Privacy Policy for Dawn Time

Version: 6
Effective date: September 19, 2026

This file is the source of truth. GitLab Pages publishes it at https://dawntime.blackhawkelectronics.com/privacy/. When this copy changes, bump Version in frontmatter and PrivacyPolicy.VERSION in :core if existing users should be prompted.

Developer: Blackhawk Electronics
Apps: Dawn Time Personal Clock (Android phone), Dawn Time (Wear OS), and the Dawn Time watch face
Website: https://dawntime.blackhawkelectronics.com
Contact: privacy@blackhawkelectronics.com

Dawn Time is a personal clock aligned to first light at a home you choose. On your phone and watch, settings, alarms, and home coordinates stay on your devices and sync over Wear OS Data Layer.

Dawn Time Pro (optional) adds a household on our server so a Windows tray app can wind down at your desk. The phone signs in with Google and holds the subscription. The PC joins with a join code and household key you type — no Google login on the PC. We store your Google email, subscription state, and an encrypted household blob. We cannot read home coordinates or alarms inside the blob.

What we collect

We do not sell your information. We do not show ads. We do not use advertising IDs. Google Play may collect crash diagnostics separately if you allow it on your device.

Data the apps store is for running the clock, alarms, and watch complications.

Optional anonymous usage (phone and Windows tray)

If Share anonymous usage is on (default on), the phone or computer app may send a small anonymous snapshot to our server so we can see which preference categories are common and which kinds of devices people run. The watch does not send snapshots. Sky calculations still run on your devices. This is not a Dawn Time account: snapshots are stored apart from any encrypted Pro household document and do not include a Google login.

What we receive: coarse, non-identifying tags about how the clock is set (for example display style and whether a home location has been entered), which kind of device sent the snapshot (phone or computer) and a coarse OS family, coarse counts of reminders, whether certain optional features are turned on, and the app version. Values are drawn from a short allowlist. We do not receive a copy of your settings file. We do not receive whether you were sitting at the device.

What we do not receive: your home location or time zone, the substance of your daily routine (including names, times, calendars, or which other apps you use), sign-in or advertising identifiers, sensor or health readings from a watch, or the computer’s name or network location. If a setting is not needed to count popular categories, it stays on your device.

How we count installations: each app stores a random install identifier. The server keeps only a one-way hash of that value so we can count each installation once. A phone and a computer count as two installations. It is not your name or account. Uninstalling or clearing app storage creates a new identifier.

How we protect the endpoint: the official Android app proves it is the Play-signed build (a short-lived platform check). We do not keep that proof. Computer builds have no such Play check; we still limit traffic as described in the Terms of Use.

Retention: we do not store your network address on the snapshot. We delete a snapshot after a period of inactivity (about 90 days) and then keep only aggregated counts.

Your choice: turn Share anonymous usage off in Settings on that device to stop further snapshots. That does not change the clock. Dawn Time Pro, if you use it, is separate.

Home location (required)

To compute dawn, sunrise, sunset, and dusk, the phone stores:

• latitude and longitude
• time zone (for example America/New_York)

You can type coordinates, tap Use current location (a one-time GPS/network fix), or type an address during setup. The watch never requests location. After a successful fix, the phone does not keep GPS running and does not use background location, geofences, or continuous updates.

If you type an address, Android’s geocoder (on Google Play devices, typically Google) may receive that address to convert it to coordinates. We store coordinates and time zone, not the street. A short on-screen label such as city and region may appear during setup; the street is not saved as home.

Preferences and alarms (on device)

Stored locally on the phone and, when a Dawn Time watch is paired, copied to the watch over Wear OS Data Layer:

• pin event and pin hour (when first light should read on the clock)
• 12-hour or 24-hour display and sun-wheel marks
• alarms, bedtime companions, sounds, vibrate, snooze
• animals you keep (homestead chore filters)
• onboarding answers such as desired sleep length and first home-zone task (when you enter them)
• “sleeping early” for tonight only

Sun times are calculated on the device. No network is required after home is set.

Optional Google Calendar overlay (phone only)

If you turn on Google Calendar on the wheel, the phone reads today’s timed events from the on-device calendar provider. We use start and end times only, to draw teal arcs on the sun-wheel. We do not store event titles, descriptions, attendees, or locations. Calendar data is not sent to the watch or to us.

You can refuse this permission and skip the calendar step. The overlay then stays off.

Optional time-until calendar on the watch

If you add calendar events to Time until on the watch (phone Settings → Time until on the watch), the phone reads upcoming timed events from the on-device calendar provider and copies event title and start time for the next couple of days to your paired watch over Wear OS Data Layer (/dawn/until_calendar). That lets the watch complication count down to a meeting without reading the calendar on the watch. We do not store descriptions, attendees, or locations. You can remove calendar sources on the phone at any time.

This is separate from Google Calendar on the wheel (phone-only arcs). Either feature can be off.

Phone down (optional; phone only)

If you turn on Phone down on a wake alarm, the phone may ask for usage access and permission to display over other apps. While a phone-down window is active, Dawn Time reads which app is in the foreground on the phone so it can show a full-screen cover over apps you did not allow. That check runs only during the window (about every second) and stays on the device. We do not upload app names or usage history.

Your allowlist and phone-down settings stay on the phone. They are not copied to the watch.

Watch sensors (optional; for bedtime skip and smart wake)

On Wear OS, with your permission:

• Activity / asleep to skip tonight’s bedtime reminder when the watch is worn and reports asleep, and to help smart wake.
• Heart rate only inside the smart-wake window before dawn, to ring during a lighter period. On Wear OS 6 (API 36+), Dawn Time requests health.READ_HEART_RATE and health.READ_HEALTH_DATA_IN_BACKGROUND; on older Wear, BODY_SENSORS (and BODY_SENSORS_BACKGROUND when applicable). Heart-rate values stay on the watch. They are not uploaded to us, Health Connect, or Google Fit.
• Off-body sensing so “asleep” is trusted only when the watch is worn.

The phone may receive a small sleep flag from the watch (worn / asleep, plus a timestamp) over Data Layer so bedtime skip and smart-wake backup work. That is a yes/no state, not a heart-rate log.

Phone-only setups ring at dawn. We do not infer sleep from the phone.

Dawn Time Pro (optional; phone + Windows tray)

If you turn on Dawn Time Pro on the phone:

• Google Sign-In on the phone — we receive your Google account email and a sign-in token to identify your household owner account.
• Play subscription — Google Play tells us whether this Google account has an active Pro subscription (purchase token and product id). Billing stays on the phone.
• Encrypted household blob — the phone encrypts preferences and alarms (including home coordinates) with a household key that never leaves your devices. Our server stores only the ciphertext and a revision number.
• Join codes and devices — when you add a computer, the PC sends a join code and a device label (typically its hostname). We store the device row, issue a device token only after you Confirm on the phone, and show an approximate city / region / country from the PC’s public IP at join time (local GeoIP database on our server — not sent to a GeoIP SaaS). That label is not your homestead coordinates and is not live location tracking.
• Windows tray — after you confirm, the PC stores a device token locally (protected with Windows DPAPI) to pull the encrypted blob. Presence and keystrokes never leave the PC.

You can Remove a connection on the phone; that revokes the device token.

Household export file (not in this version)

A file export of preferences and alarms is not offered in the app UI. Pro sync replaces that path for the Windows tray.

How data moves between your devices

Phone ↔ watch: Wear OS Data Layer via Google Play services (settings, alarms, sleep flags, and optional calendar horizon for time-until complications). Same application id on both devices.

Phone ↔ Pro server ↔ Windows tray (optional): encrypted household blob and device management as described above. The household key never transits our server.

Google Play, Wear OS, Android backup, and your device manufacturer may process data under their own policies when you use their services (location lookup, Wear sync, app backup, store crash stats). Pro adds our Laravel API for households that opt in.

Why we use this data

We do not use this data for advertising, profiling, or selling lists.

Permissions (summary)

Phone: location (optional, to fill home), calendar (optional overlay), notifications, exact alarms, vibrate, boot/timezone reschedule, foreground service to play an alarm.

Watch: notifications, exact alarms, vibrate, activity recognition, and heart-rate access for smart wake (health.READ_HEART_RATE + health.READ_HEALTH_DATA_IN_BACKGROUND on API 36+; BODY_SENSORS on older Wear). The watch does not request location.

You can deny optional permissions. Home can be typed as coordinates. Calendar overlay and smart wake stay off without their permissions.

Storage, backup, and deletion

Data is stored in app storage on your devices. If you use Android backup, Google or your backup provider may copy app data (including home coordinates and alarms) according to that backup’s policy.

To delete Dawn Time data:

1. Uninstall the phone app, Wear app, and watch face.
2. If you use Android backup, delete this app’s backup from your Google Account backup settings if you do not want a restored copy.
3. Uninstalling the phone app does not always wipe the watch copy; uninstall Dawn Time on the watch as well.

We cannot remotely delete data we do not hold. If you emailed us a support attachment, ask us to delete that copy.

Children

Dawn Time is a personal clock for adults setting a household routine. It is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Your rights

Depending on where you live (including the EEA, UK, and California), you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or restrict processing of personal data, and to object to certain processing. Most data is on your devices (edit home and alarms in Settings, or uninstall). For Pro, you can remove devices on the phone and contact us to delete server-side account data we hold (email, subscription record, encrypted blob, device rows). For a copy we might hold from email support, contact us.

We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

Changes

If we add a new data use, we will update this policy and the in-app version. When the shipped version is newer than the version you last continued past, the phone shows an alert with a link to review.

Contact

Blackhawk Electronics
Email: privacy@blackhawkelectronics.com
Web: https://dawntime.blackhawkelectronics.com

For the apps: Dawn Time Personal Clock (com.blackhawkelectronics.dawntime on phone and watch) and Dawn Time watch face (com.blackhawkelectronics.dawntime.watchface).