened from the launcher, up to 60, newest first, with no times. The other is the last five apps you opened from the dock's search. Both can be cleared in the app's settings, under Privacy & permissions, Clear recent apps. Recents that come from Usage access are Android's own history, not the app's, so that button does not delete them. It does make the app ignore everything from before you pressed it, so every recents list starts empty and fills again from what you open next. Turning Usage access off stops the app reading that history at all.
Read in the code rather than watched running: that Clear recent apps makes every recents list start empty.
Calendar
The app can ask to read your calendar. It asks only to read: the permission to change a calendar is not declared in it, so it cannot add, edit or delete an event. With it allowed, it reads your upcoming events, their titles, times, places and notes, and the names and colours of your calendars, to show your next events on the home screen's clock and on the Shelf's calendar cards. Tapping an event opens it in your calendar app.
Events are read from Android when they are shown and are not saved by the app, and none of it leaves the phone. The one thing kept is which calendars you picked, if you chose to show only some of them. Deny the permission and the rest of the app works.
Double-tap to lock
From version 1.4, double-tapping an empty spot on the home screen can turn the screen off. Android lets an app do that only through an accessibility service, so the app asks first, the first time you double-tap, and explains what the service does before sending you to Android's Accessibility settings, where you switch it on yourself. Say no and it does not ask again; you can change your mind in the app's settings, under Gestures or under Privacy & permissions.
The service does one thing: it locks the phone when you double-tap. It does not watch what happens on screen, it reads no screen content, and it collects and sends nothing. Android's own warning when you switch it on describes what an accessibility service could do in general; this one is set up to receive none of that. Turn it off in Android's Accessibility settings, or from either of those rows in the app, and double-tap to lock stops.
Hidden apps
You can hide an app from the drawer, the Quickdrawer and search. The list of hidden apps opens behind your phone's own lock: Android shows its fingerprint, face or screen-lock sheet, and the app is told only whether you unlocked. It never sees your fingerprint, your face or your PIN, and stores nothing about them. This uses Android's biometric permission, which apps are given at install without asking, and the app uses it for nothing else.
Which apps you hid is a list kept in the app's own storage on the phone. It is left out of Android's cloud backup and of phone-to-phone transfer, so it is not copied anywhere, and on a new phone you hide them again.
Hiding is not protection. A hidden app is still installed, and still shows in Android's Settings, your app store and its own notifications. For an app nobody else should open, use Private space in your phone's settings, if your phone has it.
Read in the code rather than watched running: that the hidden list is left out of Android's cloud backup and phone-to-phone transfer.
Microphone and speech
From version 1.5, you can open an app by saying its name: touch and hold the search bar in the dock, speak, and let go. If you choose it under Gestures, twisting the phone back and forth twice on the home screen does the same. The app asks for the microphone the first time, and says why before Android's own prompt appears. Say no and voice does not work; the rest of the app does.
The microphone is on only while you hold the search bar, or after a twist until you stop talking, for eight seconds at most. Android shows its microphone indicator whenever it is on.
Your speech is turned into text on the phone, in one of two ways, chosen under Search, Speech recognition:
- Your phone's own speech recognition, on phones that have it, when Automatic is chosen. It belongs to the phone's maker (on a Pixel, Google), and what it does is covered by their terms, not this page. If it needs a language pack, Android may offer to download one; that download is between you and the phone's maker.
- Senary's own: OpenAI's Whisper speech model, run on the phone by whisper.cpp. It is used on phones without speech recognition of their own, or everywhere if you choose it. It works with no internet connection at all, which was checked in aeroplane mode on a build installed from Google Play.
Senary's own needs its speech model, 44 MB, which is downloaded once from Google Play the first time it is needed, after the app asks. Play delivers it the way it delivers the app's own updates; nothing about you, and nothing you have said, is part of that download.
With Senary's own, the sound is kept in the phone's memory while you speak, turned into text, and then dropped. It is never saved and never sent. With your phone's own, the sound goes to that recogniser on the phone, as above, and the app receives only the text. Either way, the words that are heard go into the search bar, as if you had typed them, to find the app, and are not kept.
To notice a twist, the app reads the phone's gyroscope, only while the home screen is in front and the twist is switched on. The readings stay on the phone and are not kept. Choosing the torch for the twist uses the phone's torch and nothing else.
Read in the code rather than watched running: that the sound is never written to storage, that the words heard are not kept, that the phone's own speech recognition is only ever asked for in its on-device form, and that the gyroscope is read only while the home screen is in front.
What leaves the phone
Three things reach the network, and only when you use the feature that needs them:
| Feature | Contacts | What is sent |
|---|---|---|
| Weather | api.met.no | Your approximate location, rounded as above. The request also names the app and this website, which the Norwegian Meteorological Institute require so they can see who is calling. Nothing identifies you: no device ID, no account, no history. |
| News | feeds.bbci.co.uk, feeds.skynews.com | Nothing about you. The app reads the publishers' own RSS feeds for the topics you picked. |
| Article pictures and publisher logos | The publisher's own site | Nothing about you. Pictures come from the article's own address, and a logo from that publisher's /favicon.ico. |
There is no analytics service, no crash reporter and no advertising identifier in the app. Headlines are read straight from the publishers rather than through an aggregator, which would otherwise see what you read. Checked in the build on Play: no advertising ID permission, and no analytics or crash-reporting library of any kind.
A few more are worth naming that the table above does not cover, because none of them is the app making a request.
If you use Senary's own speech recognition, its speech model is downloaded once by Google Play, as described under Microphone and speech. Play makes that download, the way it makes the app's own updates; the app only asks Play for it.
If you tap the weather and have no weather app installed, the app opens your browser at a Google search for the forecast. That is a page load by your browser, under whatever terms and settings your browser has, and it happens only on that tap. Choosing a weather app in the app's settings replaces it.
Under what you type in the dock's search are Maps, Web and Play. Tapping one hands what you typed to that app: your maps app, your phone's web search (or, if it has none, your browser at a Google search), or your app store. The app makes no request of its own; what happens next is that app's, under its own terms, and only on that tap. When what you typed looks like an address, the app suggests opening it in Maps, and that is worked out on the phone.
The build currently on Play also carries Google Play's licence check, which asks Play whether the copy you have came from Play. That was added by Play at upload, not written into the app, and it has since been turned off for future builds. It reports on the install, not on you.
What it does not do
There is no account, no sign-in and no server belonging to Senary Studios. The address of this website appears in the app twice: once in the line the weather request sends to identify itself, and once in a comment. Neither is somewhere your data goes.
The app holds no credentials for any third-party service. An earlier build could show a Trading 212 portfolio on the Shelf; the card, the fetcher and the biometric lock that guarded it are all gone. Hidden apps, above, asks Android's own lock to open a list on the phone; it guards no credential. The code that could encrypt a stored key is still in the repository and nothing calls it, so no key is ever written and no file to hold one is ever created. Nothing financial ships in the app.
The app has a network log listing the requests it makes, a privacy screen in Settings naming each source and what it sends, and a disclosure shown before a permission is asked for. All three are in the build on Play. They were read in the code rather than watched running, which is the same caveat as the rest of this page.
Home-screen backup writes a file to a location you choose. That file is meant to stay wherever you put it, and not be uploaded anywhere by the app.
Your rights
Under UK GDPR you can ask what personal data I hold about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, and complain to the Information Commissioner's Office. In practice the only personal data I am likely to hold is an email you sent me.
Changes
Any change to this policy will be published on this page with an updated date above.
Questions: support@senarystudios.com