Privacy policy
How Arc handles your data
The short version
- Your data lives in your Arc account. We don’t sell it, we don’t show ads, and we don’t use it for marketing.
- Arc reads Apple Health or Health Connect only if you connect it, and never writes to it. That data is used only for Arc’s health and fitness features, never for advertising, and never stored in iCloud.
- Arc’s AI features are run by a few AI providers. Arc asks your permission before sending them your personal data, and you can keep your health data away from the AI.
- Voice brief recordings are deleted once they’re transcribed, unless you choose to keep them. Arc doesn’t record calls.
- You can export everything or delete your account from the app at any time.
1. Who we are
Arc is a personal companion app for goals, habits, health and fitness, made by Cleus, a company registered in the United States (“Cleus”, “we”, “us”). Cleus decides how your personal data is used in Arc and is responsible for it (the “controller” under data protection laws).
This policy covers the Arc apps for iPhone and Android and Arc’s web pages (shared links, invites, gift calls, the quiz and these pages). Questions: founder@cleus.ai.
2. What Arc collects and why
Arc collects what you give it and what you choose to connect. Most of it is what you’d expect a personal app to keep: your goals, your plans, and what you log. Here is all of it.
Your account
- Sign-in: you sign in with Apple, Google, or an email address and password. Our sign-in provider (Firebase Authentication) keeps your email address, your name if the sign-in service shares it, and an account ID. With Sign in with Apple you can hide your email; we then get Apple’s relay address. Passwords are handled by Firebase Authentication and we never see them.
- Profile: your name, time zone, language, units, and your settings. If you set up a fitness or nutrition goal, also your birth year, sex, height, weight, occupation and activity level, which Arc uses to set targets and estimate calories.
Why: to run your account, keep your data in it, and personalise Arc to you.
What you create in Arc
Everything you add or log is stored in your account: Arcs and goals, milestones, projects, tasks, habits and reminders, journal entries, notes and quick logs, food and drink logs, workouts and exercises, body measurements and weigh-ins, focus sessions, reflections, reviews and plans, and chat conversations with Arc. Arc also stores what it produces for you: plans, summaries, insights, share lines, and the people, plans and facts it remembers from your conversations (“What Arc remembers”).
Why: this is the app. Arc uses it to show your progress, plan your days and follow up like a friend would. Widgets, Live Activities and Siri show and log this data on your phone; logging with Siri uses a device key we store only as a hash.
Voice briefs, voice messages and calls
- Voice briefs: the recording is uploaded to your account and turned into text. The recording is deleted as soon as it has been transcribed, unless you turn on Keep voice recordings (You → Privacy & data). If a transcription fails, the recording stays with that brief until you delete it. The transcript stays until you delete it.
- Voice messages in chat: the audio is deleted right after it’s transcribed, always.
- Calls with Arc: your voice streams from your phone to OpenAI’s voice model while the call is on. Arc doesn’t record call audio. The call’s transcript is saved in your account like a voice brief, so Arc can pick up tasks and remember what you said. Very short calls are discarded.
- Morning voice notes and video clips: Arc’s own lines are turned into speech by ElevenLabs. Only the latest voice note is kept. Video clips you make from a call or a roast are kept for 30 days.
Photos and files
- Food photos are sent to the AI to estimate what you ate, then deleted right away. The food log stays.
- Progress (physique) photos are stored privately in your account until you delete them. They go to the AI only if you ask for a body estimate on that check-in. If you make a transformation video, it is rendered on our servers from those photos.
- Note photos are stored privately in your account and aren’t sent to the AI.
- Blood test reports (PDFs or photos) are covered in Health data.
- Share cards are drawn on your phone. A photo you add to a card stays on your phone unless you share the card.
- Send to Arc (the share sheet on iPhone): the text, link and up to three images you send are read by the AI to turn them into a task, log or note. The record of what you sent is kept for 7 days.
Photos you pick are chosen with your phone’s photo picker; Arc can’t browse your photo library. Saving a card or video to your photos only adds it there.
Calendar
If you connect your calendar, Arc reads the titles and times of your events for today and tomorrow, from the calendars on your phone, and syncs them to your account so it can plan around your day and understand your briefs. Arc never changes your existing calendars. If you turn on Put my plan on my calendar, Arc adds time blocks for your tasks to its own “Arc” calendar only; on iPhone that calendar is created in your default calendar account (usually iCloud), so it syncs like your other calendars. Turn Calendar off in You → Connected apps; Remove synced data there deletes what was synced.
Location
- Saved places and place reminders: places you save (like home or the gym) are stored only on your phone. To remind you when you arrive or leave, Arc asks for location access “Always” (“Allow all the time” on Android) and lets your phone’s system watch those places, even when Arc is closed. Your location isn’t sent to us for this; a task only stores the name of its place.
- Move (runs, walks, rides and hikes): while you record a session, Arc uses precise GPS, and on Android shows a notification while it records. The route you record is saved to your account: the GPS points and times, distance, pace and the name of the area where you started. If you share a route card, the map is drawn with your phone’s map service.
- Weather on your sessions: to add the weather to a recorded session (and, when Arc is in your ear, the weather right now), our servers ask Apple Weather about the place you started, rounded to about a kilometre, and the time. Apple gets no account details. Indoor sessions aren’t looked up.
- Motion (iPhone): during a Move session Arc reads your step count from the phone’s motion sensor.
Naming a place or drawing a map uses your phone’s map and geocoding services (Apple on iPhone, Google on Android), which receive the coordinates they need for that.
Usage analytics and crash reports
- Usage analytics (on unless you turn it off): which screens and features you use and when, as events tied to your account, with your app version and platform, and a daily summary of when you opened the app. Never what you write or say, your photos, or your health values. Events are deleted after 90 days; the daily summary stays with your account. We look at them per account, alongside how many things you’ve created (counts, never content), to see what works and fix what doesn’t. During the beta the Arc team can also open your content, unless you turn that off: see Beta: team access. We use no third-party analytics or advertising SDKs and no advertising identifiers.
- Crash reports go to Sentry when the app crashes or hits an error: the error, your device model, OS and app version. They carry no account ID, and emails, tokens, quoted text and other sensitive values are scrubbed out before sending.
- Turning off Share usage analytics (You → Privacy & data) stops both. Our servers still keep error logs with your account ID for 30 days, to keep Arc working.
Beta: team access
While Arc is in beta, a few people on the Arc team can open a tester’s account in our admin dashboard, to fix problems and learn what helps. That covers everything in your account: what you create and log, your chats with Arc, call and voice transcripts, recordings you chose to keep, photos, what Arc remembers, health data from Apple Health or Health Connect, and blood tests.
- Only named admins can do this, signed in, and every time one opens your data it’s logged.
- We use it only to improve and support Arc. We never sell it, never use it for ads, and never give it to anyone outside Cleus.
- It’s on during the beta unless you turn off Beta: team access (You → Privacy & data). Off, we see only usage counts.
- It ends when the beta ends.
Notifications and “Arc calls you”
Arc’s reminders and check-ins are scheduled on your phone, so no push token is collected for them. If you turn on Let Arc ring me on iPhone, Arc stores a call token for your phone and the text of upcoming calls, and sends the ring through Apple’s push service.
Sharing and social features
Buddies, squads, witnesses, public profiles, invites, gift calls, roasts and the quiz are optional. What they store and show is in What other people can see.
Arc’s web pages
Shared links, invites and gift calls open on our web pages. They count visits without cookies; to limit abuse we keep a salted hash of your IP address for a short time. A quiz result is kept for 30 days. Some pages load fonts from Google Fonts, which sees your IP address. These policy pages load nothing from other sites.
3. Health data
Health data is the most sensitive thing Arc handles, so here is exactly what happens to it.
What Arc reads from Apple Health or Health Connect
Only if you connect it (You → Connected apps), and read-only: Arc never writes to Apple Health or Health Connect. For each day Arc reads daily values, not raw sample streams:
| Data | Where you see it in Arc |
|---|---|
| Steps, active energy | Today, habits that fill in on their own, calories burned |
| Exercise minutes, workouts (type, time, duration, calories, distance) | Today’s moments, your training week, habits that fill in on their own |
| Sleep (time asleep, when it started and ended, deep and REM when recorded) | Sleep screen, Health screen, how Arc plans your day |
| Resting heart rate, heart rate variability, breathing rate, blood oxygen, VO2 max, overnight wrist or skin temperature change | Health screen (your own trends), Body, workout readiness |
| Weight | Calories-burned estimate, when you haven’t weighed in with Arc |
| Body fat | Health screen |
| Nutrition (calories and protein eaten) | Eat, when you log food in another app |
| Mindful minutes | Habits that fill in on their own |
These daily values are stored in your Arc account so they appear on all your devices and in your history. Sleep details for the Sleep screen are also read straight from your phone, and some are used only on the phone (for example noticing when you woke up).
Blood test reports (Blood work)
If you add a blood test, the PDF or photos you choose are stored privately in your account and sent to the AI (OpenAI) to read the results. You review what it read; confirmed results are saved, and Arc may use them as context (for example, to suggest questions for your doctor). The files stay in your account until you delete the report. Only upload your own reports.
Health data and the AI
With your permission, Arc gives its AI a short summary of your health values and confirmed blood test results so its replies, plans and calls make sense for you (for example, going easier after a short night). You can keep health data and blood tests away from the AI at any time in You → Privacy & data, and still use everything else. See AI features.
Our commitments for Apple Health and Health Connect data
- It is used only to provide the health and fitness features you see in Arc.
- It is never used for advertising, marketing or data mining, by us or by anyone else, and never used to decide eligibility for credit, insurance or employment.
- It is never sold, and never given to advertising platforms, data brokers or information resellers.
- It is never shared with anyone except the service providers that run the features you asked for (the AI providers, only with your permission, and our cloud host), who may use it only to provide those features to you.
- It is not used to train AI models: we don’t train any, and the AI provider that receives it (OpenAI) doesn’t train its models on data sent through its API.
- No one at Cleus reads it, unless you ask us to (for example in a support request), it’s needed for security or to comply with the law, or, during the beta, a member of the Arc team opens your account as described in Beta: team access, which you can turn off.
- It is never stored in iCloud. It lives in your Arc account on Google Cloud and in the app on your phone.
Health Connect: Arc’s use and transfer of information received from Health Connect adhere to the Health Connect Permissions policy and Google Play’s User Data policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
How to disconnect and delete your health data
- Stop syncing: in Arc, go to You → Connected apps and turn off Apple Health or Health Connect.
- Remove Arc’s access: on iPhone, open Settings → Health → Data Access & Devices → Arc (or the Health app → your profile → Apps → Arc) and turn everything off. On Android, open Health Connect → App permissions → Arc and turn off access or remove Arc.
- Delete what was synced: in You → Connected apps, tap Remove synced data. This deletes every synced day (health values, workouts and calendar events) from your account.
- Blood tests: delete a report in Blood work to delete its files and results.
- Everything: deleting your account deletes all of it (see Deleting your account).
Arc isn’t a medical device and doesn’t diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any condition. Check with a doctor before making medical decisions.
4. AI features and AI providers
Arc’s chat, calls, voice briefs, plans, food and body estimates, blood test reading and voice notes are run by AI models from the providers below. They work for us as service providers: they receive what a feature needs, use it only to provide that feature, and don’t sell it. OpenAI doesn’t train its models on data sent through its API, and for chat, analysis and calls Arc asks it not to store the conversation. Providers may keep data for a limited time for safety and abuse monitoring, as their own policies describe.
Your permission comes first. Before Arc sends any of your personal data to these providers, it tells you who they are and asks. If you say no, features that need them stay off until you say yes, and the rest of Arc works as normal. You can change your answer, and keep your health data away from the AI, in You → Privacy & data.
OpenAI
Writes Arc’s replies, plans and reviews, reads your photos and blood tests, runs voice calls with Arc, turns your recordings into text and draws AI stickers.
- Used for: chat replies, check-ins and notification lines; live voice calls with Arc (including looking things up on the web when you ask a question that needs it); turning voice briefs and voice messages into text; organising voice briefs, calls, journal entries and logs into tasks, food, workouts and notes; daily plans, weekly reviews, insights, milestones and suggestions (workouts, meals, Arcs); food and progress-photo estimates, reading blood test reports, share lines and roasts; remembering people, plans and facts you mention; drawing AI stickers; checking gift-call names and topics for safety.
- Receives: your messages, your voice during calls and your voice recordings, their transcripts, and journal entries; what you log (tasks, habits, Arcs, goals, food, workouts, focus and notes); photos you choose to send (meals, progress photos) and blood test reports you upload; health numbers (sleep, steps, heart rate, weight and similar daily values) and confirmed blood test results, when you connect them and leave health data on; your name, time zone, language and profile basics (age, height, sex) when a task needs them; sticker prompts built from what you share (text and numbers, no photos); gift-call names and topics. Calendar titles and what Arc remembers can be part of that context too. For calls OpenAI also gets a scrambled (hashed) version of your account ID for abuse prevention.
- OpenAI’s privacy policy
ElevenLabs
Gives Arc its voice in morning voice notes and video clips.
- Receives: the words Arc speaks, which can mention your tasks, plans, progress and first name. Your own voice isn’t sent.
- You can turn voice notes off in You → Arc & you. ElevenLabs’ privacy policy
AI can be wrong. Arc labels estimates as estimates, and nothing an AI estimates about your food, body or blood tests is saved as fact until you confirm it. Arc doesn’t make decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects. You choose between Fast and Smart in You → AI model; both run on OpenAI’s GPT models.
5. Other service providers
Besides the AI providers, these companies process data for us, only to run Arc:
| Provider | What for, and what they get |
|---|---|
| Google Cloud and Firebase (Google) | Hosts Arc: sign-in, database, file storage, servers, scheduled jobs and web pages. Stores everything described in this policy. |
| Sentry | Crash and error reports, scrubbed of personal details, only while usage analytics is on. |
| Apple | Sign in with Apple, ringing your phone for calls (Apple Push Notification service), app integrity checks, maps and place names on iPhone, and the weather on Move sessions (Apple Weather gets a location rounded to about a kilometre and a time, nothing else). |
| Sign in with Google, and maps and place names on Android. | |
| Open Food Facts | When you scan a barcode, your phone asks Open Food Facts about that barcode. Only the barcode is sent (and your IP address, as with any web request). |
When you choose to share a card or video to Instagram, Snapchat or another app, it goes to that app under its own privacy policy. That’s your choice, not sharing by us.
We may also disclose data if the law requires it, to protect people’s safety or Arc’s security, or as part of a merger or sale of Cleus (you would be told first, and this policy would keep applying to your data). We don’t sell personal data, and we don’t share it for advertising.
6. What other people can see
Everything in Arc is private to your account unless you use one of these features. Each one is off until you turn it on or share a link.
- Public profile (off by default): at a web link with the handle you choose, your first name, Arc type, up to three of your Arcs’ identities, season, streak, milestone titles and a quote you pin. Commitments are hidden unless you show them. Search engines are asked not to index it.
- Buddy: your buddy sees your daily progress ring, whether you won the day, your streak, and the Arcs you choose to share. Buddy roasts need both of you to turn them on.
- Squads: members see your first name, today’s progress ring, days won in the last two weeks, your streak and the squad’s season; commitments kept only if you turn that on.
- Witnesses and commitment links: anyone with the link sees your first name, the commitment, due date, stake and outcome, and the first names of people witnessing it.
- Invites and gift calls: the page shows your first name. A gift call also shows the friend’s name and topic you wrote; the person you gift it to talks with Arc in their browser, and nothing they say is stored. Gift-call links work for 7 days and are deleted after 30.
- Share cards, videos and stickers: only what’s on the card, and only where you post it.
Reports and blocks. If you report a person, a squad, a commitment or a page, we keep your report (the reason, your note and a copy of what you reported) so we can review it. The people you block are stored in your account, and blocked people can’t reach you through Arc’s social features.
7. How long we keep data
| Data | Kept |
|---|---|
| Your account and what you create (goals, tasks, habits, journal, chats, transcripts, logs, workouts, routes, synced health days, blood test reports, progress photos, memories) | Until you delete it, or delete your account |
| Voice brief recordings | Deleted once transcribed, unless you keep them |
| Voice messages in chat | Deleted right after transcription |
| Call audio | Never recorded by Arc |
| Food photos | Deleted right after the estimate |
| Video clips | 30 days |
| Data exports (the copy on our servers) | 7 days |
| Usage analytics events | 90 days |
| Daily app-open summary | Until you delete your account |
| Error logs | 30 days |
| Crash reports at Sentry | Up to 90 days |
| Send to Arc records | 7 days |
| Gift calls · quiz results | 30 days |
| Squad invites · buddy invites | Expire after 7 days · 48 hours |
Copies kept by providers (for example safety logs at AI providers) expire on their own schedules, described in their policies.
8. Your controls
All in the app, under You:
- Privacy & data: AI permission and health data for the AI, Keep voice recordings, Share usage analytics, Beta: team access, what Arc remembers from chat (forget any of it), Export my data (one ZIP file with every record, photo and kept recording), and Delete account.
- What Arc knows: see, edit or turn off what Arc remembers about the people and plans in your life.
- Connected apps: connect or disconnect Apple Health, Health Connect and Calendar, and remove synced data.
- Arc & you: turn off check-ins, voice notes and calls.
- You can delete any entry, photo, report, brief or chat on its own.
- Your phone’s settings control location, camera, microphone, photos, motion, calendar and notification access at any time.
9. Deleting your account
In the app: You → Privacy & data → Delete account. It deletes your account and everything in it right away, including photos, recordings, reports and synced health data, and removes you from buddies, squads, public pages and links. There is no waiting period and it can’t be undone. If you can’t use the app, see how to ask us to delete your account.
What remains afterwards: server error logs (deleted within 30 days), crash reports at Sentry (up to 90 days), counts that don’t identify you, and copies at providers that expire on their own schedules.
10. Security
Data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS) and at rest on Google Cloud. Security rules let only your account read and write your data (during the beta, named Arc admins can also read it: see Beta: team access), and some things (like XP and AI results) can only be written by our servers. AI provider keys stay on our servers, never on your phone. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your data, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.
11. Children
Arc isn’t for children. You must be at least 13 to use it, or older where the law where you live requires (for example 16 in some EEA countries and 18 in India). If you believe a child has given us personal data, email founder@cleus.ai and we’ll delete it.
12. Where data is processed
Cleus is in the United States, and Arc’s servers and most of our providers are too. If you use Arc from elsewhere, your data is transferred to and processed in the United States. For transfers from the EEA, the UK and Switzerland we rely on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses (with the UK addendum), or on a provider’s certification under the EU‑U.S. Data Privacy Framework and its UK and Swiss extensions.
13. If you’re in the EEA or the UK
Legal bases. We use your data:
- to provide Arc to you under our terms (performance of a contract): your account, what you create, sync and features you use;
- with your consent: connecting Apple Health or Health Connect, blood tests and other health data (your explicit consent, as it’s special-category data), sending personal data to AI providers, keeping recordings, and optional social features. You can withdraw consent at any time without affecting what happened before;
- for our legitimate interests in keeping Arc secure, preventing abuse, fixing errors and understanding which features are used (usage analytics, and during the beta Beta: team access, both of which you can turn off);
- to comply with the law.
Your rights. You can access your data, get a copy in a portable format, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to our use of it, and withdraw consent. Most of this you can do yourself in the app (export, edit, delete). For anything else, email founder@cleus.ai; we answer within one month.
Complaints. You can complain to the data protection authority where you live or work (in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office). We’d appreciate the chance to help first.
14. If you’re in California
This section is our notice under the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the CPRA.
- Categories we collect (in the last 12 months): identifiers (name, email, account ID, call tokens); personal characteristics (age, sex); internet and app activity (usage analytics); precise geolocation (routes you record); audio and visual information (voice recordings, photos); professional information (occupation, if you give it); inferences (plans, insights and what Arc remembers); and sensitive personal information: health data, precise geolocation and account login.
- Sources: you, your device (the health, calendar and location access you grant), and the providers above.
- Purposes: providing and personalising Arc, security, debugging, and improving Arc, as described above.
- Disclosures: to the service providers listed in sections 4 and 5, for those business purposes.
- We don’t sell or share personal information (including for cross-context behavioral advertising), and we have no actual knowledge of selling or sharing data of anyone under 16.
- Sensitive personal information is used only to provide the services you request, as the law permits, so the right to limit its use doesn’t apply.
- Retention: see How long we keep data.
- Your rights: to know and access what we collect, to delete it, and to correct it; and not to be discriminated against for using these rights. Use the app, or email founder@cleus.ai from the email on your account so we can verify it’s you. An authorised agent can ask for you with your signed permission. We respond within 45 days.
15. Consumer health data (Washington, Nevada and other US states)
Some US state laws, such as Washington’s My Health My Data Act, protect “consumer health data”. In Arc that’s the health data in section 3, blood tests, body measurements and progress photos, food and workout logs, and health-related things you write or say.
- We collect it from you and from the apps you connect, with your consent, only to provide the features you use.
- We share it only with the service providers in sections 4 and 5, to provide those features. We don’t sell it.
- You can see it, export it, delete it and withdraw your consent in the app, or by emailing founder@cleus.ai. If we decline a request, you can appeal by replying to our answer; if the appeal is denied you can contact your state attorney general.
Residents of other US states with privacy laws (such as Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Texas and Oregon) have similar rights to access, correct, delete and port their data, and can appeal the same way.
16. If you’re in India
Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023:
- Consent: we process your personal data with your consent, which you give when you create your account and when you turn on features such as health connections or AI, and for the other uses the Act allows. You can withdraw consent as easily as you gave it, in the app or by email; we then stop, unless the law requires otherwise.
- Your rights: to get a summary of your data and how it’s processed and who it’s shared with, to correct, complete, update and erase it, to have grievances addressed, and to nominate someone to exercise your rights if you die or can’t.
- Grievances: contact our grievance contact at founder@cleus.ai. We respond within the time the law requires. If you’re not satisfied, you can complain to the Data Protection Board of India.
- Age: Arc is only for people 18 and over in India.
17. Changes to this policy
We’ll update this policy when Arc changes. If a change matters, for example a new provider receiving your data or a new use of it, we’ll tell you in the app before it takes effect and, where needed, ask again. The date at the top shows the current version.
18. Contact
Cleus · founder@cleus.ai
For privacy questions, requests, deletion, reports and grievances.