Privacy
Rooster reads a few things about your day so it can write and record a spoken morning briefing for you. This page says exactly what those things are, where they go, and how to turn any of them off.
Rooster is made by Tropical Labs Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales. Tropical Labs Ltd is the data controller for the information described here, and you can reach us at hi@rooster.am.
The short version
- There is no account. Rooster does not ask for your email address, a password, or a social login.
- We never sell your data, and we never use it for advertising or share it with advertisers or data brokers.
- Everything Rooster reads about your day is read-only. It is used to write that morning’s briefing, and nothing is written back to your calendar, your reminders, or anywhere else.
- Every source is optional. Decline any permission and Rooster simply leaves that part out of your briefing.
No account, no sign-up
Rooster signs your device in anonymously. That gives your phone an identifier so your alarms and briefings can be generated and delivered back to the right device — it is not linked to your name, email address, or any other identity, and we cannot use it to contact you.
If you tell Rooster your first name during setup, it is stored with that anonymous identifier and used for one thing: so the briefing can greet you. You can leave it blank.
What Rooster collects, and why
Briefings are written and recorded on our servers overnight, so the audio is on your phone before the alarm rings and no morning depends on a working network. That means the material below is sent to our servers at the time it is needed.
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your alarm times | To know which mornings to write for, and when the audio has to be ready. |
| Your first name and time zone | So the briefing greets you and tells the time in your own day. |
| Your briefing settings | The voice you chose, which sections you want, your news preferences, and anything you typed about how you’d like Rooster to sound. |
| Calendar events for the day ahead — titles, start and end times | So the briefing can tell you what your first commitment is. Only if you grant calendar access. |
| Reminders due today — their titles | So the briefing can mention them. Only if you grant reminders access. |
| Approximate location and the name of your city | For local weather and local news. Only if you grant location access. Rooster requests a deliberately coarse location — roughly city level, not a precise position. |
| Today’s forecast for that location | To tell you what the weather is doing. |
| A small number of app events — that the app was opened, that a briefing was opened, played, skipped or finished | So we know the product is working and worth keeping. These record that something happened and when, not what was in it. |
| Crash reports | So a crash at 6:45am is something we find out about and fix. These contain diagnostic information about the app and device, not the contents of your briefing. |
Calendar and reminders
Rooster reads calendar events and reminders read-only, and only for the day the briefing covers. It never creates, edits, or deletes anything in your calendar or reminders, and it does not read your history.
If you connect a Google account, Rooster requests a single scope, calendar.events.readonly, and nothing more. Rooster’s use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Google calendar data is used solely to generate your morning briefing. It is not sold, not shared with third parties for their own purposes, not used for advertising, and not read by our staff except where you have asked us to help with a support issue, or where we are required to by law.
You can disconnect at any time in the app under Settings → What’s connected, or revoke access from your Google account’s permissions page. Disconnecting deletes the stored authorisation.
Who processes this, and where
Writing and recording a briefing needs a handful of services. They act on our instructions, and they receive only what that job needs.
| Service | What it does |
|---|---|
| Supabase | Database and audio storage. Holds your settings, alarms, briefing scripts, and the recorded audio. |
| Render | Runs our servers (United States). |
| Anthropic | Writes the briefing script and picks the stories, from the material described above. |
| Replicate / MiniMax | Turns the finished script into the recorded voice. |
| Sentry | Crash and error reporting. |
| Apple | Weather forecasts (WeatherKit), and subscription billing through the App Store. |
| Calendar events, if you have connected a Google account. Public news feeds. |
News comes from public sources — publishers’ own feeds and public news listings. Reading them does not send anything about you to those publishers.
Payments
Subscriptions are purchased and billed by Apple through the App Store. We never see or handle your card details. We receive only whether a subscription is active.
Our legal basis for using it
Under UK data protection law we have to tell you why we’re allowed to use your information. There are two reasons here:
- To do what you asked us to. Your alarms, settings, calendar, reminders, location and weather are used to produce the briefing you signed up for. Without them there is no product to deliver.
- Our legitimate interests. Crash reports and the small set of app events keep Rooster working and tell us whether it is worth continuing. We keep both deliberately thin, and neither is used to profile you or to advertise to you.
Where in the world it goes
Rooster is run from the United Kingdom, but the services that store data and generate briefings are based in the United States — Supabase, Render, Anthropic, Replicate and Sentry, as listed above. That means your information is transferred outside the UK. We rely on the UK Government’s adequacy regulations where they apply, and on the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum where they don’t.
How long we keep it
We keep it for as long as you use Rooster.Your settings, alarms, briefings and the recordings themselves stay put so you can go back and listen to recent mornings, and so tomorrow’s briefing knows what yesterday’s said. The material a briefing was written from — your events, reminders, weather and location for that day — is kept with that briefing.
Two things end that, and both are automatic:
- You ask us to. Deleting your data in the app removes all of it, immediately — see below.
- You stop using Rooster. After a year with no sign of the app on any device, we delete everything without being asked. Nothing is kept indefinitely for someone who has gone.
Spending stops long before that: we only write briefings for devices seen in the last couple of weeks, so a deleted app stops producing new mornings almost immediately.
Your rights
UK data protection law gives you the right to ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to receive it in a portable form. Email hi@rooster.am and we will act on it.
One honest caveat: because Rooster has no accounts, we identify you only by the anonymous identifier on your device. To act on a request we need that identifier, which the app can show you — without it we genuinely cannot find your data, which is a consequence of collecting so little of it in the first place.
If you think we’ve got this wrong, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk. We’d rather you told us first, so we can fix it.
Your controls
- Turn any source off. In the app, Settings → What’s connected shows every permission Rooster uses, what it adds, and how to switch it off. iOS Settings can revoke any of them at any time.
- Disconnect Google Calendar from the same screen.
- Delete everything, yourself. Settings → Delete my data in the app erases the lot: your alarms are cancelled, every briefing and recording is deleted from our servers, and the anonymous identity your device was using is destroyed. Rooster starts again as if you had just installed it. There is no undo — not by you, and not by us.
- Or ask us. Email hi@rooster.amand we’ll do it by hand. Deleting the app stops any further collection, but on its own it doesn’t delete what we already hold — use one of the two routes above for that.
Children
Rooster is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information.
Changes
If this page changes in a way that matters, we will update the date at the top and say so in the app.
Contact
Questions, or a request to delete your data: hi@rooster.am.