Doomstep

Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 16, 2026

This policy explains what Doomstep collects in its iPhone app and on doomstep.com, why we collect it, who can see it, and how long we keep it. Doomstep turns your steps into screen time for the apps you choose. The operator and how to reach us are listed at the end.

The short version

Your account

You sign in with Apple or Google. From your sign-in we receive an identifier for your Apple or Google account, which we store only in a scrambled (hashed) form, and the email address the provider shares, if any. Apple may share a private relay address, and only the first time you sign in. We use these to create and secure your account and to connect it to your subscription.

Apple and Google may also share your name. Doomstep keeps it on your iPhone and doesn’t send it to our service by itself. If you use Together, your first name is the name your friend sees, unless you choose a different name or remove it.

If you sign in with Apple, we also keep an encrypted Apple sign-in token so that we can revoke Doomstep’s access to your Apple ID when you delete your account. Each sign-in creates a session that lasts up to 90 days. For each session we keep a hashed form of the network address and device type it started from, never the address itself.

Steps, Health, and Motion

With your permission, Doomstep reads your step count from your iPhone’s motion sensor and from Apple Health. It reads only steps. It never writes to Apple Health, and it never reads other Health data, your location, contacts or messages, or anything inside the apps you choose.

Doomstep counts steps recorded by this iPhone and your Apple Watch. It leaves out steps typed into Health and steps written by other apps. The individual step readings, which device recorded them, and your step history stay on your iPhone, where your minutes are calculated. To suggest a daily goal, Doomstep looks at up to 14 days of your step history on the phone.

Your daily step totals leave your iPhone only for features you use:

Doomstep does not record a GPS route or your location for any walk.

Screen Time and the apps you choose

Doomstep uses Apple’s Screen Time tools (Family Controls) to lock the apps you pick. When you pick apps, Apple gives Doomstep opaque tokens and a count. Doomstep can use the tokens to lock and unlock those apps, but it can’t read which apps they are. The tokens stay on your iPhone. They are never sent to our service or to your friend.

Your first-week Screen Time comparison is drawn by Apple’s Screen Time report inside a separate report extension. Its readings stay inside that extension, which shares no storage with the rest of the app. Doomstep never receives your screen time or app usage.

When you’re signed in, the app tells our service one thing about your locks: whether protection is on, as a yes or no. In Together, your friend sees only that you’re paused, never why.

Your setup, kept with your account

When you finish setup while signed in, we save your setup with your account, so signing in again on this or another iPhone doesn’t ask you again. It holds your quiz answers (when you tend to scroll, the hour that suggests, and how many hours a day), your daily step goal and the day it starts, which setup screens you have seen, when you finished setup, whether you signed the pledge (only that you did, never the signature) and whether you have cashed in a first walk. Screen Time permission, your app choices, Motion and Health permission, step history and minutes are not part of it. Deleting your account deletes it.

So that your account works the same on any iPhone, it also keeps your notification choices and walk reminder schedule, the dates of the days off you plan or take (dates only), which celebrations you have already seen (such as your first goal day or a finished week of the Climb, so they aren’t shown again), your weekly Climb aims, and when the app suggested inviting a friend and whether it should stop. None of these include step counts. Your daily step history comes back on a new iPhone only if you turn on progress backup.

If more than one account signs in on the same iPhone, each one sees only its own days, walks, photos, streaks, days off and celebrations. The others stay on the phone and come back when that account signs in again. To tell them apart, the app keeps a record on the iPhone of which account was signed in and when. It never leaves the phone.

Walks and photos on your iPhone

Individual walks and workouts keep their activity type, start, pause and finish times, step counts, earned screen time, names and optional photos on your iPhone. They stay there unless you walk together or send one to your friend in Together. Photos you pick or take are saved as resized copies without their original location data. You can remove photos or delete an activity in Move → Your activities.

Share cards and receipts are made on your iPhone. The iPhone share sheet sends only the image you choose to the app you choose. Saving an image to Photos needs permission to add photos. Deleting a walk later doesn’t delete images you already saved or shared.

Progress backup and app milestones

Progress backup is off until you turn it on in Progress. It saves your recorded daily steps, each day’s goal, earned and bonus minutes, when you started, your weekly Climb aims and results, and your milestones, with a random ID for each iPhone that recorded them. This lets you restore your history after reinstalling or on a new iPhone. It doesn’t include photos, app choices, location or a spendable minute balance. You can remove the backup in Progress at any time.

While backup is on, the app also sends a short list of app milestones, so we can see whether Doomstep is working: opening the app (once a day), starting and finishing walks, walking days, your first reward and cash-ins, starting and ending breaks, whether an unlock or relock worked, opening the share sheet or saving an image, starting and completing a Climb, seeing, accepting or dismissing the suggestion to invite a friend, and starting a trial or subscription. Each has a date and time and whether your subscription came from the App Store or Stripe. They don’t include step counts, app names, photos or location. Removing backup deletes them. When a friend accepts your Together invite, we record that too.

The Doomstep app shows no advertising and doesn’t track you. Our website sets no cookies and shows no ads. It counts page views with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which uses no cookies.

Our ads on Facebook and Instagram

Doomstep advertises on Facebook and Instagram. To see which of those ads lead people to install Doomstep and start a trial or subscription, the iPhone app includes Meta’s software. It tells Meta when the app is installed and opened and, once each, when you create an account and when a free trial or subscription starts, with the plan’s price. Meta’s software also sends information about your iPhone with each of these, such as its model, iOS version, language, time zone and a random ID it creates for this install, and Meta receives your IP address.

The app never sends Meta your name, email address or account, your steps or any Health or Motion data, your photos, or the apps you choose. Doomstep doesn’t ask to track you, so the app never reads your iPhone’s advertising identifier. Meta also learns whether one of its ads led to an install through Apple’s ad attribution system, which doesn’t identify you. Meta handles what it receives under its own privacy policy.

Together

Together is optional. It pairs you with one friend to walk together and share one bank of break minutes. This is what it sends, and who can see it.

Invites

When you create an invite, we store your name, the optional promise you write, and a link and six-character code that expire after seven days. Anyone who has the link or code can see your name, your promise, and your weekly Climb target and time zone. Once the invite is used, cancelled or expires, it can’t be used to join, but the link can still show who sent it. When a friend accepts, they hold the seat while they set up, and you see that they are setting up. To stop people guessing codes, we count each account’s failed invite code lookups in the current hour.

What your friend sees

While you are paired, your friend’s app shows:

Your friend’s phone receives your daily totals of minutes earned and used from our service, even though no screen in the app shows them today.

Your friend never sees your apps or app choices, your screen time, your subscription or trial, your email, your device, or whether you have reported or blocked them.

The shared bank

When you both agree that “Either of you can use the minutes either of you earns,” the minutes you have available move into one shared bank, and what you earn afterward goes into it. To run the bank, our service keeps each person’s daily steps, goal and minutes earned; each group of minutes added and who added it; each shared break, with its length, when it started and ended, and which phone it ran on; and the minutes returned or expired. That ledger of minutes added, used, returned and expired is never edited or deleted: a correction is added as a new entry. We also keep a record of each time you agree to share or stop sharing.

To keep one phone in charge of your shared breaks, the app registers a random ID for your iPhone, kept in its keychain, with the app’s version. Signing in on a new phone moves that role to it.

Cheers, walks together, and postcards

Cheers, walk invites, “I’m in” and postcard reactions are fixed phrases. There is no chat. When you walk together, each phone sends its own walk’s step count about once a minute while the app is open, and when the walk started and ended, so you both see both counts and the time you overlapped. A postcard sends one finished walk’s steps and times, with up to five of its photos if you choose, to your friend, who can answer with one preset reaction.

Walk photos

Photo sharing is off until you turn it on, in Together’s settings or when Doomstep asks you (for example as you send a walk), and photos move only while you both have it on. Postcards work without photos.

Share cards

Share cards are made on your iPhone and shared only when you choose. A card shows only your own numbers unless you both turn on “Allow our combined stats on share cards.” Your names appear only if you both also allow names, and your photos appear on your friend’s cards only if you allow it. A photo you pick for your own card stays on your phone. Either of you can turn these off at any time, and we keep a record of each change. We can’t remove a card after it has been shared elsewhere.

Reports and blocks

You can report or block your friend, someone setting up on your invite, or a former friend, and you can report a photo. A report keeps the reason you pick, any note you write, and the pair’s recent activity, with “reporter” and “reported” in place of account numbers, for our team to review. A photo report also keeps a reference to the photo. Blocking ends the pair at once and stops invites between you in both directions. The other person isn’t told about a report or a block. If a block ends a pair, they see the same note as when someone leaves.

When Together ends

When a pair ends, whether someone leaves, blocks or deletes their account, every shared photo is deleted, and each person’s unspent shared minutes go back to them. The only exception is a person who deletes their account: their own unspent minutes expire. A day off together you earned and haven’t planned, or agreed on and haven’t started, becomes each person’s own day off; we keep its dates with each account, and nothing about the other person. Completed weekly Climbs stay as keepsakes for both of you. The rest of what you shared stays on our service but is no longer shown to either of you, until you delete your account. We can’t remove images someone saved or shared elsewhere.

Leaderboards

Joining a private leaderboard or the public leaderboard is optional and separate from progress backup. A leaderboard stores your chosen nickname, submitted daily steps, active days, weekly totals and rank, update times, and cheers. Private leaderboard information is visible to its members. The public leaderboard shows your board name (one we make up for you, or one you choose), weekly steps, walking days, place and cheers to anyone who views it. Don’t choose a name that reveals information you don’t want to share.

On the public leaderboard you can hide a walker or report their name. We store your hides with your account, and each report with the reported name, who reported it and when, for our team to review. The other person isn’t told.

Leaving a leaderboard removes your membership and associated scores and cheers from that leaderboard. The service removes daily leaderboard observations after 21 days, cheers after 14 days, and weekly leaderboard results after eight weeks.

Feature requests

Feature requests and votes are public and anonymous. They aren’t linked to your account: the app sends only a random code made on your phone for the board, and we keep just a one-way code derived from it to count votes, limit posts and remember who you blocked. To limit spam we also keep a hashed form of your network address for an hour after you post. We check requests automatically, you can report a request or block the person who posted it, and we may remove any request. Because nothing links them to you, deleting your account doesn’t remove them; email us to ask for a request to be removed.

Our email list

If you join Doomstep’s email list on doomstep.com, we store your email address and which page of the website you joined from with beehiiv, our email provider. We use them only to email you about Doomstep: when it’s on the App Store, and the occasional update. Joining doesn’t create a Doomstep account, and the list isn’t linked to your account in the app. Like most email services, beehiiv tells us whether our emails were delivered, opened or clicked.

You can unsubscribe with the link in any of our emails, or by emailing support at the address below. If you ask us to delete your address, we remove it from the list.

Notifications

If you allow notifications, the app registers your iPhone’s Apple Push Notification service token with our service, and Apple delivers the notifications. We send them for Together: cheers, walk invites and “I’m in”, walks saved for both of you, postcards and reactions, goals reached, a friend joining or leaving, and invite reminders. A notification can show your friend’s name and a short fixed message.

We use your time zone to hold Together notifications between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. Walk invites only arrive between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. We send at most three a day, not counting replies to something you started, such as “I’m in” to your own walk invite. Focus and Do Not Disturb still apply, and you can mute a friend’s walk invites. Walk reminders and break reminders are scheduled on your iPhone and don’t go through our service. Signing out removes your token from our service. You can turn notifications off in iPhone Settings.

Purchases

Apple processes App Store payments. Doomstep receives signed transaction information: the product, subscription status, trial, renewal and expiration dates, a hashed form of the original transaction ID, and a random account token that links a purchase to your account.

In the United States you can also subscribe through Stripe. Stripe processes that payment on its own checkout page, which opens in your browser, under Stripe’s own privacy policy. You enter your card or other payment details on Stripe’s page, never in Doomstep. When you start a checkout we give Stripe your Doomstep account number and, if your sign-in shared one, your email address, so Stripe can link the payment to your account and send your receipts. Stripe tells us your Stripe customer ID, your subscription status, plan, and trial and renewal dates.

Whichever way you subscribe, we also record that your account has used its introductory trial. Doomstep never sees or stores your payment card or other payment details.

Service providers

These companies run parts of Doomstep for us:

We don’t use data broker services. Apart from Meta’s measurement of our ads, the only analytics service we use is Cloudflare Web Analytics, on our website. Service providers may process information outside your country. If you email us, we receive what you choose to include.

How information is shared

We share information only with the people you choose (your friend in Together, a leaderboard), with the service providers above, when the law requires it or to protect people’s rights and safety, or as part of a business transfer with appropriate notice and protection. We don’t sell or rent personal information, and we never use Health, Motion or step data for advertising.

How long we keep information

Deleting your account

In Doomstep Settings, choose Delete account. If you subscribed through Stripe, we first cancel that subscription, as described below. If you signed in with Apple, we revoke Doomstep’s access to your Apple ID. Then we permanently delete:

Your friend keeps their own account and progress, gets their unspent shared minutes back, and sees a note that you left, without your name. Your own unspent shared minutes expire.

We keep two things. The shared bank’s accounting records (which minutes were added, used, returned or expired, when, and on which phone) stay so that every shared balance can still be checked. They carry an account number derived from your sign-in, never your name or email. Reports keep their reason, note and activity, with your account number removed.

Deleting your account cancels a subscription bought through Stripe immediately. No further charges are made, and the current billing period isn’t refunded unless the law requires it. If Stripe can’t confirm the cancellation, we don’t delete your account, so you can try again or cancel in Settings › Account & billing first. Deleting your account doesn’t cancel an Apple subscription. Stripe keeps its own payment records under its privacy policy. Walks and photos stored only on your iPhone stay there until you remove them in Move or delete the app, and images already saved to Photos or shared elsewhere aren’t affected.

Security

We use access controls, protected connections, device security features, and we store sign-in tokens only in hashed or encrypted form. Our own logs record error codes and counts, not names, steps, photos or tokens. No service can promise absolute security.

Your choices and rights

You can change Motion, Health, Screen Time, photo and notification permissions in iPhone Settings. Turning a permission off can stop the feature that needs it. In Doomstep you can change your goal, turn progress backup on or off, leave a leaderboard, and in Together turn photo sharing and share-card settings on or off, mute walk invites, pause sharing, leave, report or block. Manage or cancel Apple subscriptions in Settings under your Apple Account’s Subscriptions, and subscriptions bought through Stripe in Doomstep Settings › Manage billing.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or receive a copy of your information, object to certain processing, withdraw consent, or complain to your privacy regulator. Email the privacy address below to make a request. We may need to verify your identity before acting. If you can’t get into your account, you can also ask us to delete it.

Children

Doomstep is not designed for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has provided information, contact us so that we can investigate and remove it.

Changes

We will update this page when our practices change, and give additional notice or ask for consent where required. The date at the top shows the current version.

Contact

Doomstep is operated by Eric Johnson.
Support: support@doomstep.com
Privacy requests: privacy@doomstep.com