Privacy Policy for BenchBrief

Effective date: July 17, 2026

BenchBrief ("the app") is a personal lab-notebook app for capturing, summarizing, and organizing experiment notes. This policy explains what data the app accesses, how it's processed, and what control you have over it.

Summary

BenchBrief does not run its own servers, does not use analytics or advertising SDKs, and does not sell or share your data with anyone. Everything the app does with your camera, microphone, and notes happens on your device. The only data that ever leaves your device is your own notes syncing to your own private iCloud account, so you can access them across your own devices — BenchBrief's developer never has access to that data.

What the app accesses, and why

Camera. Used to scan photos of handwritten or whiteboard notes so their text can be extracted. Photos are processed entirely on-device using Apple's on-device text recognition — they are never uploaded anywhere.

Photo library. Used only if you choose an existing photo (instead of taking a new one) to extract text from. BenchBrief does not browse or access your library beyond the photo you explicitly pick.

Microphone. Used to record short voice notes describing your experiments.

Speech recognition. Your voice recordings are transcribed entirely on-device using Apple's on-device speech recognition. Audio is never sent to Apple's servers or anyone else's for this purpose.

iCloud. If you're signed into iCloud, BenchBrief syncs your projects, experiments, and generated summaries to your own private iCloud database (via Apple's CloudKit), so the same data appears across your own devices. This data is stored in the private portion of your iCloud account — it is not visible to BenchBrief's developer, not shared with any third party, and not used for any purpose other than syncing your notes to your own devices. If you're not signed into iCloud, or choose not to enable sync, the app works the same way with data kept only on that device.

App language preference. Your selected in-app display language is stored locally in the app's own settings storage on your device. This is not shared anywhere.

What we don't do

We don't run analytics or crash-tracking SDKs.
We don't show ads or use advertising identifiers.
We don't track you across other apps or websites.
We don't sell, rent, or share your data with third parties.
We don't have a backend server that receives your notes, photos, or audio — the app has no server component at all.

Your control over your data

You can delete any experiment, summary, or project at any time from within the app; deletion also removes any associated iCloud-synced copies.
Deleting the app removes all data stored on that device. If iCloud sync was enabled, your data remains in your private iCloud account until you also delete it there (or delete the app's data via Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Manage Account Storage).
Because BenchBrief has no backend, there is no separate "delete my account" process — deleting your local data and/or your iCloud data is the complete removal process.

Children's privacy

BenchBrief is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the "Effective date" above will be updated. Continued use of the app after changes means you accept the updated policy.

Contact

Questions about this policy or BenchBrief's data practices can be sent to longbaoloc86@gmail.com.