Technical & privacy

On iPhone JARVIS is an App Store app. On Android, tablets and computers it is a web app in the browser. On Android you add it to your home screen from Chrome.

The Android steps are in step 01 of Getting started. From the home screen icon the web app opens full screen and in portrait and behaves like any other app.

It works on iPhone and Android, on a tablet and on a computer: same account everywhere, same data. Approve a request from your phone in the morning, go through the history on a laptop in the evening, nothing needs moving across.

A web app on the home screen stands in for a native app, but it does not behave identically. Small changes usually load themselves the next time you open it, but with bigger changes that is not reliable: a new version sometimes will not arrive until you close the app and open it again, or remove it from the home screen and add it back. That is why we recommend the native App Store app on iPhone: the App Store updates it like any other app, so you know you are on the current version.

On iPhone notifications come through the App Store app, you just allow them on first launch. On Android they only come from the web app installed on the home screen, the phone does not let an open browser tab send them.

That is why on Android adding it to the home screen is not cosmetic: as long as you only open JARVIS in the browser, no notification reaches you. After the first launch from the home screen icon the app asks whether you want to allow notifications.

You as a parent get requests to approve, the morning summary of overnight deductions, alerts about a new kid device, new badges and news that a kid has saved up for a goal. Your kid gets the results of their requests, reward hand overs, a goal saved up for, new badges and a chore reminder. Amounts never appear in the texts and most texts are generic. Some (for example about streaks) include your kid's first name.

Every family member can turn notifications off separately. On top of that you can switch on quiet hours for the whole family (default window 21:00 to 07:00). Nothing arrives at night then. JARVIS does not wake you about deductions anyway: the summary comes in the morning.

• Not sure notifications arrive?

  On the web send yourself a test notification in Settings → Notifications. Quiet hours are there on the web too, in the iPhone app in Settings → Family.

Your family's sensitive content is encrypted with a key each family has of its own: kids' names, the names of tasks, chores, rewards and goals, and notes.

Balances and amounts are not encrypted, because the app has to calculate with them: it adds up bonuses and deductions, checks limits and the monthly potential. On their own they give nothing away. Without names and titles they are just numbers.

The server decrypts content only in memory: when someone in your family works with it in the app, or when it puts together a notification or e-mail for the family. It is never decrypted in the JARVIS admin. This is not end to end encryption.

Your e-mail is how you get back into your account. What to do if you lose your password or the e-mail itself is in step 07 of Getting started.

Exactly who can reach the data and how, where the servers run and which processors we use is spelled out on the Privacy page.

No marketing and no advertising trackers. Here is an honest list of what we measure, and what we do not.

We do not sell data and we use no advertising tools. In the app we only store daily usage totals by event name, with no identifier of a person or family. On the public jarvis.kids website we count page visits without cookies; in the app we keep no such statistics. More detailed measurement of the website through PostHog (with a cookie) runs only when you accept it in the cookie banner, never in the app.

The optional “Help us improve” consent is off by default. When you turn it on we count which screens and features get used, and in families where the founder has it on, also summaries of kids' age groups and how popular the templates are. Encrypted content (task names, notes) is never shared. You turn the consent on or off at any time in Settings → Privacy.

Error reporting (crashes and technical faults in the app) always runs. Without it we would never learn about problems and could not fix them. Personal data does not end up in those reports: it is stripped from the technical records before they are sent.

Your data is in your hands: in Settings → Privacy you download your account export (“Download JSON” on the web, “Download your data” in the iPhone app) and you also find “Delete account” there. The account export does not include your family's encrypted content yet, you can ask for it by e-mail. A single kid's data, including decrypted titles and notes, you download or delete in that kid's settings.

A kid aged 15 or older confirms their own data: when they open the app, JARVIS shows them a “Your data” screen. Until they confirm, you see in the kid's settings that the confirmation is pending.