Dominate
Privacy Policy — Dominate
Effective date: 2 September 2026
Last updated: 2 September 2026
Dominate ("the app") is made by its developer ("we", "us"). This policy explains what the app does with information, and what it does not do.
The short version. The app blocks apps you choose, and it never learns which apps those are — Apple hands it sealed tokens rather than names (section 4). Your schedules, your daily limits and your statistics live on your phone and we have no server that holds them (section 2). We collect anonymous statistics about how the app is used (section 3). The answers you give while setting the app up, including the first name you enter, go to the company that runs our subscription screen so it can address you by it (section 5). There is no advertising, no tracking prompt, and no advertising identifier (section 7).
1. What the app does, and why that matters here
Dominate holds apps and websites shut — on a schedule you set, for a block you start by hand, or once a daily limit runs out. Doing that sounds like it would require watching everything you do on your phone. It does not, and this policy is mostly the explanation of why.
The blocking runs on Apple's Screen Time (Family Controls) system. You choose the apps in a picker that belongs to Apple, inside a sheet the app cannot read. What comes back to us is a set of opaque tokens — sealed references that only Apple's own system can resolve. The app hands those tokens back to iOS and says "shield these". At no point does it learn the name of a single app you picked, and it has no ability to read your Screen Time reports, your usage history, or anything you do outside itself.
2. What stays on your device
All of the following is stored only on your iPhone. There is no account, no sign-in, and no server of ours that holds any of it:
- Your schedules — their names, hours, repeat days and on/off state
- Your daily limits and how much of one you have used today
- Your Screen Time app selections, as the opaque tokens described in section 4
- Your focus sessions and the statistics drawn from them, including the time you have reclaimed and what the calendar shows
- The first name you enter during setup, and the rest of your setup answers
- Your theme and other settings
Some of it is kept in a shared container so that the parts of Dominate that run outside the app itself — the lock screen you meet when you open a blocked app, the Home Screen widget, the Live Activity, and the background component that starts and ends scheduled blocks — can read the same information. That container is on your device. It is not a server, nothing syncs it, and no part of it is uploaded.
The widget and the Live Activity read that container and make no network connections of any kind.
If you delete the app, all of it is deleted with it.
3. The statistics we collect
We collect anonymous usage events, through our analytics provider Amplitude, so we can see where people get stuck:
- Setup progress — which of the setup screens were seen, which were completed, where people leave, and the answers described in section 5 as categories (for example "evenings" rather than any text you typed)
- Permissions — that the app asked for Screen Time or notification permission, and what the answer was
- Subscription events — that a subscription screen appeared, whether a purchase, trial or restore was started, completed, abandoned or failed, and which plan was involved
- Sessions and app lifecycle — that the app was installed, opened or updated, and how long a session in the app lasted
- Device and app context — app version, build number, and whether the build came from the App Store, TestFlight or a development machine
- Approximate location — the country, region and city that Amplitude works out from the internet address your device connects from. This is not read from your iPhone: the app does not use location services and never asks for location permission. It is worked out from the connection itself, the way it is for any website you visit. It is not a street address, cannot locate you within a city, and is never used to build a profile of you.
This data is attached to an identifier that stands for an installation, not a person. There is no account and no name attached to it, and it is not Apple's Identifier for Advertisers — the app never reads that one at all (section 7).
The name you type is not among these events. The app records only whether the name field was filled in, never what you put in it. The separate matter of the subscription screen, which does receive the name, is section 5.
There is no screen recording and no session replay. We do not record video of your screen, and the analytics library is not configured to.
4. Screen Time and app blocking
To block anything, the app needs Screen Time (Family Controls) permission. iOS asks for it once, with Apple's own wording, at the moment you first do something that needs it — start a block, choose apps, or add a schedule. The app never asks for it on a blank screen with no explanation.
What that permission does and does not give us:
- You pick the apps and websites in Apple's picker, not ours. The app cannot see inside that sheet.
- What we receive back are opaque tokens. The app never learns which apps you chose, which apps you have installed, or how long you spend in any of them.
- Those tokens are stored on your device only. They are never sent to us or to anyone else, and they are meaningless off your device.
- They are used for one thing: telling iOS to shield those apps while a block is running, and to lift the shield when it ends.
- We cannot read your Screen Time reports. The app does not have, and has never asked for, the permission that would let it see how you use your phone.
Screen Time permission is optional in the sense that you can refuse it, but the app's entire purpose depends on it: without it, iOS ignores every block and nothing is actually restricted. iOS shows this request once per install and the refusal cannot be undone from inside the app — you would change it in the iPhone Settings app, under Screen Time.
5. Your setup answers, and the subscription screen
Setting the app up asks you a series of questions. Your answers are kept on your device, and they are also sent to Superwall, the company that runs our subscription screen, so that the screen can be written in your own terms rather than pitching cold.
What is sent:
- The first name you entered. This is the one piece of directly identifying information the app collects, and it is worth naming plainly: it appears in the subscription screen's headline, and to put it there it has to leave your device.
- What you said you want back — attention, sleep, time, and so on
- Which kinds of app you named as distractions
- How many hours a day you said you spend on your phone, and the figures the app works out from that
- Which part of the day you chose for your first schedule
None of this is published, sold, or used to identify you beyond addressing you by the name you gave. If you would rather it not leave your device, you can enter something other than your real name — the app uses whatever you type and does not check it.
Superwall also reports back whether you are subscribed, which is what unlocks the app, and sends us its own events about what happened on the subscription screen. Those are forwarded into the statistics in section 3 under names like "checkout started" and "purchase completed".
6. Notifications
If you allow notifications, the app can tell you when a scheduled block is starting or ending, or when a daily limit has run out. These are scheduled on your device by iOS.
We do not operate a push server and cannot send you anything remotely. The app records that a permission was asked for and answered — never the contents of a notification. Notifications are optional and everything else works without them.
7. What there is none of
Some things are easier to describe by their absence, and each of these is a deliberate choice rather than an oversight:
- No advertising, and no advertising identifier. The app does not read Apple's Identifier for Advertisers, does not show advertisements, and has no advertising or attribution partner. It does not track you across other companies' apps and websites, which is why you never see Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt.
- No sale or sharing of personal information, and no data brokers.
- No location. The app does not use location services and has never asked for location permission. (The approximate country worked out from your internet address is a different thing, and is described in section 3.)
- No camera, no photos, no contacts, no health data.
- No audio. The app never records sound. A microphone purpose string is present in the app because a component it depends on declares that capability; the app itself never requests microphone permission and never uses one.
- No email address or phone number. There is no account and nothing to sign in to.
- No list of your apps. See section 4 — this one is worth repeating, because it is the thing people reasonably assume an app blocker must know.
8. Who else receives data
We use a small number of processors. Each receives only what it needs.
| Service | What it receives | Why | Their policy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amplitude | The anonymous usage events in section 3 | Product analytics — where people get stuck | amplitude.com/privacy |
| Superwall | Your setup answers including your first name (section 5), and subscription screen, purchase, trial and restore events | Runs the subscription screen and remembers whether you are subscribed | superwall.com/privacy |
| Apple | Your purchase | Apple processes all payments — we never see your payment details — and operates the Screen Time system the blocking runs on | apple.com/legal/privacy |
That is the whole list. The app contacts no other server: it has no catalogue to search, no content to download, and no backend of its own.
9. Children
Dominate is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. There is no account, no profile and no way to communicate with anyone else through the app. If you believe a child has provided us with information, contact us and we will delete it.
10. How long we keep things
Anonymous usage events are retained by Amplitude for as long as the product needs them, and are deleted on request. Your setup answers are held by Superwall for as long as your subscription record exists there. Everything else lives on your device for as long as you keep the app.
11. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete or export your personal information, to object to or restrict processing, to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information, and to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.
Because the app has no account, our records are tied to an installation rather than to you, so in most cases we have no way to connect a request to a specific person. In practice:
- To delete everything on your device: delete the app. Your schedules, limits, statistics and app selections go with it.
- To stop any further data being sent: delete the app. A later reinstall starts a new identifier that is not connected to the old one.
- To have an analytics record deleted: email us at the address below with whatever you can tell us about the installation and roughly when you used the app, and we will delete what we can identify.
- To have the name and setup answers held by Superwall deleted: email us and we will ask them to remove the record.
Our legal basis for processing under the GDPR is our legitimate interest in understanding how the app is used and in keeping it working, and the performance of our contract with you for the subscription itself.
12. Security
Data in transit is encrypted with HTTPS. Data on your device is protected by iOS's own file protection. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
13. International transfers
Our providers, Amplitude and Superwall, process data in the United States. Where required, transfers rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
14. Changes
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top and, for anything significant, tell you in the app.
15. Contact
Questions, requests or complaints:
Email: abeto.studio@gmail.com